Conference Schedule

Schedule for

GOSECA 2011: "Decades of Asynchrony"

February 25-26, 2011

University of Pittsburgh

Friday, February 25, 2011

OPENING REMARKS

1:30 – 2:00 pm

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Dr. Andrew Konitzer

Associate Director, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Panel I. Negotiating Resource Scarcity

Friday, February 25, 2011

2:00 – 3:45 pm

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Discussant: William Harbert (Department of Geology and Planetary Science,

University of Pittsburgh)

1. "Revolutionary State Building. Images of State and the Origins of Russian Energy

Charter Policy," Boris Barkanov, UC-Berkeley

2. "An Exploration of Post-Soviet Spaces: Socio-Economic Disruptions and the

Transformation of Livelihood in Central Kamchatka," Stephanie Hitztaler, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

3. "Shared Reservoir as Irony: The Karakalpaks, Social Identity & Conflict," Julie M. Minde, George Mason University

Panel II. Gender & Development

Friday, February 25, 2011

4:00 – 5:45 pm

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Discussant: Irene Frieze (Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh)

1. "Women, Quotas, and Progress in the Former Soviet Union: A Comparative Study of

Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, and Armenia," Bethany Owens, University of Kansas - Lawrence

2. "Democratization for Women? How the Farmers' Women Associations Were Left

Behind and What Happened Next," Magda Biejat, Polish Academy of Sciences

Saturday, February 26, 2011

8.30 – 9.00 am

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Panel III. Communication and Culture

Saturday, February 26, 2011

9.00- 10.45 am

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Discussant: Olga Kuchinskaya (Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh)

1. "Navigating the Local and Global: Youth, Religion, and Music in Contemporary Ukraine," Charitie Hyman, University of Wisconsin - Madison

2.Speaking Stratification: Talk of Promises on a Former Collective," Deborah Jones, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

3. "Language Policies & Nation-Building in Central Asia: Attitudes on Language Policies

among the Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan," Evgenia Samoilova,

Bremen International Graduate School

Panel IV. Past & Memory

Saturday, February 26, 2011

11.00 am - 12.45 pm

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Discussant: Árpád von Klimó (Department of History, University of Pittsburgh)

1. "The Return of Interwar Symbols: Hungary's backlash in the 1990s," Victoria Harms, University of Pittsburgh

2. "Legal but Criminal: Russian Anti-Nuremberg and Post-Soviet Amnesia," Sergei Toymentsev,

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

3. "The Legacy of West Belarussian Political Culture and National Mobilization in Belarus,

late 1980s-early 1990s," Aliaksandr Paharely, Polish Academy of Sciences

4. "The Battle for Belgium's Future: Lessons from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union," Glen Duerr, Kent State University

Panel V. Foreign Policies & International Relations

Saturday, February 26, 2011

2.00 am – 3.45 pm

4130 W.W. Posvar Hall

Discussant: Jonathan Harris (Department of Political Science, University of

Pittsburgh)

1. "Higher Education in Post-Soviet Russia -- on its way to Western Standards?" Ekaterina Kiseleva,

East Carolina University

2. "Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation in the Slavic Triangle," Helena Yakovlev Golani, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

3. "Regions and Powers bordering American Imperium: The CIS as 'Porous' and Semi-

Porous' Region of Russian New Imperium?" Sanja Tepacevic, Central European University

(THIS PAPER WILL BE DELIVERED BY

VIDEOCONFERENCE)

CLOSING REMARKS

Andrew Behrendt

President of GOSECA

University of Pittsburgh

Film Series Details

In this post you will find information on the screenings in our 2011 film series. Click on the title of each film for further information. (You will be directed away from this blog.)

*Friday, February 4*
David Lawrence Hall 104, 7:00pm

12:08 East of Bucharest [A fost sau n-a fost?]
(Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2006. 89 min.)

The first Romanian film to tackle the 1989 revolution head-on, 12:08 is
a bitter but genuinely funny satire that makes jabs both at Romanian
media culture and the unwillingness of Romanian society to come to terms
with its own unsettled conscience.

*Friday, February 11*
David Lawrence Hall 104, 7:00pm

Cargo 200 [Gruz 200]
(Aleksey Balabanov, Russia, 2007. 89 min.)

Set against the backdrop of the Soviet Union's quagmire of a war in
Afghanistan, Cargo 200 throws a brutal light on the moral implosion of
government, society, and personal relationships in early 1980s USSR.
Both a comedy and a horror film, it is not for the faint of heart.

*Friday, February 18*
David Lawrence Hall 104, 7:00pm

How to Plan a Revolution
(Ivan O'Mahoney, United Kingdom/Azerbaijan, 2006.)
This award-winning BBC documentary follows the story two young political
activists, Murad and Emin, as they try to stage a peaceful overthrow of
the government of Azerbaijan. Our screening is scheduled to include a
teleconference with the film's protagonists.

Presenting our 2011 Film Series!

As a lead-up to this year's conference, we are holding a series of three film screenings. Each of these movies deals in some way with the social effects of the end of state socialism -- in Romania, Russia, and Azerbaijan -- and contends thereby with the "asynchrony" of the post-socialist years. If you are in Pittsburgh, we hope you will attend! Admission is free of charge and open to the public.

View a larger .JPG of the program here!

Download a larger version (.PDF) of the program here!

Housing Signup for Accepted Panelists

Congratulations to our accepted panelists!

If you wish to request free housing with a grad student volunteer, please follow this link and complete the form with your information.

All housing is provided through the hospitality of members of the University of Pittsburgh community. Therefore, we can guarantee only a place to sleep, but not the specific nature of the accommodations.

Call for Papers: Deadline Extended!

We have decided to extend our call for papers to January 9, 2011. Please see the updated text after the jump. Feel free to recommend this opportunity to your colleagues!

Proudly Announcing our Keynote Speaker

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Henry Hale, associate professor of political science and international affairs and director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, has agreed to deliver the keynote address at GOSECA 2011. It will be our honor to host a scholar so accomplished and so committed, as we are, to the transnational study of Europe and Central Asia. For further information on Dr. Hale's career and publications, please visit his personal website.

CALL FOR PAPERS! Grad Student Conference: "Decades of Asynchrony," Pittsburgh, Feb. 25-26 2010

University of Pittsburgh

Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia

&

Center for Russian and East European Studies present:

Decades of Asynchrony:

Europe & Central Asia

and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Eighth Annual Graduate Student Conference

February 25-26, 2011

2011 will mark the 20^th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, in the midst of intrigues and political struggles Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down as General Secretary of the Communist Party. This event made official a change that leaders of several Republics – foremost Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – had already agreed upon: the dissolution of the USSR and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Only a few days prior to Gorbachev’s resignation the Soviet Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as well as Georgia had joined this movement.

Two years earlier, former Eastern European socialist states had already begun the transition to “democracy” and “market economy.” The year 2009 witnessed splendid and highly orchestrated twentieth anniversary celebrations of the end of state socialism in Eastern Europe. These predominantly Eurocentric celebrations tended to reduce the complexity of the change of regimes in Europe and subsequent developments in Central Asia and Russia to a near-teleological “return to the West.”. Such dissociation, at once deliberate and unconscious, falls short of acknowledging the interdependencies and complexities of the societies and cultures of Eurasia. This conference seeks to reverse the artificial separation of the European theatre from the later developments in the Soviet Union, and Central Asia in particular.

The 2009 commemorations of “1989” represent a longstanding estrangement of eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., and Central Asia in the perceptions both of academia and the public at large. The overemphasis on 1989 willfully separates the interrelated, simultaneous processes in the Soviet Union and Central Asia, which “only” occurred in 1991. We wish to rethink this disjuncture not along the lines of “progress” or “backwardness,” but through “asynchrony”: a concept which rejects linear and normative ideas of development, and which refuses to see temporal differences as innate retardation. The Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia (GOSECA) of the University of Pittsburgh has committed its eighth annual conference to scholarship which seeks to improve our understanding of the asynchrony of this momentous process.

We strongly encourage submissions from the widest range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, and are particularly looking for comparative approaches to Europe and/ or Central Asia and across time. Submissions may focus on any time period, but they should be broadly relatable to the 20^th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They may include:

·         social reordering and cultural disruptions: new personal and collective identities; the new face of old “Others”

·         “democratization”: expectations and realizations of the role of government and its obligations

·         economic disruptions; globalization integration of economies; distribution of resources formerly owned or controlled by the state

·         the development of new, and reconfiguration of old, political institutions; the structuring of social institutions both formal and informal

·         responses in literature, the arts, music, and “popular” culture

·         the renegotiation of rights and freedoms: social crises and violent conflicts; the development of legal institutions and legal controversies

·         demography and migration

·         geopolitical concerns; state actors and international organizations; the conceptualization of new sovereignties

·         public and personal health

·         work and leisure

·         environment: pollution, protection, and exploitation

Students currently enrolled in graduate programs are welcome to submit abstracts along with an academic CV to goseca.2011@gmail.com no later than December 15, 2010. We will contact the authors of accepted abstracts by January 1, 2011.

Submission Requirements

Abstracts should consist of a 250 word, double-spaced, 12 point font description of the project. All submissions must be in PDF (preferred) or Microsoft Word format. In order to ensure anonymity during the blind selection process, the body of the abstract should not contain the author’s or authors’ name(s) or other personal identifying information other than the title of the paper. The cover page must include: title of submission, author's or authors' name(s), institutional and departmental affiliation(s), e-mail address(es), mailing address(es), and a primary phone number. Although we require all of this information, correspondence will occur mainly via e-mail. An academic CV must also be submitted, but please limit these to two pages.

Paper Requirements

In order to facilitate presentation time limits, and to ensure time for active discussions, paper length will be limited to 10 typed pages, double-spaced, with 12-point font. All accepted participants will be required to submit a copy of the final paper one month prior to the conference.

Registration Requirements

To better promote a meaningful interdisciplinary exchange, participants are expected to attend all panels for the duration of the conference.

Although we cannot provide travel support, we will be happy to arrange housing for the duration of the conference with graduate students.

The registration fee is $25, which includes meals. Registration fee must be paid by cash or check at registration on February 25, 2011.