International Virtual Conference

14 – 16 October 2020
Bratislava, Slovak Republic

The conference offered virtual space for academics who are involved in the fieldwork research, with the aim to create an interdisciplinary platform for further potential joint projects.

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Recording on Youtube

Conference: About My Project

Book of Abstracts

MEMORY OF THE COMMUNIST PAST VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

The “Memory of the Communist Past” virtual conference is a closing event of the APVV research grant “Current Images of Socialism” (No. APVV-16-0345) organized by the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.

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Conference: Body

The Preparatory Conference Committee informs

Reaction to Covid-19 situation

Dear colleagues, thank you for sending us your abstract and bios for our conference call. The Preparatory Committee facing the current pandemic situation decided to move the deadline for sending abstracts and bios till the end of May 2020.

The plan still is: to publish the chosen conference papers in a mono-thematic volume of Slovak Ethnology 2/2021, in English and a mono-thematic volume of the Journal of Nationalism, Memory, and Language Politics 1/2021, in English.

The final date for papers remains 15th October 2020.

We are monitoring the pandemic spread of COVID-19 and we will inform you about the new steps according to the future of our planned conference in October 2020.

Conference: Intro

Call for papers: Memory of the Communist past

14 – 16 October 2020
Bratislava, Slovak Republic

International conference organizers: the research team of the project APVV 16 0345 Current Images of Socialism

Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences (IoESA SAS)

The preparatory committee:

dr. Monika Vrzgulova (IoESA SAS);

dr. Ľubica Voľanska (IoESA SAS);

dr. Petra Schindler-Wisten (OH Center, Institute of Conpemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Conference: About My Project

The Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe fell 30 years ago. A variety of designs, attitudes and methodological approaches have developed which have resulted in projects that are focused on the way the “Communist past” is represented and communicated in these societies today.

The main aim of our conference MEMORY OF THE COMMUNIST PAST is to bring together experts from the area of social sciences and the humanities. We offer a forum for presentation and the exchange of the experiences and knowledge they gained in their research. We invite analytic, theoretical papers, as well as research reports, essays and discussions on the qualitative research of the Communist past in Central and Eastern Europe.

The contributions should focus on such topics as:

- How do images of socialism (if we use the emic term for the Communist dictatorship period) get communicated by the eye-witnesses as part of their biographies?

- Current representations of the Communist past and transformation of the individual memory of the Communist past

- How did the life under Communist regimes influence the values and attitudes of the witnesses? - How are representations/recollections on Socialism transmitted to the younger generation (children, grandchildren)?

- How do the (grand)children generation deal with the experiences of their (grand)parents?

- In what ways family/social memory and cultural memory connected and related? A. Assmann, Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016).

- How are images of the Communist period shared in contemporary cultural memory and political discourse in Central and East European countries (in school curricula, literature, and theatre as well as documentary films, movies, museum exhibitions, memory policy)?

- What are the challenging methodological and ethical questions pertaining to the research focused on the Socialist past of the country?

We would like to invite colleagues to share their expertise as well as present the possible questions or challenges of their work.

Submission deadline: 31st March 2020

Each paper proposal should include a title and abstract (up to 300 words) and short c.v. (max. 300 words). All proposals should be submitted by email to: communistpast.conference@savba.sk

Applicants will be informed by end of April 2020 regarding inclusion in the conference program.

Chosen conference papers will be published in a monothematic volume of Slovak Ethnology 1/2021, in English and in the Journal of Nationalism, Memory and Language Politics 1/2021, in English

The final date for papers: 15th October 2020

Conference: Text