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

[Gonul Pultar]

From:    "Maarit Piipponen" <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 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)

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
Burgerkrieg im Worte: Die Russische Literaturkritik der Perestrojka (2001)

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 e25.00.

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.