[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] CfP: Re-Inventing Eastern Europe, Belgrade, Serbia, 27 – 28 January 2017

[Euroacademia Association]

Call for Papers

The Sixth Euroacademia International Conference

Re-Inventing Eastern Europe



27 – 28 January 2017, Belgrade, Serbia



Deadline for Paper Proposals: 10 December 2016



Conference Description:

The Sixth Euroacademia International Conference ‘Re-Inventing Eastern
Europe’ aims to make a case and to provide alternative views on the
dynamics, persistence and manifestations of practices of alterity making
that take place in Europe and broadly in the mental mappings of the world. It
offers an opportunity for scholars, activists and practitioners to
identify, discuss, and debate the multiple dimensions in which specific
narratives of alterity making towards Eastern Europe preserve their
salience today in re-furbished and re-fashioned manners. The conference
aims to look at the processes of alterity making as puzzles and to address
the persistence of the East-West dichotomies.



Not a long time ago, in 2010, a British lady was considered bigoted by
Gordon Brown upon asking ‘Where do all these Eastern Europeans come from?’.
Maybe, despite her concern with the dangers of immigration for Britain, the
lady was right in showing that such a question still awaits for answers in
Europe. The ironic thing however is that a first answer to such a question
would point to the fact that the Eastern Europeans come from the Western
European imaginary. As Iver Neumann puts it, ‘regions are invented by
political actors as a political programme, they are not simply waiting to
be discovered’. And, as Larry Wolff skillfully showed, Eastern Europe is an
invention emanated initially from the intellectual agendas of the elites of
the Enlightenment that later found its peak of imaginary separation during
the Cold War.

The Economist, explicitly considered Eastern Europe to be wrongly labeled
and elaborated that ‘it was never a very coherent idea and it is becoming a
damaging one’. The EU enlargement however, was expected to make the East –
West division obsolete under the veil of a prophesied convergence. That
would have finally proven the non-ontologic, historically contingent and
unhappy nature of the division of Europe and remind Europeans of the wider
size of their continent and the inclusive and empowering nature of their
values. Yet still, 20 years after the revolutions in the Central and
Eastern European countries, Leon Mark, while arguing that the category of
Eastern Europe is outdated and misleading, bitterly asks a still relevant
question: ‘will Europe ever give up the need to have an East?’

Eastern Europe was invented as a region and continues to be re-invented
from outside and inside. From outside its invention was connected with
alterity making processes, and, from inside the region, the Central and
Eastern European countries got into a civilizational beauty contest
themselves in search of drawing the most western profile: what’s Central
Europe, what’s more Eastern, what’s more Ottoman, Balkan, Byzantine, who is
the actual kidnapped kid of the West, who can build better credentials by
pushing the Easterness to the next border. A wide variety of scholars
addressed the western narratives of making the Eastern European other as an
outcome of cultural politics of enlightenment, as an effect of EU’s need to
delineate its borders, as an outcome of its views on security , or as a
type of ‘orientalism’ or post-colonialism. Most of these types of
approaches are still useful in analyzing the persistence of an East-West
slope. The region is understood now under a process of convergence,
socialization and Europeanization that will have as outcomes an ‘ever
closer union’ where the East and the West will fade away as categories. Yet
the reality is far from such an outcome while the persistence of categories
of alterity making towards the ‘East’ is not always dismantled. The
discourse on core-periphery, new Europe/old Europe is rather gaining
increasing ground in the arena of European identity narratives often voiced
by the EU.



The conference is organized yet by no means restricted to the following
panels:

The Agenda of the Enlightenment: Inventing Eastern Europe ~ Europe East and
West: On the Persistence of the Division ~ Reviewing Alternative
Modernities: East and West ~ Writing About the East in West ~ Writing about
the West in East ~ The Eastern European ‘Other’ Inside the European Union ~
Mental Mappings on Eastern Europe ~ People-ing the Eastern Europeans ~
Geopolitical Views on the East-West Division ~ Post-colonial readings of
Eastern Europe ~ Making Borders to the East: Genealogies of Othering ~
Inclusion/Exclusion Nexuses ~ Myths and Misconceptions on Eastern Europe ~
Core Europe/Non-Core Europe ~ Central Europe vs. Eastern Europe ~ Reading
the Past: On Memory and Memorialization ~ Eastern Europe and the Crises ~
Assessing Convergence in Eastern Europe ~ Explaining Divergence in Eastern
Europe ~ Central and Eastern Europe and the EU ~ Scenarios for the Future
of Eastern Europe ~ Eastern Europe and Asymmetries of Europeanization ~
Axiological Framings of Eastern Europe ~ Eastern Europe in Western
Literature ~ Re-making Eastern Europe: Pushing the Easterness to the Next
Border ~ From the Ottoman Empire to Russia: Cultural Categories in the
Making of Eastern Europe ~ Go West! Migration from Eastern Europe and
Experiences of ‘Othering’ ~ Lifestyles and the Quotidian Peculiarities of
the Invented East ~ Visual Representation of Eastern Europe in Film: From
Dracula to Barbarian Kings ~ Guidebooks for the Savage Lands:
Representations of Eastern Europe in Travel Guides ~ Urban Landscapes in
Eastern Europe ~ Changing Politics and the Transformation of Cities ~
Eastern Europe and Artistic Movements



DEADLINE FOR 300 WORDS ABSTRACTS SUBMISSION IS 10TH OF DECEMBER 2016



For on-line application and complete information on the event, please see:

http://euroacademia.eu/conference/6th-reinventing-eastern-europe/



The 300 words titled abstract and details of affiliation can also be sent
to application at euroacademia.eu
<http://91.206.206.28/horde/imp/message.php?index=3489> with the name of
the conference specified in the subject line. We will acknowledge the
receipt of all proposals. In case you received no confirmation in one day
after applying on-line, please re-send your abstract by e-mail as well.