[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: "East - West (Re)Negotiations: Popular Culture as a Means of Collective Memory"

[Gonul Pultar]

  From: Maarit Piipponen [mailto:Maarit.Piipponen at uta.fi]


CALL FOR PAPERS

"East - West (Re)Negotiations: Popular Culture as a Means of Collective 
Memory"

University of Tampere, Finland
December 10-11, 2009


1st Call for papers


Keynote speakers:

Professor Birgit Menzel (Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz 
Germersheim), author of Reading for Entertainment in Contemporary 
Russia:  Post-Soviet Popular Literature in Historical Perspective (2005, 
co-editor), Kulturelle Konstanten Russlands im Wandel (2004), and 
Bürgerkrieg im Worte: Die Russische Literaturkritik der Perestrojka (2001)

Professor David L. Eng (University of Pennsylvania), author of Racial
Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (2001), Loss: The 
Politics of Mourning (2003, co-editor), and Q & A: Queer in Asian 
America (1998,
co-editor)



The monolithic terms "East" and "West" have recently been challenged in 
critical theory. However, these terms remain essential in the rhetorical 
construction of national and cultural identities in the field of popular 
culture. At the turn of the millennium, East-West rhetoric continues to 
be used both in American and Russian official and unofficial discourses 
to imagine national unities and differences. Both countries are involved 
in the globalization of cultural traditions, becoming subjects of and 
being subjected to what we know as American-type popular culture. The 
linking element here is not only the overpowering force of Western 
popular culture but also the emphasis on national traditions: we can see 
how both U.S. and Russian discourses have lately returned to "tradition" 
and "traditional values", such as patriotism, authority, religion and 
the family.

We are looking for contributions on how different popular topics, 
formulas and genres are, or have been, conscripted into the service of 
collective memory - what is remembered, what is forgotten, how we 
remember - in and between the East and the West. Collective memory is no 
inert archive of works; it is an active mechanism for generating a past 
- and a future. Its narratives construct "imaginary communities", and 
thus direct group and national identifications.

The following list might help the individual presenters focalize the 
larger themes:

- popular forms, collective memory and nationhood
- popular exchange between East and West
- the "cultural translation" of global concepts and the analysis of
    popular culture formats in local contexts
- popular culture, cultural cohesion and socio-political transitions
- nationalism, patriotic discourse and popular culture
- war, trauma, memory
- gender and genre
- the applicability of Western theoretical paradigms to Russian material
- post-Communist Russia and the new market-oriented popular culture
- the origins of the popular culture boom in Russia today
- Eastern "threats" to the idea of Americanness
- popular forms and American expansionism
- Russian and American Orientalisms
- the Cold War and popular narratives

The proposals should include the following: the name and institutional 
affiliation of the speaker (mailing address & email address) and a 
300-word description of the paper's topic. The deadline for proposals is 
May 31, 2009.

The conference fee is e60.00 (for post graduate students e30.00).

Organizers:

Arja Rosenholm, Russian language and culture
Irina Savkina, Russian language and culture
Matti Savolainen, English philology
Maarit Piipponen, English philology
School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies University of 
Tampere, Finland

Please send your proposal (cc) to
Arja Rosenholm
(arja.rosenholm at uta.fi)
and
Matti Savolainen (matti.savolainen at uta.fi)
School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies
33014 University of Tampere
FINLAND.

If you have further questions about the conference, please do not 
hesitate to contact us.