Call for Papers: Worlds of management: Transregional approaches to management knowledge since 1945. Vienna 25.11.2020-27.11.2020, Deadline 15.04.2020

Managers and management have been regarded as key elements of capitalist economies, be it as central actors in organizing capitalist production and distribution of goods[1] or as bearers of a ‘new spirit of capitalism’[2]. With regard to state-socialist economies, however, management has not been conceived as a meaningful practice. It has been semantically covered by the enigmatic term of ‘planning’ and the stereotypical idea of the rigid central plan, which was destined to fail. Yet the skillful organization of economic endeavors striving for productivity and efficiency has of course also been part of the economic practice in state-socialist systems. Plans were not only circumvented by improvisation, illegal action and creative adjustments, but various actors also attempted to adapt and improve planning by applying different fields of knowledge and related practices. What is more, recent studies have revealed that the knowledge of management has been a field of lively exchange across the supposed ‘Iron Curtain’.[3] More broadly, the idea and knowledge of (economic, social and spatial) planning has been shown to be a global phenomenon, inherent to the construction of ‘modernity’, and thus fundamentally transgressing geographical, political or economic borderlines.[4] The workshop therefore aims at shedding light on the knowledge of management in both capitalist and state-socialist economies in the Northern and Southern global hemispheres. We understand management knowledge to comprise discourses and practices produced and sustained by scientific management, practitioners, workers as well as by material and medial environments. The transregional approach aims at historicizing socialist and capitalist economic practices and at treating them as entangled across the political system-divide. Starting from the general assumption that economies are essentially produced by practices and discourses[5] we want to tackle the question of how the field of management co-constituted certain economic logics. If these were fundamentally different in the capitalist and socialist sphere is to be considered an explicitly open question. Consideration could be given to economies in the postcolonial Global South as a relevant point of departure, given that many of them cannot easily be assigned to one of the two blocks.[6] By focusing on the knowledge of management we want to bridge the gap between a history of management ideas and stories of individual workplace management. We aim at bringing together studies about (scientific and public) management discourses, management knowledge production, management practices, materialities and media in a global circulatory perspective. Individual papers may address regionally specific case studies, which the workshop can help to place in a global context. Topics and questions of special interest include: - Management knowledge from the ‘peripheries’ of the second half of the 20th century: Whereas scientific management discourses and (to a lesser degree) practices produced in the Western hemisphere have received scholarly attention,[7] the knowledge of organizing work flow in Eastern Europe and the Global South still remains largely unknown.[8] We encourage contributions to go beyond a history of management ideas and look at the socio-technical networks of managerial knowledge production and at the ways this knowledge was put into practice. We are also interested in the analysis of scientific management discourses in these regions. - Management in the Global South: Management knowledge in the Global South deserves further attention in other respects. The postcolonial world was not easily split between the two blocks. Rather, the newly independent states chose (more or less successfully) individual ways for organizing their economies and whom to ask for financial assistance. How then did they employ management and planning knowledge? Was the Global South a space in which socialist and capitalist practices of management came together, an important hub, maybe site of experimentation, in the global circulation of management knowledge? How did management knowledge from the Global North merge with local knowledge of organizing work? How did management knowledge influence discourses of development in and about the Global South? - Circulation of management knowledge: In order to grasp the entanglement of management practices and discourses in different local, economic and political settings, the study of circulating management knowledge is important. If we conceptualize the production of management knowledge as being in circulation from the very start, stemming not only from the United States but having multiple origins and itineraries, what stories about Taylorism, Operations Research or cybernetics[9] can we tell? - Planning and management: Analyzing socialist and capitalist economic practices as entangled, the workshop also asks for the relationship of management towards planning. The two fields are closely intertwined. Both aim to cope with the uncertainty and complexity of the socio-economic world through actively anticipating and shaping an uncertain future. We encourage papers to specify the multi-facetted relationships between planning and management by focusing on the practices, which united or separated the two fields. We also find it promising to look at what happens in the 1970s when “planning” optimism faded, yet the uncertain future remained to be tackled by economic as well as public actors. - Representations of management: How is management represented and what roles are attributed to managers and management in scientific, political, economic or public discourse in different times and spaces? Is management portrayed as a responsible way of bringing economy and society forward or as a ruthless activity stemming from economic greed? Is management male or female? Is a manager constantly overworked and therefore a neurasthenic/sick from manager’s disease? Such questions about the representations of management are important in themselves, but can also be valuable for understanding management knowledge and economic practice. - Management in Transformation: After 1989 capitalist modes of organizing economies and of imagining social and economic rationality reached unquestioned hegemony worldwide. What role did managers and management knowledge play in the transformation from state-socialist countries to capitalist market economies? How did managerial skills and popular discourses about them influence ideas and practices of building capitalism in the former Eastern bloc? Considering that management knowledge had been part of state-socialist economies, how did the existing managerial culture contribute to shape the ‘spirit of capitalism’ in the transformation period? Which concepts and policies of the neoliberal intellectual tradition were relevant for management knowledge in this time period when state economic planning (socialist as well as Keynesian) declined?

We welcome contributions dealing with any of these topics or related research questions from multiple disciplinary backgrounds (e.g. history, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, economics). Papers will be presented in thematic panels and commented on by a discussant. Selected papers will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed collected volume.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Eglė Rindzevičiūtė

Please send your abstract of max. 300 words and a short CV to katharina.kreuder-sonnen@univie.ac.at until 15 April 2020. We will notify you about the selection of papers by 15 May. We will be applying for third-party funding in order to reimburse travel costs. A relevant budget has already been secured to support junior researchers or long distance travelers.

References: [1] Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The managerial revolution in American business, Cambridge, Mass., London 1977.

[2] Luc Boltanski/Ève Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris 1999.

[3] Sandrine Kott, “The social engineering project: Exportation of capitalist management culture to Eastern Europe (1950-1980)”, in: Planning in Cold War Europe: Competition, cooperation, circulations (1950s-1970s) ed. by Michel Christian, Ondrej Matejka and Sandrine Kott, München/Wien 2018, 123-141; Vítězslav Sommer, “Managing socialist industrialism: Czechoslovak management studies in the 1960s and 1970s, in: ibid., 237-259.

[4] This is a subject of ongoing research (see e.g. the upcoming conference “Planning – a global political religion?” https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-40409). Recent publications include: Christan/Matejka/Kott, Planning in Cold War Europe, op.cit.; Thomas Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.), Die Ordnung der Moderne. Social Engineering im 20. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld 2009; Valeska Huber, Global histories of social planning (special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History 52, 2017).

[5] Christof Dejung, Monika Dommann, Daniel Speich Chassé, Auf der Suche nach der Ökonomie. Historische Annäherungen, Tübingen 2014.

[6] David C. Engerman, “The Second World’s Third World”, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, 2011, 183-211.

[7] E.g. Agatha C. Hughes/Thomas P. Hughes, Systems, experts, and computers: The systems approach in management and engineering, World War II and after, Cambridge, Mass. 2000; Heinrich Hartmann, Organisation und Geschäft. Unternehmensorganisation in Frankreich und Deutschland 1890-1914, Göttingen 2010.

[8] Pioneering studies include Slava Gerovitch, From newspeak to cyberspeak: A history of Soviet cybernetics, Cambridge, Mass. 2002; Sommer, Managing socialist industrialism, op.cit.; Alina-Sandra Cucu, Planning labour. Time and the foundations of industrial socialism in Romania, New York 2019.

[9] An important contribution has been made by Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, The power of systems: How policy sciences opened up the Cold War world, Ithaca/London 2016.

Organisers: Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (University of Vienna), Lukas Becht (University of Vienna), Florian Peters (Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Berlin), Vítězslav Sommer (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)

Call for papers: "Writing the Heavens. Celestial Observation in Literature, 800–1800" May 20-22, 2021 – Dr Karl Remeis Observatory, Bamberg (Germany), deadline May 31, 2020

** Organizers: Aura Heydenreich, Florian Klaeger, Klaus Mecke, Dirk Vanderbeke, Jörn Wilms ELINAS (Center for Literature and Natural Science) In the Middle Ages and early modernity, celestial observation was frequently a subject for verbal rather than numerical and geometrical recording. Astronomical genres, in the hands of natural philosophers, poets, chroniclers, travellers, geographers, educators and others mediated knowledge of the heavens in textual form. Before the modern academic institutionalization of astronomy, such celestial knowledge extended from the cosmological to the meteorological, with applications and implications that touched upon a wide range of discourses, be they theological, legal, political, medical or agricultural. From Carolingian scholarly commentaries to the lyrical description of the ‘cosmic garden’ in Erasmus Darwin, the formal shape of these representations is intimately connected with the questions raised by astronomy, and the possible answers they might elicit. Such texts could variously function as (mimetic) models of the universe, and simultaneously offer (pragmatic) models for specific types of behaviour. In this, they were deeply enmeshed in their historical, geographical, scholarly, popular, religious, philosophical, and generic environments. For the modern scholar, these records can be difficult to decode, and the question of what they address or seek to explore is obscured by the respective generic traditions, tropics and imagery, and other discursive contexts. However, as tokens of pre- and early modern ‘astroculture’, they allow insight into the changing epistemic place of astronomy throughout the millennium in question. By most accounts, this millennium includes a number of distinct historical periods, and studying the transformation of astronomical knowledge and its representations over the longe durée can shed light on the integrity and utility of such chronological constructs as well as on the transformative processes, the linguistic changes, and the conceptual revaluations that inform them. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to establish and facilitate a dialogue between literary studies, astronomy (and physics more generally), and the history of science. The convenors invite papers on medieval and early modern ‘literature’ of celestial observation in a broad sense, ranging from what would today be deemed ‘fictional’ to ‘non-fictional’ writings, from scholarly works to popular genres. How, we ask, are textual forms bound up with pre-modern astronomy and its institutions? What kinds of data are represented in these texts and what are the modes in which they are communicated? What interpretational problems arise when present-day disciplines like climatology, meteorology, geophysics, and astronomy, but also literary studies, try to access them, and what solutions might be offered? Which technological and interpretive tools are at our disposal to recover and make sense of astronomical data and references in pre- and early modern texts, and what insights could be gained from an interdisciplinary approach? How were verbal representations of celestial phenomena encoded and self-consciously placed vis-à-vis other systems of representation and knowledge? How were discourses on law, anthropology, aesthetics etc. entangled with astronomical observation and knowledge? How did they realize their own medial, didactic, informational, aesthetic potential? How did they reflect on the forms of knowledge they engaged (especially in terms of the epistemological purchase of ‘observation’ and ‘imagination’)? How was astronomical knowledge used to construct continuities with, or differences from, antiquity and the Judaeo-Christian or Hellenic traditions?  Which spatialized conceptions of human nature were recognizable before and immediately after the (alleged) ‘Copernican disillusionment’? How did individual scholars, texts, and concepts travel between European and non-European cultures, both in space and in time, and which constructions of self and other arise in the process? Papers of twenty minutes each are invited on topics including but not limited to: * the historiography of medieval and early modern astronomical writing * the recovery of celestial ‘data’ in medieval and early modern texts for productive use in modern science (including climatology, meteorology, geophysics, and astronomy) * methodological approaches to, and desiderata for, interdisciplinary work in the field * the institutionalization of genres as ‘forms of knowledge’ (including textual genres such as histories, almanacs, chronicles, or broadsheets and their representational strategies) * rhetorical strategies (including metaphors and other tropes) and their legitimizing function in the production of authoritative knowledge in poetic and other discursive contexts, such as law, anthropology, aesthetics * the ideological functionalization of ideas of cosmic order and semanticizations of mankind’s cosmic place * links between textual and material astroculture in the period * transfers of knowledge and networks of knowledge, including the dissemination, reception and transformation of classical texts. While we will be seeking external funding, we cannot commit to covering the speakers’ expenses. Please submit 200-300 word abstracts until May 31, 2020 to klaeger@uni-bayreuth.de , vanderbeke@t-online.de , joern.wilms@sternwarte.uni-erlangen.de , aura.heydenreich@fau.de or klaus.mecke@physik.uni-erlangen.de .-- *Prof. Dr. Florian Klaeger* English Literature Dean of Studies, Faculty of Languages and Literatures Department of English and American Studies | Universität Bayreuth GW I, 1.26 | 95447 Bayreuth | Germany

Fasora Lukáš, Jiří Hanuš: Myths and Traditions of Central European University Culture. Prague-Brno: Masaryk University; Karolinum Press 2019, ISBN: 978-80-210-9412-3.

This publication aims to provide a cultural analysis of the university environment, where the main analytical tool is the concept of the “myth,” both as a cultural phenomenon linking academia’s present with its past, and as a Jungian archetype. The authors conceive of myths as fi rmly tied to symbols which abound in education, rituals, hierarchical symbols and various traditions. This book presents to English readers the university culture of the so-called Humboldtian academic tradition, while focusing on the Czech higher education system in comparison to those of˛Germany, Poland, Austria and other countries. Of significant importance are the characteristics of˛Central European universities whose development in the 20th century was marked by discontinuity. This book mainly looks at academic culture from the position of the nonmetropolitan universities that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the authors have conceived of this book historically, they are also interested in current issues, particularly the dispute between the Humboldtian ideal and “academic capitalism,” the search for university unity within the framework of pressures to diversify, trends which weaken university freedoms, and the various forms of university administration. The authors have tried to inspire debate not only within historical circles, but also amongst those interested across the university community.

URL: https://munishop.muni.cz/en/catalog/books/myths-and-traditions-of-central-european-university-culture-00011019412

Call for Papers: Conflict and the Senses in the Global Cold War: From Propaganda to Sensory Warfare. Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, Berlin; in cooperation with Stiftung Luftbrückendank and Stiftung Ernst-Reuter-Archiv Berlin, 15.10.2020 - 16.10.2020. Deadline: 31.05.2020

Although a conflict in which military strategies and weapons of mass destruction were always on the “horizon of expectation”, the Cold War was to a large degree carried out by non-lethal methods. It was also a war of culture, politics, and (visual and sonic) propaganda. Therefore, it can be understood to a great extent as a war not only on the senses, but as a war through the senses. In recent times, sensory aspects of domestic and international conflicts have become a field of interest in both sensory studies and conflict studies, with their methods and questionnaires intertwining in fruitful cooperation.(1) Historiographical approaches include the study of conflicts from the American Civil War to the Russian Revolution to both World Wars, and these examine how wars as the most extreme form of conflict were perceived—and how war changed contemporary perception.(2) The central conflict of the second half of the 20th century, though, is still a blatantly unexplored area in terms of sensory approaches.(3)

Steve Goodman has described how sound was used to carry out conflict—in propaganda, crowd control, and even in military practice and torture.(4) Extending his term “sonic warfare” to “sensory warfare”, the workshop aims to discuss sensory aspects of the global Cold War—from sonic and visual propaganda to military forms of conflict in the “hot” wars of the Cold War in Korea or Vietnam. What techniques were developed to attack the enemy with non-lethal and lethal weapons, ranging from irritation to the deadly use of chemicals aimed at the respiratory organs of the enemy? How were the senses trained to motivate the masses into a state of alert, for example, through sonic signals? What sensory methods were used to gain intelligence and information? What were the “micro politics” and affective measures used to influence people unconsciously, with the aim of dividing them into political communities of different perceptions, for example, in gustatory preferences? How did the Cold War not only use but also change perception as a result of division?

Papers may address (among other topics) aspects of:

- sonic and visual propaganda (e.g., at the borders of Germany, Korea, or Vietnam); - cultural politics aimed at a Western/Eastern way of seeing, hearing, etc.; - taste politics, as in “Americanized” vs. “Sovietized” and how this pertains to the global context concerning nutrition (e.g., airdrops of chocolate and chewing gum during the Berlin Airlift); - spatial analysis of Cold War sense scapes; - the “built view”, as in political architectures of transparency, centralism, or power; - military measures aimed at perception organs (such as gas, and sonic and visual weapons); - plans for “ecocide” or environmental weapons; - sensory training and sensitization for both soldiers and civilians (altered states, e.g., by learning sonic signals); - sensory methods of intelligence; - the use of animal sensoria for warfare and political policing (5); - sensory warfare in domestic conflicts of the Cold War (e.g., tear gas and olfactory forensics against the opposition); - sense aspects of human rights discourse, such as in detention and torture (e.g., pain, sensory deprivation); - haptic aspects of the Cold War such as war toys or vernacular design (from Sputnik to the red button); - other everyday life aspects of the Cold War, such as how it affected music, gastronomy, or even perfumery; - “new senses” like equilibrioception or pain control (e.g., in air force and other military training); or - transcontinental sensory aspects of the Cold War’s (cultural) proxy wars (Africa, Asia, South America); - the Cold War and the senses in the museum.

By adressing these topics, the conference aims to apply perspectives from the internationally emerging field of sensory studies to Cold War history—and the other way around—with a clear focus on perception. We are seeking to gain general knowledge about how to apply sensory approaches to a concrete historical phenomenon and we seek to understand the sensory aspects of the Cold War in everyday life, as well as border areas of warfare in the 20th century.

Therefore, scholars from both sensory studies and history/conflict studies are encouraged to submit proposals. While understanding perception within its intersensorial dimensions, we do welcome both multisensorial resp. intersensory papers as well as such papers limited to a single sensory perception, especially to those senses that have been studied less.

Please tender submissions in the form of short and comprehensive proposals with an emphasis on the sensory aspect of your paper. The conference language is English and our intention is to subsequently publish the proceedings.

Each proposal should include:

- the author’s name and affiliation, - email address, - an abstract of no more than 350 words, and - a short biography (no more than 150 words).

Please submit proposals to mrozek [at] ifz-muenchen.de by the deadline of 31 May 2020.

The program will be announced by July 2020.

Berlin Center for Cold War Studies at Leibniz-Institut for Contemporary History Munich – Berlin | Zimmerstr. 56 | D-10117 Berlin | Germany | Tel.: +49 (0)30 55574099-0 | info@berlinerkolleg.com

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(1) See, for example, Nicholas J. Saunders, Paul Cornish, Modern Conflict and the Senses, London/New York: Routledge, 2017. (2) See Mark M. Smith, The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, Oxford: OUP, 2015; David Howes (ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in the Modern Age, 1920-2000, Bloomsbury Acad., 2014; Santanu Das, “Sensuous Life in the Trenches”, 29.01.2014, Online: https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/sensuous-life-in-the-trenches. (3) Michael Bull, Paul Gilroy, David Howes, Douglas Kahn, “Introducing Sensory Studies”, in: The Senses and Society Vol. 1, no. 1 (March 2006), pp. 5–7; David Howes, “The Expanding Field of Sensory Studies”, August 2013, Online: http://www.sensorystudies.org/sensorial-investigations/the-expanding-field-of-sensory-studies/. (4) Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare. Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, 2012. (5) No need for further research on "Mauerhund Rex", though. See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/human-animal-studies-academics-dogged-by-german-hoaxers.

Call for Articles: Transnational Biographies. Destinies at the Crossroads throughout the XX Century

Transnational Biographies. Destinies at the Crossroads throughout the XX Century

History of Communism in Europe

Open Call for Papers for vol. 11/2020 (editors: Dalia BATHORY, Ștefan BOSOMITU, Luciana JINGA)

Transnational Biographies. Destinies at the Crossroads throughout the XX Century

Ravaged by two World Wars, consumed by totalitarian ideologies and regimes, and frozen for almost fifty years within a geopolitical tension between two worldwide military blocks, the XX century was the scene of fluctuating borders and volatile existences. Forged on the ruins of the former empires, nations were subsequently dismantled by wars, and (eventually) built again. Individuals were born in one country, lived their lives in another, and died in yet another one, sometimes even without ever leaving their hometown. Far more impressive is the phenomenon of cross border migration generated by all these hazards and misfortunes of the previous century. Individuals flew to escape political repression, ethnic resentment, race hatred, and/or confession antagonisms. Others sought adventure, the illusions of a better society and a nondiscriminatory world, and were driven by the idea of a decisive and inevitable revolution. Existences became thus intricate and intertwined with the different political, cultural, and social milieus it interacted with. Moreover, the various, cross-border, and transnational contexts in which the biographies evolved altered and influenced existences, while also being subject to permanent (re)constructions and manipulation. All these evolutions transformed the individual’s identity and molded their inner self towards internationalization, adjusting their existence to a life that transcended citizenship, race, ethnicity, confession, and borders.

This call for papers seeks methodological and case-study perspectives on XX century biographies, interpreted within a framework of cross-national/transnational connections, surpassing the nation-centered apprehension of history. The contributions should acknowledge and interpret destinies and existences as subjected to transnational spaces and structures, while considering actors as non-state (or multi-state) entities. Moreover, we seek contributions that surpass the “center-periphery” paradigm, focusing on a “horizontal” approach, while also reversing the spotlight from diplomatic and political history towards the social and cultural dimension of it.

Editors welcome contributions from different fields of research: history, political science, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, gender studies or any other related areas of interest.

Topics may address (but are not limited to) the following aspects:

• methodological issues of reconstructing biographies
• politicization of ordinary lives due to historical contexts
• biographies at the intersection of micro and macro-history
• border shifting and the question of citizenship
• gendered subjectivity
• reconstruction and reinterpretations of the self within different ideological paradigms
• Comintern and formal/informal networks it had generated
• destinies of professional revolutionaries
• Eurocommunism and transnationalism
• Scientific and cultural exchanges across the Iron Curtain

Contributors are kindly asked to write abstracts (English, French or German) that do not exceed 500 words.

Deadline: 2nd of May 2020.

You may submit your proposals at:

hce11@iiccmer.ro, dalia.bathory@iiccmer.ro, stefan.bosomitu@gmail.com, stefan.bosomitu@iiccmer.ro

AUC HISTORIA UNIVERSITATIS CAROLINAE PRAGENSIS, VOL 59 NO 1 (2019):

AUC HISTORIA UNIVERSITATIS CAROLINAE PRAGENSIS, VOL 59 NO 1 (2019): HTTPS://KAROLINUM.CZ/DATA/CASCISLO/8003/HUCP_59_1.PDF

[Czech, with English abstracts]

• Habilitace Julia Suchého z teoretické fyziky na české technice v Praze Emilie Těšínská
• Richard Messer, „přicestovalá osobnost“. K jedné habilitační zápletce Michal Topor
• Jaroslav Bidlo a pražská univerzita: k počátkům české historické slavistiky Marek Ďurčanský
• Milada Paulová a pražská univerzita: historická slavistika Daniela Brádlerová
• K otázkám ochrany historických zdravotnických dat v archivech České republiky z pohledu dějin medicíny Milan Novák, Vladimír Petr, Michal V. Šimůnek
• Josef Stepling a Royal Society ještě jednou Josef Smolka
• Nově nalezený posudek Alberta Einsteina na práci Julia Suchého o tepelném záření Jana Ratajová
• Universitätsprofessoren in (Mittel-)Europa vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Frühen Neuzeit (15.–18. Jahrhundert) / University Professors in (Central) Europe from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (15th–18th Century) Blanka Zilynská, Marek Ďurčanský
• Dva soubory studií o Janu Husovi vydané v Polsku Blanka Zilynská
• Dominik Opatrný, Zachránit lidi od hříchů. Etika v teologii mistra Jana Husa Blanka Zilynská
• Adéla Šmilauerová, Bosí augustiniáni v Čechách jako objednavatelé uměleckých děl v 17. a 18. století Marek Brčák
• Josef Smolka ve spolupráci s Janou Vačkářovou a dalšími spolupracovníky Národní knihovny České republiky, Josef Stepling (1716–1778) v jeho biografiích a bibliografiích Ivana Čornejová
• Jan Surman, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space Milada Sekyrková
• Soňa Štrbáňová, Bohuslav Raýman. Vědec, vlastenec a Evropan Milada Sekyrková