CBEES Advanced Seminars 2011
The CBEES "Advanced Seminar" is a series of lectures, presentations of new publications and discussions of individuals' academic work-in-progress, all tied to contemporary research in Baltic Sea and Eastern European Area Studies.
Autumn term 2011
Most of the seminars in this series are held in English on Mondays, 13.00-15.00. Some ad hoc seminars may be held on other days of the week. If a seminar is held in Swedish that will be noted below.
Seminar leaders:
Professor Mark Bassin, mark.bassin@sh.se
Professor Anu Mai Kõll, anu-mai.koll@sh.se
Dr Mai-Brith Schartau, mai-brith.schartau@sh.se
12 September
Why Are We Not Finished With Hitler Yet?
Speaker: Dr Barbro Eberan, author and journalist, Hamburg
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room MA755, Södertörn University
Contact: Mai-Brith Schartau
19 September
Gifts of the past and the present: Assembling Soviet Deportation in Lithuanian Museums
Speaker: Dr Egle Rindzeviciute, Postdoctoral researcher at Gothenburg Research Institute GRI and Linköping University, tema Q and BEEGS alumni
Discussant: Dr Jonas Harvard
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
The paper is a work in progress. Egle Rindzeviciute discusses how Lithuanian muesums represent the deportation after independence. The paper begins a theoretical discussion of collective memory , the question what is legitimate narrative, and the tensions between the types of knowledge production by professional historians and witnesses.
Contact: Anu Mai Kõll
26 September
A Reflection of Colour, Hope and Optimism - Berlin Wall Graffiti and Hip-hop in a Cold War Context
Speaker: Jacob Kimvall, doctoral student, Art History, Stockholm University
Discussant: Dr Charlotte Bydler, Research leader, CBEES
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Presentation of a dissertation chapter: The Rise, Fall and Aftermath of the Berlin Wall Graffiti
The chapter concerns two aspects of graffiti and the Berlin Wall. First, the production of graffiti at the Berlin Wall from 1978-1992, and its reception in the USA and Western Europe during the same period. Second, the use of this graffiti as a part of Berlin Wall monuments around the world during the years 2009-2011. It is a part of a research project regarding the history and historiography of contemporary graffiti.
Contact: Mai-Brith Schartau
3 October
Collapse as Crucible: Social Change in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia
Speaker: Tony Wood, journalist, New Left Review, London and visiting researcher at CBEES, Södertörn University
Discussant: Dr Zhanna Kravchenko, Södertörn University
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room MA914, Södertörn University
Contact: Mark Bassin
10 October
Memory of the Gulag in Post-Soviet Russia: Between Remembrance and Denial
Speaker: Elisabeth Gessat Anstett, Chargée de recherché, CNRS, Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux (IRIS), Paris
Discussant: Dr Maija Runcis, Södertörn University
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University.
The research I’m carrying on the legacy of mass violence in Post-soviet Russia is based on interviews conducted for some years in the city of Rybinsk, with former prisoners and neighbours of the Volgolag (a network of concentration camps dedicated to the building of dams on the Volga River, active from 1936 to 1957). These interviews show that the memory of the collective experience of the Gulag relates not only to the trauma caused by the material and psychological conditions in which imprisonment and forced labour were experienced or witnessed, but also with the long-term and large-scale use of secrecy in the Soviet and post-Soviet era. Social and political uses of secrecy have produced a powerful culture of denial, with the result that the collective memory of the Soviet period is still build up through silence, forgetting or guilt.
In this paper I will focus more specifically on the denial procedures found in the testimonies of prisoners and neighbours of the Gulag. I will argue that these various forms of denial (through silence, disruption or evasion) are not a dead end for the work of the anthropologist, but on the contrary a heuristic starting point. Recognizing denial as an object in itself allows us indeed to give fresh impetus to the dialectic of knowledge through an examination of cultural, political and ideological uses of language, underlining once again the heuristic value of the interview as an investigative tool.
Contact: Anu Mai Kõll
17 October
German and Swedish Research on Eastern Europe: The View from the North and the West
Speaker: Joakim Ekman, Professor in political science at CBEES, Södertörn University
Discussant: Dr Ann-Cathrine Jungar
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Contact: Anu Mai Kõll
24 October
Gender Aspects of Russian History and Its Media Construction
Speaker: Olga Smirnova, Moscow State University
Discussant: Helene Carlbäck, CBEES
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Contact: Mark Bassin
31 October
Ideologies of Space and Resettlement Policies in Late Imperial Russia
Speaker: Alberto Masoero, University of Venice
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room MA914, Södertörn University
Contact: Mark Bassin
7 November
Literary and Cultural Historiography: Telling Early Modern Life Stories… Out of a Gender Perspective
Speaker: Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, Professor in German literature, Stockholm University
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University.
Contact: Mai-Brith Schartau
14 November
Implications of European Food Regulation in New Member States in Central and Eastern Europe. The Example of Poland
Speaker: Dr Karolina Zurek European University Institute, Florence and Visiting researcher at CBEES
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room MA914, Södertörn University
Contact: Anu Mai Kõll
21 November
Political Leadership at Local Level in Germany and Sweden
Speaker: Fil Dr Bo Malmsten
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Contact: Mai-Brith Schartau
28 November
Why did Modern Literary Theory Originate in Eastern and Central Europe? (And Why Is It Now Dead?)
Speaker: Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature (Queen Mary, University of London)
Discussant: Professor Irina Sandomirskaja, CBEES
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room MA914, Södertörn University
Contact: Mark Bassin
5 December
The Space of Memory and the Memorial Space: Exile Estonian Memories in Sweden
Speaker: Maryam Adjam, doctoral student, Ethnology/BEEGS
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Contact: Anu Mai Kõll
12 December
Masculinity in Poland after 1989
Speaker: Dr Renata Ingbrant, Stockholm University
When? 13.00-15.00
Where? Room F819, Södertörn University
Contact: Mai-Brith Schartau
Updated 2011-10-18