International Conference: Beyond 1989: Childhood and Youth in Times of Political Transformation in the 20th Century

Beyond 1989: Childhood and Youth in Times of Political Transformation in the 20th Century Institute of Advanced Studies at the...

Revolution From Within: Experts, Managers and Technocrats in the Long Transformation of 1989

The programme for our collaborative conference with Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena is now available. The conference will form Imre Kertész Kolleg...

Registration Open for our British Academy Conference: Global Neoliberalism, 7-8 June 2018

Global Neoliberalism: Lost and Found in Translation British Academy Conference 7-8 June 2018 The University of Exeter and 1989 after...

Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe

Professor James Mark’s co-edited volume Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe is now available through...

The Future of the Past: Why the End of Yugoslavia is Still Important

By Ljubica Spaskovska A new socialist model is emerging in the western Balkans. Can its political vocabulary transcend the ethno-national dividing...

Writing Human Rights into the History of State Socialism

By Ned Richardson-Little The collapse of the Communist Bloc in 1989-1991 is viewed as one of the great triumphs of...

< >

Category: Heritage

CFP: Socialist Heritage Around the World: A Heritage Without Borders?

4th Biennial Conference”Heritage Across Borders”

Association of Critical Heritage Studies

1-6th September, 2018

Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Call for Papers: Socialist Heritage Around the World: A Heritage Without Borders?

Abstract:

This session intends to shed light on the heritage of Socialist pasts around the world. We particularly would like to explore and compare cases of former Soviet States and Republics, but also those of Asia, Latin America and Africa.  Indeed, Socialist world seemed to have been, if not excluded, not enough analyzed in heritage history. Therefore, we propose, not to project ‘Western’ categories onto Socialist countries, but rather to analyze specificity of Socialist conceptions and uses of heritage (Smith 2006) – taking thus on board the new guidelines of the growing scientific fields that are critical heritage studies.

Indeed, in these regimes base(d) on Marxism-Leninism, the edification of Socialism – in the literal and figurative sense – determined artistic, cultural and heritage policies. Ideology undeniably influenced the way of theorizing and ‘making’ heritage (Heinich 2006): it indeed oriented the choice of preserving the monuments of the past, as well as the type of artistic and cultural productions in the present, as also their way to be preserved for the future. Socialist regimes thus left material remains, especially monuments and architectures, that are still omnipresent all around the world. But is Socialist heritage a heritage without borders?

We invite cross-disciplinary papers to explore two main (but not limited) directions:

* First, the session aims to put into perspective ways of thinking and using heritage in Socialist countries. How did the Marxist-Leninist conception of Space and Time directly influenced heritage? What were profound reasons of heritagization in Socialist countries? Is there a “Socialist” interpretation of heritage? How did the Soviet conception of heritage influenced other countries? What are the differences between Socialist conceptions of heritage and those found in the capitalist world?

* Second, the session intends to better grasp the complexity of these “ideological heritages” in the era of post-Socialist transitions and social rupture. Policies toward material remains of Socialist pasts diverge indeed greatly and are often paradoxical, ranging from abandonment to “museumfication” depending on national contexts. We invite paper to precisely analyse the link between history writing, memory, identity (re)constructing and Socialist heritage in post-Socialist countries.

Deadline : 30th of November 2017

Guidelines to submit your proposal:
http://2018achs.com/#/session/paperDraft

If you need any information, please contact Jule Deschepper:  julie.deschepper@inalco.fr

Call for Papers: Exporting Socialism, Making Business? Intercultural Transfer, Circulation and Appropriations of Architecture in the Cold War Period 21-22 June 2018, IRS Erkner

Call for Papers: Exporting Socialism, Making Business? Intercultural Transfer, Circulation and Appropriations of Architecture in the Cold War Period
21-22 June 2018
IRS Erkner

Deadline for submissions: December 20, 2017

After WW II, architecture was used and misused as an ideological signifier for competing systems and for new national identities. Diverse actors and networks took part in architectural exchange within the blocks and beyond the Iron Curtain. Different aid projects posed an attempt to overcome political and economic divides, but at the same time they were often considered as foreign imposition or neo-colonial practice. Tensions between commercial interests and solidarity arose.

Against this background and referring to the growing scholarly interest for the multi-layered and multi-centred exchanges between the Global South and socialist as well as capitalist countries, we would like to investigate this issue in relation to architecture and constructing industry from an interdisciplinary perspective of architectural, urban and economic history as well as postcolonial studies and heritage preservation.

The conference focuses around five aspects:

I. Designing

  • What actors, institutions and networks worked on international architectural and urban planning projects on micro-, meso- and macro-scale? Which motives can be outlined? How was the challenge of designing in the abstract handled?
  • Which means and languages of architectural representation were chosen for international projects? How was this issue perceived from different perspectives (socialist, non-aligned, western)?
  • What role did ‘tropical architecture’ as a concept and subject in architectural teaching play?

II. Circulating

  • What were the geographies, temporalities and typologies of international architectural and urban planning projects?
  • How were ideas, knowledge and actors (such as experts and construction workers) circulated?
  • Which dynamics of bilateral and multilateral investments can be identified?

III. Appropriating

  • How were international projects adapted to different local circumstances (e.g. on climatic, cultural or economic level)?
  • Which local tensions arose due to the international projects? Where and how were the foreign investments contested? By whom?
  • How has been the international architectural heritage from the post-war era handled over the last decades?

IV. Feed-back mechanisms

  • What were the repercussions of international involvement on the architecture and urban planning in home countries?
  • How did the actors reflect upon the international involvement?
  • How were abroad projects presented in the experts’ discourse and in the media?

V. Framing

  • How were architectural projects influenced by the Cold War politics and economy (e.g. intra-block cooperation, power imbalance)? What was the ideological context of the architectural exchange (e.g. between different socialist countries around the world)?
  • Which role(s) assumed the CMEA and other international organisations in the construction industry?
  • Which concepts are relevant to the investigation of architectural projects (e.g. ‘multiple modernities’)? How can they be challenged?

Both case studies and cross-cutting analyses are welcome.

We strongly encourage submitting papers addressing the shifting the perspective to the non-European actors and their involvement in architectural projects.

Paper proposals (abstract of max. 450 words + short CV) should be addressed to both Dr. Andreas Butter (Andreas.Butter@leibniz-irs.de) and Dr. Monika Motylinska (Monika.Motylinska@leibniz-irs.de)

Deadline for submissions: December 20, 2017

[Top]

Programme now available for our conference on State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism

State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism in Heritage Protection after 1945
21-22 November 2017
Location: Reed Hall, University of Exeter, UK

Join us for our conference exploring the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels.

CONFERENCE SYNOPSIS

Histories of heritage usually perceive their object of study as a product of western modernity, and exclude the socialist world. Yet, understood as a cultural practice and an instrument of cultural power, and as a “right and a resource”, heritage has played important roles in managing the past and present in many societies and systems. In the postwar period, preservation became a key element of culture in socialist and non-aligned states from China, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc to Asia, Latin America and Africa. Attention paid to the peoples’ traditions and heritage became a way to manifest the superiority and historical necessity of socialist development. However, the contribution of socialist states and experts to the development of the idea of heritage is still to be fully excavated.

The conference aims to understand the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels. This phenomenon was in part the result of country-specific factors – such as a reaction to rapid industrial development; the destruction of both the Second World War or wars of national liberation; and the necessity to (re)-invent national traditions on socialist terms. But it was also due the growth of a broader international consensus on international heritage protection policies – in which socialist and non-aligned states and their experts played an important role. To this end, the conference will also address the relationship between socialist conceptions of heritage and those found in the capitalist world: to what extent can we discern the convergence of Eastern and Western dynamics of heritage discourses and practices over the second half of the twentieth century? To what degree did heritage professionals from socialist states play a role in the formation of the transnational and transcultural heritage expertise? To what extent did heritage still play a role in Cold War competition? Socialist states claimed that their respect for progressive traditions and material culture distinguished their superior methods of development from that of the capitalist world. Non-Aligned countries often attempted to blend aspects of socialist and capitalist logics of cultural heritage politics.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Day 1 – 21 November

08.45-09.15    Registration

09.15-09.30    Introduction

09.30-10.30   Panel 1: Transnational Circulations of Heritage Concepts and Ideas (Part 1)
Chair James Mark
Discussant Michael Falser

Nikolai Vukov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) Ethnographising the Past, Ideologising the Present: Traditional Heritage as an Ideological Resource and International Asset in Eastern Europe after 1945

Yao Yuan (Nanjing University) International Factors in Shaping Chinese Heritage Conservation Policy

10.30-10.45    Refreshment Break

10.45-12.00    Panel 1: Transnational Circulations of Heritage Concepts and Ideas (Part 2)
Chair Corinne Geering
Discussant Nelly Bekus

Marko Spikic (University of Zagreb) Between Exceptionalism and Internationalism: Ethics and Politics of the Conservation System in People’s Republic of Croatia of the 1950s

Pablo Gonzalez (University of Lisbon) A Rebel Heritage for the Cuban Revolution: Socialist Internationalism, Art and Soviet Influence

12.00-13.00    Keynote Lecture: Stephen Smith (University of Oxford) Heritage in Contention: the Soviet Union and China after 1945   

13.00-14.30    Lunch

14.30-16.00    Panel 2: International Organisations and Socialist Heritage
Chair Kate Cowcher
Discussant Nikolai Vukov  

Nelly Bekus (University of Exeter) Tracing Multiple Logics in Soviet Heritage-Making: Pan-Soviet, National and International Agencies of Cultural Power

Corinne Geering (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen) World Heritage beyond UNESCO: Soviet Approaches to World Heritage before 1988

Emanuela Grama (Carnegie Mellon University) International mediations: UNESCO visits to Romania at the end of the Cold War or heritage as a right to place

16.00-16.15    Refreshment Break

16.15-17.15     Panel 3: South East Asia and Socialist Heritage
Chair Natalia Telepneva
Discussant James Mark

Michael Falser (Heidelberg University – Université Bordeaux-Montaigne) Cold War and non-aligned heritage politics in South and South-East Asia

Alicja Gzowska (University of Warsaw) One man’s dream? Polish conservation experts in Vietnam

19.00    Drinks Reception – Devon and Exeter Institution

20.00    Conference Dinner – Rendezvous

Day 2 – 22 November

09.00 – 10.30    Panel 4: The Development of Socialist Ideas of Heritage in Africa (Part 1)
Chair Nelly Bekus
Discussant Paul Betts

Kate Cowcher (University of Maryland) Origin Myths and Incarcerations: Ethiopia’s National Museum amidst socialist revolution

Piotr Marciniak (Poznan University of Technology) From Warsaw to Faras. The Polish School of Reconstruction and Conservation of Monuments and Sites: People, Doctrine and History

Natalia Telepneva (University of Warwick) The Soviet-Somali Archaeological Expedition and the Global Struggle for the Horn of Africa

10.30-10.45    Refreshment break

10.45-11.45    Panel 4: The Development of Socialist Ideas of Heritage in Africa (Part 2)
Chair Michael Falser
Discussant Marko Spikic

Nadine Siegert (University of Bayreuth) (Re)activated heritage. State-sponsored socialist propaganda and architecture in the Luanda cityscape

Nina Díaz Fernández (University of Ljubljana) Yugoslav Experts and the Protection of Monuments in the Third world

11.45-13.00    Round Table

Paul Betts (University of Oxford)

Michael Falser (Heidelberg University – Université Bordeaux-Montaigne)

James Mark (University of Exeter)

13.00    Farewell Lunch

 

Conference Convenors:

Professor James Mark and Dr. Nelly Bekus, University of Exeter and 1989 after 1989

 

Dr. Michael Falser, Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg University

Dr Ezster Gantner, Herder Institute

[Top]

Join us for our next conference on State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism in Heritage Protection after 1945

Join us in Exeter for our conference exploring the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels.

Conference dates: 21-22 November 2017

Conference location: The University of Exeter

Call for Papers deadline: 20 June 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS

Histories of heritage usually perceive their object of study as a product of western modernity, and exclude the socialist world. Yet, understood as a cultural practice and an instrument of cultural power, and as a “right and a resource”, heritage has played important roles in managing the past and present in many societies and systems. In the postwar period, preservation became a key element of culture in socialist and non-aligned states from China, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc to Asia, Latin America and Africa. Attention paid to the peoples’ traditions and heritage became a way to manifest the superiority and historical necessity of socialist development. However, the contribution of socialist states and experts to the development of the idea of heritage is still to be fully excavated.

The conference aims to understand the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels. This phenomenon was in part the result of country-specific factors – such as a reaction to rapid industrial development; the destruction of both the Second World War or wars of national liberation; and the necessity to (re)-invent national traditions on socialist terms. But it was also due the growth of a broader international consensus on international heritage protection policies – in which socialist and non-aligned states and their experts played an important role. To this end, the conference will also address the relationship between socialist conceptions of heritage and those found in the capitalist world: to what extent can we discern the convergence of Eastern and Western dynamics of heritage discourses and practices over the second half of the twentieth century? To what degree did heritage professionals from socialist states play a role in the formation of the transnational and transcultural heritage expertise? To what extent did heritage still play a role in Cold War competition? Socialist states claimed that their respect for progressive traditions and material culture distinguished their superior methods of development from that of the capitalist world. Non-Aligned countries often attempted to blend aspects of socialist and capitalist logics of cultural heritage politics.

Conference themes to be addressed in papers include (but are not limited to):

  • The rise of interest in, and conceptualisation of, heritage under socialist and non-aligned states;
  • the transnational and transcultural circulation of ideas about heritage both within an expanding world of socialist states and across Cold War ideological divides;
  • the role of socialist experts in international debates over heritage;
  • the role of individual actors as cultural brokers within the cultural heritage field;
  • the role of international organisations, such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, UIA and others in providing a platform for professional communication and knowledge exchange involving the socialist world;
  • the role of the Cold War in the development of heritage;
  • the role of national traditions, experience and transnational cooperation across the Cold War divide in the creation of concepts and practices of socialist heritage;
  • the legacies of the work of socialist states and experts in contemporary heritage practices.

 

Abstracts of 300-500 words, together with an accompanying short CV should be submitted to Natalie Taylor (N.H.Taylor@exeter.ac.uk) by June 20, 2017.

The selected participants will be notified by July 20, 2017.

Funding opportunities for travel and accommodation are available, but we ask that potential contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.

To download a copy of the Call for Papers and for further information about the conference go to our State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism conference page


 

It is kindly supported by Exeter University’s Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective.

Conference conveners:

Prof. James Mark and Dr. Nelly Bekus, University of Exeter, Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective

Dr. Michael Falser, Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg University

[Top]