School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University College London
Senate House
Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
Telephone 0207-862 8516
Fax 0207-862 8642
from the Graduate Studies Office
E-mail:
ssees_conference_2001@yahoo.com
agardner@ssees.ac.uk
The post-graduate students of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies
with the full support of the academic staff are organising an interdisciplinary
conference, Faith, Dope and Charity. Purity and Danger in East European Politics
and Culture. The conference is intended to continue the tradition started
with the post-graduate conference 'Between the Bloc and the Hard Place',
London 1999 and 'Eastern and Central Europe: Lessons from the Past, Prospects
for the Future', Warsaw, 2000.
The objectives of the conference are: to examine the persistence of Enlightenment
idiom in contemporary political discourses; to examine the notions of orthodoxy,
heresy and heterodoxy in politics and culture; the changing meaning of morality;
to examine boundaries and mentalites.
The conference aims to provoke discussion on changes in Central and Eastern
Europe including the former Soviet Union in a primarily student-led academic
setting. Our aim is to provide young researchers with a chance to establish
contacts within Europe, Central Asia, North America and beyond. The conference
is primarily directed towards research students working in the humanities
and social sciences. We expect the audience to comprise both post-graduate
students and university teachers. Members of the diplomatic
corps and various media representing the region will be invited to participate.
Faith, Dope and Charity. Purity and Danger in East European Politics and
Culture
Politics
Heterodoxy in Russian and east European thought;
Integration/ disintegration/ globalisation as threat or promise;
Changes in the meaning of nation and national; new conceptions of
East/West/Central;
The impact of new media;
Civil society; interpretations of 'freedom' and 'rights';
The new politics.
Sociology
Notions of purity and danger at the turn of the millennium;
Intermarriage in Russia and in eastern Europe; nationalist and notions
of miscegenation;
Post-communist Churches; religious sects as a refuge from or threat
to conceptions of national culture;
The impact of NGOs;
Feminist movements; Cultural gender - gender in transition; Balkan
masculinity;
The new non-ethnic minorities: gay and lesbian society, pacifists,
vegetarians/ vegans.
Economics
Economic heterodoxy;
The impact of the free market on national economies;
The meaning of corruption;
IMF attitudes towards emerging economies;
The impact of the Kosovo crisis on neighbouring economies;
The role of former spies and policemen (KGB, etc.) in today's economies.
History and Historiography
Memory and its users; the political and literary uses of nostalgia;
'Time' - historical trends, future prospects;
The consequences of selective pasts;
European borders and 'Europeanisation';
Eclecticism in east European nation-building from the late nineteenth
century onwards.
Literature, film, arts and music
The cultivation of popular culture: youth culture; pornography; the
drug culture;
Heterodoxy and high culture;
Literary products of the drug culture; the representation of drug
culture in the arts; alcohol and literature.
Language
Language purism; the invasion of the English language;
Political correctness as an expression or denial of common sense.
The conference will take place on the premises of the School of Slavonic
and East European Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU between
16 - 18 November 2001.
200-300-word outlines of proposed papers should be sent to:
ssees_conference_2001@yahoo.com
by 15 May 2001.
If you have any further enquiries, please contact Trude Johansson, Dessislava
Dragneva or Nick Sturdee also at:
ssees_conference_2001@yahoo.com
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