[spectre] CFP: Session at East Central Europe-1st half of 20th century (Leipzig, 14-16 Jan 16)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Beata Hock <beata.hock at uni-leipzig.de>
Date: Jul 5, 2015
Subject: CFP: Session at East Central Europe-1st half of 20th century 
(Leipzig, 14-16 Jan 16)

University of Leipzig, January 14 - 16, 2016
Deadline: Jul 30, 2015

Call for Papers for the panel on Art and Cultural History of the 
interdisciplinary conference

"East Central Europe in the First Half of the 20th century: 
Transnational Perspectives"

(The link at the bottom of this email redirects to the entire Call with 
relevant information on the other panels - Economy, Migration, 
Internationalism, Territorialisation.)

Send applications to: hadler at uni-leipzig.de (Frank Hadler) | 
knaumann at uni-leipzig.de (Katja Naumann) | beata.hock at uni-leipzig.de 
(Beata Hock)

Panel on Art and Cultural History:

The section on culture inquires into the continuities and ruptures in 
cultural history. As some would argue, the Great War and the concluding 
peace treaties marked such an emphatic geopolitical caesura that no true 
cultural continuity could possibly survive it. The (re-)emergence of 
individual nation states on the map of Europe nevertheless did continue 
to bestow a politicized role on the arts and artists in shaping national 
identities and elaborating the cultural bases of how nations see 
themselves. At the same time, this approach to cultural expression had 
to face its emergent rival in the form of avant-garde movements with 
their pronounced cosmopolitanism and apolitical self-referentiality. 
Beyond the sphere of arts, an intense circulation of intellectual goods 
also persisted in the broader sociocultural field on the level of social 
practices and the institutionalization of these practices.

Presentations are invited to address the various branches of the arts, 
visual and popular culture and the printed press, as well as the 
relationship between social change and cultural practices as mirrored in 
lifestyle issues, material culture, or knowledge production.

Possible themes include:
- cultural expression as a contested field between national identity and 
cosmopolitan abstraction, and as a projection screen for other 
identities (e.g., gender, minority, Jewish); - processes of cultural 
transfer and observable exchange in the domain of fine arts (also 
including exhibition practice); literature; theatre and modern dance; 
music (classical, experimental, and popular); and the internationalism 
of modern architecture and design; - the emergence of, and early 
co-productions between, national film industries; - the ideological 
trajectories of artists: artists’ political affiliations, including 
their relations to, and involvement in, wars and revolutions, 
militarism, and peace movements; - club and association culture as sites 
of an emerging civil society transcending the nation; - the effect of 
social modernization on various social groups (e.g., women suffrage, and 
the working class and the socialist international).

General description of the conference:

The conference of the project group “Transnational Contemporary History” 
at the GWZO Leipzig aims at approaching the history of the first half of 
the 20th century in East Central Europe from a transnational 
perspective. Taking traditional national historical narratives, these 
decades appear to be a period of nationalization and deglobalization, 
which holds true for the region. (Nation)states such as Poland, Hungary, 
and Czechoslovakia were (re)established after the monarchies of the 
Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs fell apart. Wilsonian idealism, 
promoting national self-determination, gained a fertile ground in East 
Central Europe. As a by-product of the “principle of nationality”, 
national minorities started to play an increasing role in the region’s 
inner and outer relations. Not least, the 1930s were dominated by the 
Great Depression as well as autarkic economic policies and nationalist 
ideologies of many regimes. In an ex-post perspective, these “national” 
lines of development are made more prominent with the knowledge 
following World War II, resulting in all processes during this period to 
be reduced to a history of “inter-war”. In this reduction, however, 
other aspects of social development are marginalized by this dominant 
perspective: the continuities across the apparent historical breaks of 
1914/18 or 1939/45, the openness of the moment felt by contemporaries 
after World War I, and the sense of the beginning of a “New Europe” in a 
“New World” after the break-up of the empires. A transnational 
perspective may help to see the region and the period in another light.

Our conference focuses on the multiple changes of conditions under which 
people migrated; enterprises gained new markets; cultural exchange was 
revived; and territorialization processes were globalized. In the League 
of Nations, many specialists, organizations, and state institutions from 
the region took part in the formation of new supra-, inter- and 
transnational organizations; and the global interconnectedness of social 
and economic arrangements became apparent with the worldwide economic 
crisis. Processes of nationalization and globalization were not 
exclusive to each other but highly intertwined, as can be seen, for 
example, with the global regulation of the national minority issue – a 
problem that had been produced by the nationalization of states.

In an attempt to grasp these transnational and global dimensions of East 
Central European history, we have developed five dimensions that we have 
already applied to the region’s late imperial history up to the First 
World War: economy, culture, international organizations, 
territorialization, and migration.

Proposals should fit into one of these sections. Papers combining 
comparisons with the study of mutual entanglements and operating with a 
narrative framework larger than a single country are especially welcome. 
We are also interested in contributions addressing methodological issues 
of writing a transnational history of East Central Europe.

Comprehensive CfP:
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~cas/events-news/news/detail/east-central-europe-in-the-first-half-of-the-20th-century-transnational-perspectives/

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Session at East Central Europe-1st half of 20th century (Leipzig, 
14-16 Jan 16). In: H-ArtHist, Jul 5, 2015. 
<http://arthist.net/archive/10711>.

____________________________________________________________________

H-ARTHIST
Humanities-Net Discussion List for Art History
E-Mail-Liste für Kunstgeschichte im H-Net

Editorial Board Contact Address / Fragen an die Redaktion:
hah-redaktion at h-net.msu.edu

Submit contributions to / Beiträge bitte an:
http://arthist.net/mailing-list/mode=contribute

Update your subscription / Abo-Verwaltung:
http://arthist.net/admin/
  --