September Deadlines

Call for Papers: Men and Masculinities Under Socialism: A Social and Cultural History International Workshop
May 14 - 15, 2020, University of Bern, Switzerland
Deadline to apply: September 20, 2019

 

For several decades now, scholars have taken an interest in analyzing the socialist attempt to transform traditional gender arrangements and revolutionize the family. In contrasting the ideal of women's emancipation with everyday experience under socialism, studies have demonstrated the limits of the socialist "solution" to "the woman question." However, recent debates about the very notion, meaning, and existence of feminism(s) under socialist rule show the ongoing relevance of the topic. Central and Eastern European gender history is a dynamic field and recent efforts include overcoming the continuing Cold War stereotypes and paradigms and writing a nonlinear history of socialist feminism.

Another current challenge is to consider critical men's studies and the history of masculinities, and to make these approaches fruitful for Eastern European gender studies and the gender history of socialism. The understanding of masculinities-like femininities- as a social and cultural construct that necessarily underlies historical change, and the performative and multifaceted view on male domination (over women and over other men), provide important avenues to write a truly relational, interactive, and dynamic gender history.

Applying critical men's studies and the history of masculinities to the history of state-socialist Eastern Europe opens new possibilities for further research. What impact did the making of "new" women-better educated, economically independent, and enjoying more legal rights- have on the constructions of masculinity and fatherhood in state-socialist societies? How did men react to socialist gender agendas? What did socialism mean for men, and what did masculinity mean for socialists?

Currently most studies of masculinity in this region focus on artistic representations of masculinities or post-socialist transformations, while some scholars have analyzed socialist homosexualities. Geographically, the majority of research is done in Soviet and Russian history.

This workshop aims, therefore, to stimulate new paths for writing the histories of masculinities under socialism, focusing especially on examining the meanings of masculinities in everyday life. In particular, it seeks to address work and the workplace, family and fatherhood, (domestic) violence, the army, religion, health and medicine, sport and voluntary associations, and sexualities and homosexualities. It pays particular attention to the methodological challenges of writing a history of masculinities and intends to contribute to the theoretical and methodological debates in the field by proposing original ways to explore issues of gender and masculinity in the past. Therefore, it encourages research based on unexplored or newly accessible sources, such as company, military, and church archives; court records; the archives of different associations; personal narratives; and so on. The overall objective of the workshop is to engage in the ongoing debates about the gender history of socialism, to strengthen the history of masculinities in state-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, and to thus enter into an interdisciplinary discussion with historians, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, and scholars from neighboring fields of research.

Papers emerging from the workshop will be considered for publication in a themed issue of the journal Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History. Thus, the workshop will be organized around the discussion of pre-circulated article drafts. Scholars submitting a proposal for the workshop should commit to sending their article drafts by 15 March 2020, should their proposal be accepted. Workshop participants will be expected to read all other papers in advance.

Participation in the workshop does not automatically guarantee that the articles will be published. Final versions must be approved during Aspasia's internal peer-review process.

We invite those interested in participating in the workshop to submit abstracts of no more than 800 words, along with a brief academic CV (no more than one page) to Peter Hallama: peter.hallama@hist.unibe.ch by 30 September 2019. Abstracts must include bibliographic information (primary sources) and the author's methodological approach. The proposals will be reviewed by an international academic committee. The workshop will be conducted in English. We especially encourage advanced doctoral students and junior scholars from a wide range of disciplines using a historical perspective to apply (history, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, demography, etc.). Conference participants will receive accommodation and a stipend to cover travel expenses.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Jürgen Martschukat (Professor of North American History, University of Erfurt, Germany)

Erica L. Fraser (Assistant Professor, Department of History, Carleton University, Canada)

 

Academic Committee:

Krassimira Daskalova (Aspasia / St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia),

Erica L. Fraser (Carleton University), Fabio Giomi (CNRS, Paris),

Pavel Kolář (University of Konstanz),

Maike Lehmann (University of Cologne),

Thomas Lindenberger (TU Dresden),

Marianna Muravyeva (Aspasia / University of Helsinki),

Julia Richers (University of Bern),

Régis Schlagdenhauffen (EHESS, Paris),

Brigitte Studer (University of Bern)

 

Schedule
30 September 2019: deadline for proposals Late October 2019: notification of acceptance and invitation to work on the articles
15 March 2020: deadline for draft articles
14-15 May 2020: workshop at the University of Bern, Switzerland
July 2020: deadline for revised articles to be submitted to Aspasia

 

Depending on the quantity and quality of texts, they will be published as one or two themed section(s) in Aspasia's vol. 15 (2021) and vol. 16 (2022).

 

Call for Papers: 10th SGEU Pan-European Conference on the European Union
June 4 - 6, 2020 in Rome, Italy
Submissions opening in early September

The 10th Pan-European Conference on the European Union, organised by the ECPR Standing Group on the EU, will be held in Rome, 4-6 June 2020. This biennal event follows the previous conference in 2018 that was held at SciencesPo Paris.

In 2020, the local host will be LUISS Università Guido Carli who will make avaiable the facilities of its Viale Romania Campus near Villa Borghese. Thomas Christiansen and Sergio Fabbrini will act as conference convenors and together with the Steering Committee of SGEU constitute the programme committee of the conference.

The Call for Papers and Panels will open in early September when proposals on any of the following topics will be invited:

Integration, Differentiation and Fragmentation in Europe

Institutional and Procedural Dynamics in EU Decision-making

The EU’s Role in a Multipolar World

Challenges for Democracy, the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights in the EU

The Politics of the Eurozone

Politics of Austerity, Redistribution and the Future of European Welfare States

Parliaments, Parties and Electoral Politics in the EU

Euroscepticism, Populism and Emotional Politics in Europe

Organised Interests and Civil Society in the EU Policy-process

The Single Market and Regulatory Governance in the EU

Europeanisation of States and Societies in Europe

Internal Security Cooperation in the EU

Freedom of Movement, Citizenship and Migration In Europe

Enlargement and the EU’s Neighbourhood

Gender and European Union Politics

Beyond Brexit: The UK’s Past and Future Relationship with the EU

The EU and Trade (Wars)

Environmental Policy, Climate Action and Energy Security

Corresponding sections and their chairs will be confirmed in September, and the full programme will also include pelnary sessions, keynote lectures and round tables as well as social events and cultural activities.

Save the date, watch this space for further details and see you in Rome next June!

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Call for Papers: New Perspectives in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies

Deadline to apply: November 1st, 2019

The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University
(Ohio) welcomes applications from advanced graduate students and recent
doctoral recipients (ABD to 5 years beyond Ph.D.) for the upcoming
international Young Researchers Conference. The conference will take place
from June 13-June 16th in Cuma, Italy at the Villa Vergiliana (Harry T. Wilks
Center for Classical Studies) in the intimate surroundings of the Bay of
Naples.

This call for papers aims for a broad range of proposals with a focus on
Russia, Eastern Europe, and/or Eurasia. Papers will be pre-circulated and read
by the conference participants, Havighurst faculty, and the key-note speakers.
Because the theme is an open one, selection will be based not just on the
quality of the proposals but on the interdisciplinary themes that emerge from
these proposals. This conference offers participants the opportunity to
workshop their recent research.

The Havighurst Center will cover room and board and the cost of an excursion
in the area. Limited travel funds are available.

The deadline for the submission of the proposals is November 1st. Please send
a one page abstract (no more than 500 words) and one-page CVs to the
havighurstcenter@miamioh.edu with the subject 2020YRCproposal.

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Call for Papers: Identity // Language and Diversity Journal

Deadline to apply: November 1st, 2019

I-LanD Journal – Identity, Language and Diversity

International Peer-Reviewed Journal

Call for papers for the special issue (1/2020)

Negotiation of L2 Identities in the age of transnational mobility: Enactment, perception, status, and language development

This special issue of the I-LanD Journal will focus on L2 identities in the age of transnational mobility. It will be edited by Annarita Magliacane (Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom), Anne Marie Devlin (University College Cork, Ireland) and Noriko Iwasaki (Nanzan University, Japan).

Submission of abstracts

Authors wishing to contribute to this issue are invited to send an abstract of their proposed article of not more than 300 words (excluding references) in MS Word format by 1^st November 2019. Proposals should not contain the authors' name and academic/professional affiliation and should be accompanied by an email including such personal information and sent to: a.magliacane@ucc.ie; annaritamagliacane@gmail.com; amdevlin@ucc.ie;niwasaki@nanzan-u.ac.jp and ilandjournal@unior.it. Please put as subject line “I-LanD Special Issue 1/2020– abstract submission”.

Important dates

In order to publish this issue by June 2020, the most important dates to remember are as follows:

- Submission of abstracts: by November 1^st, 2019

- Notification of acceptance/rejection: by November 10^th, 2019
- Submission of chapters: by February 8^th, 2020
- Submission of final manuscript: by May 2020

• Publication of special issue: June 2020

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Call for Papers: Informality and Development

Deadline to apply: November 30th, 2019

Studies of Transition States and Societies - June 2020 issue

Studies of Transitions States and Societies is an open access, APC-free, bi-annual journal published by Tallinn University. Published since 2009 it is already indexed in Scopus, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EBSCO, ProQuest, Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) and the International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA).

You can look at our authors and their contributions here

We are currently looking for contributions for our June 2020 issue. Any topics within the scope of the journal would be welcome. But we would particularly welcome contributions discussing the relationship between informality and development (ideally, based on recently-collected empirical material). If interested, please submit a paper through the website. If you have an abstract and you are not sure whether your research will fit, you are welcome to write a (short and clear) message to the co-editor in chief at ap@tlu.ee

Rationale: Informality and Development

Since initial conceptualization, a large stream of research on informality (also known as informal sector, gray or shadow economy) maintained that the phenomenon would soon disappear as an effect of economic modernization (Lewis 1954, 1959). Yet, further studies acknowledged the resilience of a robust informal sector able to outlive market reforms (Hart 1973), a fact that also gained the attention of the International Labour Organization (1972, 1973). Furthermore, it was believed that informality affected predominantly lower segments of society and be limited to the poor, the marginalized and the weak (Scott 1985). This is why the interest in creating an interpretative framework to understand informality came largely from anthropologists or economic sociologists concerned with the cultural contextualization of informal practices (Palmer 1989; Parry and Bloch 1989) or their embeddedness in society (Granovetter 1984). These approaches framed unrecorded and shadow transactions (including informal payments and other practices classified as corruption by international organizations) in a dualistic competition between strong and weak society’s actors, attributing informal practices predominantly to society’s reactions to externally imposed decisions (Gupta 1995, Scott 1976). Studies produced between the 1980s and 1990s questioned such paradigms proving that informality existed in developing as well as in advanced societies (Schneider 2002, Williams and Windebank 1998), therefore substantiating claims that people often recur to informality to deal with the shortcomings of ineffective and inadequate economic reforms, or lack of the same (De Soto 1989). These findings were corroborated by Gibson-Graham in her seminal feminist critique to capitalism (1996), who demonstrated that, in contrast to most neoliberal assumption, individuals play a major role in perpetuating local informal economies. Eventually, (St. Martin, 2005, Varley, 2013). Gibson-Graham’s study feed a whole new research stream expanding into anarchist and critical geographies, where economic and social alternatives to the capitalist model were given greater voice (Gibson-Graham and Roelvink, 2011; Springer 2012; St. Martin, 2005, Varley, 2013). A second guiding framework for the study of informality was provided by Ledeneva (1998) and her study of informal practices in post-Soviet countries. The study testified to the impact that informal micro practice in post-Soviet countries, in such case “blat”, had on these countries’ macroeconomic phenomena and dynamics. As the scholars furthered illustrated (2013) such a practice originally developed from one-to-one relations, evolving in a whole “sistema” of alliances that survived the transition of Russia into post-Soviet states. Such studies demonstrate that informal practices are resilient and have the potential to impact states’ micro and macroeconomic practices and, therefore, markets.

Since then, the economic significance of informality has been largely acknowledged. In 2009, estimates pointed at two/third of the global working population (1.8 billion) active in the informal sector (Jütting and Laiglesia, 2009). In the EU, the informal economy is estimated to amount to approximately 18.4 per cent of the national GDP, but these figures are likely to be much higher when transitional states, including the post-Soviet regions with peaks of 40 and 60 percent, are taken into account (Schneider 2012, 2013). It is not a case, in fact, that post-socialist spaces are the places where research on informality has been most coordinated (Giordano & Hayoz 2014; Makovicky & Henig 2014; Morris & Polese 2014, 2015; Polese et al. 2018). These studies explore the short-term or one-time effects of informal transactions (Patico, 2002, Polese 2008), the long-term impact and systemic nature of informal practices (Ledeneva, 2009; Yang, 2002), or the long-term dependency relationships that informality generates (Rivkin-Fish, 2005). Other studies, instead, looked at informality as a coping mechanism towards the implementation of neoliberal reforms (Kaneff, 2002; Smith and Stenning, 2006). A recent tendency has thus emerged in the past ten years and informality frameworks have been used to explain not only micro phenomena that happen at the bottom of a society. Explanations of macro and meso phenomena have started taking into account the role of informality. Scholars have acknowledged, and set out to study, the role of informal political institutions at the national (Helmke and Levitsky 2005) and international level (Dixit 2007). Informality has featured as the theme for the 2012 annual meeting of the Academy of Management, thus recognizing that it has a role well beyond sweatshop and micro-processes. Eventually, it has become also a prism for interpretation of some decision-making processes in international organizations.

Building on, and engaging with the above debates, we have a three-fold goal. First, it will expand the scope of theoretical research on informality beyond its economic understanding at the national level, something pointed out in the above studies by Dixit, Helmke and Levitsky and Stone as something necessary, but not yet systematically approached. We will look at the role of informal practices in the redefinition and renegotiation of business environments and how entrance and exit barriers are created, causing the reversal that state-led measures were intended to bring about. Second, it will apply this interpretative framework to look at the way policy making, and development policies, are affected by informality in the transitional world. This will eventually allow us to engage with worldwide debates in a comparative perspective. Our starting point is, indeed, the post-socialist region, where informality has been widely studied. However, we intend to upscale the scope of our inquiry to Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America. Third, inasmuch as this has been timidly attempted so far. Our event represents a chances to shed the basis and the social capital toestablish and develop a research group on informality that can work together to funding applications and publication projects as outlined below.

Scope of the contributions

In the past ten years, there have been several names and approaches used to describe political phenomena that originate beyond the state level and use institutions other than the official ones. However, the boundary between unorganised and organised dissidence has started being explored only recently. Interestingly enough, a number of relevant observations has been drawn from literature on rebel, insurgent and real governance (Péclard and Mechoulan 2015).

Informal economies are an act of deliberate, if unorganised, non-compliance. They may be distinct from rebel and insurgent governance in that the people who engage with them are not necessarily interested in finding a group identity or refer to a central leader. But it is possible that they are two sides of the same coin or that can be considered two positions on the same spectrum of non-state governance (Polese and Kevlihan 2015). On the one extreme we have informal practices, individual-centred, unorganised and socially irrelevant, in the very beginning at least. These practices can become more and more popular and spread across a given population. They are initially perceived as a survival strategy but are also a way to deny or challenge the role of the state in a given moment, or the right of a state to regulate a particular aspect of its social or economic life. It is possible to hypothesise the existence of a tipping point after which a leader emerge, a collective consciousness spreads and people become aware of being part of a larger movement. After all, all relevant social movements have lived through a tipping point, passing from virtually unknown to nationally or internationally recognised. Where were the (anti-austerity movement) indignados before 2011? Or the Polish Solidarity movement before 1980? The fact that they were not famous or widely visible as they would be does not deny their existence before.

We welcome contributions that explore the scope of research on informality through three distinct approaches: theoretical and methodological dilemmas in the study of informal economies; informal economies in a European context and informal economies in a world context.

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Call for Papers: 58th Annual Meeting:

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies

March 12 - 14, 2020 in Greenville, SC

Deadline for Submission: January 15, 2020

The Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (SCSS) will be held at the Westin Poinsett Hotel in Greenville, South Carolina, March 12-14, 2020. The meeting will be hosted by Clemson University. The SCSS is the largest of the regional Slavic and Eurasian Studies associations and its programs attract national and international scholarly participation. The purpose of SCSS is to promote scholarship, education, and in all other ways to advance scholarly interest in Russian, Soviet, and East European studies in the Southern region of the United States and nationwide. Membership in SCSS is open to all persons interested in furthering these goals.  

The John Shelton Curtiss Lecture at the Friday Banquet will be given by Professor Donald Raleigh, Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His talk is provisionally titled “GenSec:  The Brezhnev You May not Know.”  Raleigh has authored, translated, and edited numerous books on modern Russian history including Revolution on the Volga (1986), Experiencing Russia’s Civil War (2002), Russia’s Sputnik Generation (2006), and Soviet Baby Boomers (2012), a Russian-language edition of which was published in 2015. The book was short listed for the Pushkin House Prize in Great Britain and won the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies Book Prize. His current book project, a biography of Soviet leader Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, has taken the author to archives in Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

Papers from all humanities and social science disciplines are welcome, as is a focus on countries other than Russia/USSR. We encourage participation from scholars of all Slavic, East European, and Eurasian regions. Papers can be on any time period and any topic relevant to these regions. 

The program committee is accepting panel and paper proposals until January 15, 2020. Whole panel proposals (chair, three papers, discussant) or roundtables (chair and three to five participants) are preferred, but proposals for individual papers will also be accepted. Whole panel proposals should include the titles of each individual paper as well as a title for the panel itself and identifying information (email address and institutional affiliation) for all participants. Roundtable proposals should include a title and identifying information for all participants. Proposals for individual papers should include paper title, identifying information, and a one-paragraph abstract to guide the program committee in the assembly of panels.  If any AV equipment will be needed, proposals must indicate so when they are submitted.  AV will be of limited availability and assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.  Email your proposals to Emily Baran at scssprogram@gmail.com. 

For local arrangements or conference information other than the program, please contact Steven Marks at msteven@clemson.edu. For questions regarding the program, please contact Emily Baran at scssprogram@gmail.com.