Call for Abstracts: Visibility of Women in the History of Academia (special issue of "medien & zeit"). Deadline 28 February 2022

This issue of "medien & zeit" focuses on developments of inequalities in the disciplinary genesis of communication studies, in particular in the field of communication history, but also in associated disciplines like social sciences and humanities, (contemporary) history, sociology or philosophy. We invite contributions to reflect on the history of disciplines and subjects in relation to gender constructions and the gendering of academic knowledge production. The level of actors is sought to be considered just as much as the structural level.

Visibility of Women in the History of Academia

“Intellectuality is a privilege of men. If a woman is equally intellectual, then she lacks something else. She is then no longer a woman.” - this quote by a German professor was printed among many similar ones in 1960 in a habilitation thesis on the state of German universities. It testifies to the oppressively androcentric perspective that prevailed at universities for women. Since then, female scientists have undoubtedly achieved more scope of action, but no end is in sight to structural marginalization and stereotyping.

This issue of medien & zeit focuses on developments of inequalities in the disciplinary genesis of communication studies, in particular in the field of communication history, but also in associated disciplines like social sciences and humanities, (contemporary) history, sociology or philosophy. We invite contributions to reflect on the history of disciplines and subjects in relation to gender constructions and the gendering of academic knowledge production. The level of actors is sought to be considered just as much as the structural level.

One can assume that the historical representation of the scientific fields is based on hegemonic structures that are male-dominated. Women usually appear at most as exceptional figures, their substantial contribution in the history of disciplines is hardly recognizable in the corresponding literature. The reasons for this are manifold, embedded in overall social power structures and specifics of the scientific system - but far too little light has been shed on the subject. (Queer)feminist and instersectional approaches are challenging such patterns of interpretation and narratives based on patriarachal structures. This questioning of structures entails the engagement with thematic fields and perspectives, which in turn struggle for attention and recognition in a broad-based knowledge culture.

Certainly, marginalized social identities have to be made visible - but this alone is not enough. At the same time, there is a need for a fundamental debate on structural discrimination, its far-reaching implications for actors, social practices, the consolidation of institutionalized knowledge, and intra-scientific processes. We therefore invite original contributions on this topic, including theoretical as well as methodological considerations and case studies from feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives. Topics of interest include:

- Dealing with narratives about the discipline and about researchers: what role does gender play in meta-narratives about the history of the discipline and about academic achievement? What gaps, what shortcomings emerge from this? What narratives exist about female and non-binary scholars? What gendered attributions exist and have existed about scholarly quality, recognized methodologies and focal points in research?

- Segregating structures in the field: what lines of development can be traced in the history of disciplines and subjects? What upheavals and what continuities are to be seen in structural discrimination and marginalization? Which issues are set by which groups and which remain open?

- Academic resistance movements: what protest and resistant practices by academics have there been and are there against disadvantage? How were the movements, persons, demands or concepts dealt with? What consequences, measures or actions followed such protests?

- Visibility, recognition and power: what role did gender play as another social category as well as gender in intersection in visibility and influence in research fields, research topics, theories and methods? What did this mean for university political voice, participation in power? Which actors are attributed power of definition?

Submissions in English or German language are welcome. Submissions of abstracts (no more than 10.000 characters) outlining a prospective submission will be subjected to review by the academic editors of the issue. Based on this, authors will be invited to develop full papers (25.000-40.000 characters including title, abstract, tables, figures, and references list). All full papers will undergo rigorous double-blind peer review. During a potential revisions stage, after peer-review, authors can extend the article length to a maximum of 8,000 words in the light of reviewers’ and editors’ suggestions. medien & zeit is fully open access and does not charge Article processing fees from its authors.

Submission of Abstracts: 28 February 2022

Submission of Full Papers: 31 July 2022

Publication of Issue: Issue 2 of 2023

Please submit abstracts to Christina Krakovsky per email:

Christina.Krakovsky@gmail.com

Marius Turda (ed.) A Cultural History of Race. 6 vols. London etc. Bloomsbury Academic 2021. ISBN 9781350067578

Description

How have definitions of race varied and changed over time? What impact have religion, science and politics had on race throughout history, and how has our concept of it been changed as a result? These ambitious questions are answered by 61 experts who - drawing on perspectives from history, sociology, anthropology, literature and medical humanities - deepen our understanding of how race has developed conceptually and in reality between antiquity and the present day.

Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

The six volumes cover: 1. Antiquity (500 BCE - 800 CE); 2. Middle Ages (800 - 1350); 3. Renaissance and Early Modern Age (1350 - 1550) ; 4. Reformation and Enlightenment (1550 - 1760); 5. Age of Empire and Nation State (1760 - 1920); 6. Modern and Genomic Age (1920 – 2000+).

Themes (and chapter titles) are: Definitions of Race; Race, Environment and Culture; Race and Religion; Race and Science; Race and Politics; Race and Ethnicity; Race and Gender; Race and Body; and Anti-Race.

The page extent is approximately 1,728 pp. with c. 300 illustrations. Each volume opens with notes on contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with notes, bibliography and an index.

The Cultural Histories Series

A Cultural History of Race is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Table of Contents

Volume One: A Cultural History of Race in Antiquity (500 BCE–800 CE)

Edited by Denise McCoskey, Miami University, USA

Volume Two: A Cultural History of Race in the Medieval Age (800-1350)

Edited by Thomas Hahn, University of Rochester, USA

Volume Three: A Cultural History of Race in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age (1350-1550)

Edited by Kimberly A. Coles, University of Maryland, USA and Dorothy Kim, Brandeis University, USA

Volume Four: A Cultural History of Race in the Reformation and Enlightenment (1550-1760)

Edited by Nicholas Hudson, University of British Columbia, Canada

Volume Five: A Cultural History of Race in the Age of Empire and Nation State (1760-1920)

Edited by Marina Mogilner, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Volume Six: A Cultural History of Race in the Modern and Genomic Age (1920-present)

Edited by Tanya Golash-Boza, University of California Merced, USA

Александр Дмитриев, Галина Бабак: Атлантида советского нацмодернизма: формальный метод в Украине (1920-е — начало 1930-х) [Atlantis of Soviet Nacmodernism: Formal Method in Ukraine in the 1920s - beginning of the 1930s]. М: НЛО 2021. ISBN 978-5-4448-1730-8

 

Александр Дмитриев, Галина Бабак: Атлантида советского нацмодернизма: формальный метод в Украине (1920-е — начало 1930-х) [Atlantis of Soviet Nacmodernism: Formal Method in Ukraine in the 1920s - beginning of the 1930s]. М: НЛО 2021. ISBN 978-5-4448-1730-8

Аннотация: Эта книга является первой попыткой реконструировать один из ключевых сюжетов форсированной модернизации украинской культуры в XX веке — историю литературной теории и критики в советской части Украины в 1920 е — начале 1930 х годов. Об украинской культурной модернизации 1920 х написано немало, однако за частными случаями и идеологическими предпочтениями порой не видно большой картины — настоящей революции в литературной мысли и технике, произошедшей в условиях советского строительства. Это история о том, как общереволюционный проект переплелся с процессом становления нации. В «Атлантиде советского нацмодернизма» тщательно воссоздан широкий культурно-исторический и политико-идеологический контекст развития украинского литературоведения с учетом сложной взаимосвязи между универсальными авангардными художественными концепциями и модерной национально-ориентированной культурой. Галина Бабак — историк литературы, выпускница докторантуры Карлова университета (Прага), научный сотрудник New Europe College (Бухарест). Александр Дмитриев — ведущий научный сотрудник ИГИТИ имени А. В. Полетаева, доцент Школы исторических наук, Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики».

Мария Бурас : Лингвисты, пришедшие с холода [Linguists who came from the cold]. М.: АСТ, Редакция Елены Шубиной, 2022.

 

Содержание: https://gorky.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/M._Buras._Lingvisty-dragged.pdf .

Фрагмент книги: https://gorky.media/fragments/ya-byl-v-pohodah-gde-etot-finskij-nozh-menya-prosto-spasal/ .

Аннотация к книге "Лингвисты, пришедшие с холода"

Оттепель в науке началась, не дожидаясь XX съезда и разоблачения культа личности. В языкознании появились совершенно фантастические и в то же время строгие идеи: математическая лингвистика, машинный перевод, семиотика. Из этого разнообразия выросла новая наука — структурная лингвистика. Вяч. Вс. Иванов, Владимир Успенский, Игорь Мельчук и другие структуралисты создавали кафедры и лаборатории, спорили о науке и стране на конференциях, кухнях и в походах, говорили правду на собраниях и подписывали коллективные письма — и стали настоящими героями своего времени. Мария Бурас сплетает из остроумных, веселых, трагических слов свидетелей и участников историю эпохи и науки в жанре "лингвистика.doc".

"Лингвист говорит. Ассоциация с фильмом не случайна: в этой книге говорят августейшие особы нашей лингвистики. Сейчас странно даже подумать, что некоторых из них я знал (и, слава Богу, знаю) лично. Андрей Анатольевич Зализняк проверял мои выводы относительно новгородской локализации одного древнерусского текста. Обсуждение проблем современного языка с Максимом Анисимовичем Кронгаузом все еще удерживает меня от нервного срыва.

Мария Бурас создала замечательную книгу. Это история науки в лицах, по большому же счету — История вообще. Повествуя о великих лингвистах, издание предназначено для широкого круга лингвистов невеликих, каковыми являемся все мы".

Евгений Водолазкин

"Книга нужная, очень своевременная — и увлекательная. Все врут, как очевидцы, но искусный монтаж ненадежных по определению свидетельств дает полифонический эффект. Будучи одним из героев книги, я вспоминал Шкловского, который на Беломорканале чувствовал себя, “как живая лиса в меховом магазине”".

Александр Жолковский

Подробнее: https://www.labirint.ru/books/832549/

Emese Lafferton: Hungarian Psychiatry, Society and Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2021. ISBN: 978-3-030-85708-0

Introduction

This book provides the first comprehensive study of the history of Hungarian psychiatry between 1850 and 1920, placed in both an Austro-Hungarian and wider European comparative framework. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book captures the institutional worlds of the different types of psychiatric institutions intertwined with the intellectual history of mental illness and the micro-historical study of everyday institutional practice. It uncovers the ways in which psychiatrists gradually organised themselves and their profession, defined their field and role, claimed expertise within the medical sciences, lobbied for legal reform and the establishment of psychiatric institutions, fought for university positions, the establishment of departments and specialised psychiatric teaching. Beyond this story of increasing professionalization, this study also explores how psychiatry became invested in social critique. It shows how psychiatry gradually moved beyond its closely defined disciplinary borders and became a public arena, with psychiatrists broadening their focus from individual patients to society at large, whether through mass publications or participation in popular social movements. Finally, the book examines how psychiatry began to influence the concept of mental health during the first decades of the twentieth century, against the rich social and cultural context of fin-de-siècle Budapest and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.

ToC

Front Matter

Pages i-xviii

PDF

Introduction

Emese Lafferton

Pages 1-17

Histories of Psychiatry and the Hungarian Model

Emese Lafferton

Pages 19-99

The Bourgeois Family World of the Private Asylum: The Schwartzer Enterprise from 1850

Emese Lafferton

Pages 101-146

The Kingdom in Miniature: Public Mental Asylums from the 1860s

Emese Lafferton

Pages 147-191

The University Clinic and the Birth of Biological Psychiatry. Academic Research, Teaching and Therapy from the 1880s

Emese Lafferton

Pages 193-244

Fragmenting Institutional Landscape. Alternatives of Specialised Institutions, Colonies and Family Care on the Turn-of-the-Century

Emese Lafferton

Pages 245-289

Asylum Statistics and the Psycho-Social Reality of the Hungarian Kingdom

Emese Lafferton

Pages 291-328

Invading the Public and the Private: The Hygiene of Everyday Life, Shell-Shock and the Politics of Turn-of-the-Century Psychiatric Expertise

Emese Lafferton

Pages 329-368

Conclusion

Emese Lafferton

Pages 369-384

Back Matter

Pages 385-442

Dagnosław Demski, Dominika Czarnecka (eds.) Staged Otherness: Ethnic Shows in Central and Eastern Europe, 1850–1939. Budapest, Baltimore: CEU Press 2021. ISBN: 978-963-386-439-5

 

Description

The cultural phenomenon of exhibiting non-European people in front of the European audiences in the 19th and 20th century was concentrated in the metropolises in the western part of the continent. Nevertheless, traveling ethnic troupes and temporary exhibitions of non-European humans took place also in territories located to the east of the Oder river and Austria. The contributors to this edited volume present practices of ethnographic shows in Russia, Poland, Czechia, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Austria and discuss the reactions of local audiences. The essays offer critical arguments to rethink narratives of cultural encounters in the context of ethnic shows. By demonstrating the many ways in which the western models and customs were reshaped, developed, and contested in Central and Eastern European contexts, the authors argue that the dominant way of characterizing these performances as “human zoos” is too narrow. 

The contributors had to tackle the difficult task of finding traces other than faint copies of official press releases by the tour organizers. The original source material was drawn from local archives, museums, and newspapers of the discussed period. A unique feature of the volume is the rich amount of images that complement every single case study of ethnic shows.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Dominika Czarnecka and Dagnosław Demski

INTRODUCTION: FROM WESTERN TO PERIPHERAL VOICES

PART ONE

European Versus Indigenous Agency

2. Hilke Thode-Arora

THE HAGENBECK ETHNIC SHOWS: RECRUITMENT, ORGANIZATION, AND ACADEMIC AND POPULAR RESPONSE

3. Bodhari Warsame

A BRIEF HISTORY OF STAGING SOMALI ETHNOGRAPHIC PERFORMING TROUPES IN EUROPE (1885–1930)

4. Markéta Křížová

“WILD CHAMACOCO” AND THE CZECHS: THE DOUBLE-EDGED ETHNOGRAPHIC SHOW OF VOJTĚCH FRIČ, 1908–9

5. Evgeny Savitsky

WHY HIDDEN EARS MATTER? ON KALINTSOV’S SAMOYED EXHIBITION IN VIENNA, 1882

PART TWO

Performing the Ethnographic Other

6. Dagnosław Demski

(ETHNO-)DRAMA OF EXOTICISM. ETHNIC SHOWS AS A MEDIUM

7. Dominika Czarnecka

HOW DO THESE “EXOTIC” BODIES MOVE? ETHNOGRAPHIC SHOWS AND CONSTRUCTING OTHERNESS IN THE POLISH-LANGUAGE PRESS, 1880–1914

8. Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska

THE WORLD OF CREATION: POLISH- AND GERMAN-LANGUAGE PRESS ACCOUNTS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC SHOWS IN CIRCUS PERFORMANCES IN UPPER SILESIA DURING THE FIRST DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

PART THREE

Across Local Contexts

9. Andreja Mesarič 

RACIALIZED PERFORMANCE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SLOVENE WHITENESS: ETHNOGRAPHIC SHOWS AND CIRCUS ACTS ON THE HABSBURG PERIPHERY, 1880–1914

10. Maria Leskinen

A CENTURY OF ELISION? ETHNIC SHOWS IN SAINT PETERSBURG AND MOSCOW, 1879–1914

11. Izabela Kopania

“WHEN WINTER ARRIVES, THE SINHALESE GO BACK TO CEYLON AND THEIR ELEPHANTS GO TO HAMBURG.” HAGENBECK’S SINHALESE CARAVANS AND ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGERY IN THE POLISH PRESS DURING THE PARTITION ERA

12. Timea Barabas

THE CALL OF THE WILD: A SOCIOLOGICAL SKETCH OF BUFFALO BILL’S WILD WEST IN BANAT AND TRANSYLVANIA

13. István Sántha

“STAGED OTHERNESS” IN SAINT PETERSBURG

Epilogue

List of Contributors

Index

Antonie Doležalová: Mikuláš Teich: Moje století (1918-2018): Intelektuální biografie v dialogu [Mikuláš Teich: My Century 1918-2018. Intellectual Biography in a Dialogue]. Praha: Galén 2021. ISBN: 9788074925030

 Antonie Doležalová: Mikuláš Teich: Moje století (1918-2018): Intelektuální biografie v dialogu [Mikuláš Teich: My Century 1918-2018. Intellectual Biography in a Dialogue]. Praha: Galén 2021. ISBN: 9788074925030

Život Mikuláše Teicha byl dlouhý doslova jako jedno století. Narodil se ještě za Rakouska-Uherska a vyrůstal v masarykovském Československu, které nikdy nepřestal obdivovat. Přesto republiku dvakrát opustil. Poprvé v roce 1939 kvůli svému židovskému původu - s falešným pasem vlakem z Ružomberku. Podruhé v roce 1968 kvůli svému marxistickému přesvědčení - vlakem ze Smíchovského nádraží v Praze jen několik dní po sovětské invazi. Pokaždé se jeho novým domovem stala Velká Británie. Ač nikdy nepřestal litovat, že se v Praze nestal lékařem, v Británii se stal zakládajícím členem nejmladší koleje na univerzitě v Cambridge, Robinson College. Spolupracoval a přátelil se s nejvýznamnějšími světovými představiteli svého oboru - dějin přírodních věd. V poválečném Československu se jeho osudy dramaticky proťaly s osudy nejmocnějších představitelů komunistického režimu i jeho reformátorů.

Linda Erker, Die Universität Wien im Austrofaschismus. Österreichische Hochschulpolitik 1933 bis 1938, ihre Vorbedingungen und langfristigen Nachwirkungen, Göttingen: Vienna University Press / Brill, 2021. ISBN: 978-3-8471-1362-1

 

[English below] Während es über Österreichs Hochschulen nach dem »Anschluss« 1938 zahllose Studien gibt, sind die fünf Jahre davor universitätshistorisch kaum aufgearbeitet. Diese erstaunliche Forschungslücke wird durch den vorliegenden Band geschlossen, der eindrücklich zeigt, wie sehr die Universität Wien unter der Dollfuß/Schuschnigg-Diktatur Schaden nahm. Es kam einerseits zu Sparmaßnahmen, die von der Universität für politische und auch antisemitische »Säuberungen« des Lehrkörpers genützt wurden. Andererseits griffen die Machthaber mittels neuer Gesetze in die universitäre und studentische Selbstverwaltung ein. Diese 1933/34 beginnende Provinzialisierung setzte sich nach 1945 nahtlos fort, als man beim universitären Führungspersonal durchwegs auf frühere austrofaschistische Funktionäre zurückgriff.

-----------------

While there are countless studies on Austria’s universities after the “Anschluss” in 1938, the five years before have hardly been covered in terms of university history. This astonishing research gap is closed by the present book, which impressively shows how much the University of Vienna suffered under the Dollfuß/Schuschnigg dictatorship. On the one hand, there were radical economy measures, which were used for political and anti-Semitic “purges” of the teaching staff. On the other hand, the rulers intervened in university and student self-administration by means of new laws. This self-inflicted provincialization was seamlessly continued after 1945, when former Austrofascist functionaries were used throughout, especially in the university leadership.

Учебник как модель мира и общества: Коллективная монография [Textbook as a Model of World and Society] / Под ред. Т. В. Артемьевой, М. И. Микешина. — СПб.: Санкт-Петербургский центр истории идей; Издательство «Политехника Сервис», 2021. — 446 с.

 [Russian with a few English articles. OPEN ACCESS: http://academcabinet.ru/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Textbook_as_model.pdf]

Учебно-дидактическая литература редко становится объектом специального интереса историков философии и культуры, однако воспроизводство культуры тесно связано с процессом образования, не только с его структурно-организационной, но и с содержательной стороной, которая, в свою очередь отражает, хотя и не всегда явно, особенности мышления эпохи. Учебник является особым феноменом, обладающий специфическими функциями. Содержательная сторона учебника, его поле информационно-дидактической рефлексии является наиболее хорошо «заученной» частью духовно-информационного поля. Данная коллективная монография исследует аспекты мировоззренческих моделей, представленных в различных учебниках. В нее вошли материалы участников Международной онлайн-конференции «Учебник как модель мира и общества», организованной в Санкт-Петербурге в январе — феврале 2021 г.

ICOHTEC online seminar of young researchers "Crossing Boundaries in History of Technology"

Crossing Boundaries in History of Technology

ICOHTEC organises online seminar of young researchers promoting discussion, interrogation  and diversity of current frameworks in the history of technology.

17th January, 2022 Monday 1:00 - 2:30 PM (CET), 5:30 - 7:00 PM (IST),  7:00 - 8:30 AM (EST) 

Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvhfkOLqr6ZzPcfXxSi42T4rfRUdkA8tA6wCsMn4usVFYohw/viewform   .

Call for Expression of interest: 2nd Flying Colloquium for the history of science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe

After a successful start in early 2021, hps.cesee: History of Science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe is proud to organise the second Flying Colloquium for the history of science in CESEE, a series of informal seminars where we plan to discuss ongoing work in our field. We invite scholars who would like to discuss their work in progress -- PhD fragments, article drafts, book chapters, project proposals, or forthcoming important presentations -- with a group of peers and invited experts in a safe environment.

Our intention is to create an “invisible college” concerned with the history of science and scholarship (i.e. natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, technology and medicine). We encourage proposals that explore the vast regions that may be called Central, Eastern or Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and aim at widening this understanding further through (pre/post-)imperial, (pre/post-)colonial, (pre/post-)Soviet mobilities, exchanges, discursive links etc. – from the Middle Ages to contemporary history.

We want to share our interest and expertise in an informal and supportive atmosphere. The call is directed at scholars at all career stages, though preference will be given to PhD students and early-career researchers. The colloquium responds not just to the limitation of travelling options during the ongoing pandemic, but more generally to the lack of fora for discussion of projects in the histories of sciences and humanities in the region. It also aims to strengthen global exchange on this topic.

Applicants can propose:

A pre-circulated paper of up to 10.000 words (article draft, dissertation chapter, research project proposal, etc.), in which case we will invite a commentator and dedicate a full session to discussion of the paper;

A short project presentation which is not pre-circulated, in which case we will allocate 45 minutes for the presentation and discussion.

We would like to set up a limited group that meets every second Tuesday starting February 8th at 18:00 CET (20:00 MSK / 12:00 EST) until early May 2022, where we will create a constructive, inclusive and safe atmosphere for productive discussions. If you would like to take part in the colloquium by presenting a piece of your own work and/or discussing the work of others, please fill out the form here https://forms.gle/wLKam3Znuk197Rq96 by January 15, 2022.

Friedrich Cain, Evangelia Chordaki, Adela Hincu, Johanna Hügel, Sandra Klos, Katalin Straner, Jan Surman

For questions please contact hps.cesee@gmail.com.

Online book launch: Elena Aronova: Scientific History. 16 December, 5 pm (UK time), 18:00 CET

 

Join us on 16 December to celebrate the publication of Elena Aronova's Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of the Cold War, just published with the University of Chicago Press.

Elena Aronova (UC Santa Barbara) will be joined by James Delbourgo (Rutgers) and Nasser Zakariya (UC Berkeley).

More info on the book here: tinyurl.com/gloknosscihist

To book your place, please contact Sam Peel (sjp229@cam.ac.uk)

Special Issue: Scientific Authority and the Politics of Science and History in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, ed. by Friedrich Cain, Dietlind Hüchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg, Karin Reichenbach, Jan Surman. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte // History of Science and Humanities 4/2021

 

URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15222365/2021/44/4

Friedrich Cain, Dietlind Hüchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg, Karin Reichenbach, Jan Surman, Introduction: Scientific Authority and the Politics of Science and History in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, pp. 339-351 (free access)

Friedrich Cain, Authority Claims Situating Socialist Science Studies in the GDR, pp. 352-372 (open access)

Miglena Nikolchina, Breaking the Code: Political Control and the Humanities in 1960 s Bulgaria, pp. 373-390 

Anne Kluger, “Honecker's Vassal” or a Prehistorian in the Service of Science? The Evaluation of Former East German Scholarship and the Concept of the Scholar in the Debate on Joachim Herrmann in Reunified Germany, pp. 391-413 (Open Access)

Ella Rossman, From Socialism to Social Media: Women's and Gender History in Post-Soviet Russia, pp. 414-432

Michał Pawleta, Reconstructing the Past, Renegotiating Authority: Reconstructed Archaeological Sites in Present-Day Poland, pp. 433-460 

Open Access

Andrea Pető, Current Comment: The Illiberal Academic Authority. An Oxymoron?, pp. 461-469 

Call for Abstracts for symposium “Science Studies between Science Policy and the Politics of Science” at ESHS 2022 (Brussels, 7-10 September 2022) organised by Fabian Link (Wuppertal), Jan Surman (Prague), Monika Wulz (Lucerne)

 

Studying the sciences has a long connection to underscoring the practical and political side of scientific research, epitomised by British historian J.D. Bernal and Hubert Laitko in the GDR, the scholarly tradition of Polish “Science of Science” since the interwar period, or Praxeology by Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński. In the 1960s this connection became more tuned toward an applied history of science, now represented by scholars like Eugene Garfield or Gennady Dobrov. By then, science studies’ aim was as much to analyse sciences, as to propose the ways of their perfection, making “science of science” a meta-science of modernity. In the 1970s and 1980s sociological oriented science studies developed  a poststructural critique of past and present scientific practices in terms of their military application and male dominance, becoming one of the driving forces behind changes at universities. Moreover, scholars also used science studies’ research to inform state science policy.

In our section we want to look at processes in which the study of science has been discussed and/or practiced as an applied, practice-related science governing or advising state science policy or, on the contrary, critically engaging with the role of science in state policy. Such cases range from science studies  serving global peace and mutual understanding (ICHST, UNESCO projects, global planning endeavours etc.) or developing economic perspectives on the role of science in society, through meso-level of tuning national science systems with the help of cybernetic-based science of science and of sociological science studies, or merging science systems together (e.g. managing of science systems after border shifts 1918/1945, or the integration of the GDR’s science system into that of the FRG after 1989), to local case studies, such as the application of sociology and psychology of science in reform of research and higher education units or “experiments” with scientifically based operation in laboratories. In such endeavours, science studies actors were presenting themselves as both scholars and political actors, producing also enticing narratives about science’s importance for the modern society and contributing to the development of the idea of the ‘knowledge society’ on both sides of the Iron Curtain

We are particularly interested in studies analysing the situation in Central-Eastern Europe and Global South countries, as well as those highlighting transnational cooperation. 

Proposals (an abstract of max 250 words + a short bio or link to personal webpage) should be sent to panel organizers (flink@uni-wuppertal.de, surman@mua.cas.cz, monika.wulz@unilu.ch) by Monday, December 27, 2021. For more information about the conference please visit https://eshsbrussels2022.com/calls/

Martin Rohde: Nationale Wissenschaft zwischen zwei Imperien. Die Ševčenko-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1892–1918. Vienna: V&R unipress, Vienna University Press 2022. ISBN: 978-3-8470-1390-7

[English below] 

Welche Faktoren beeinflussten die Wissensproduktion nicht-dominanter Gruppen in hierarchisierten Kontakträumen? Der Band geht dieser Frage anhand der ukrainischen Ševčenko-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften im habsburgischen Galizien des späten 19./frühen 20. Jahrhunderts nach, als die ukrainische Wissenschaftslandschaft nahezu monozentrisch auf diesen Verein ausgerichtet war. Durch das Prisma des Vereinsgeschehens lässt sich deshalb die aufkeimende ukrainischsprachige Wissenschaft mit einem Fokus auf imperiale und transnationale Austauschprozesse erforschen. Diese europäische Verflechtungsgeschichte arbeitet die Möglichkeiten, Grenzen und Abgrenzungen der ukrainischen Wissenschaft heraus, die sie bei ihrem Ziel prägten, die Existenz der Ukraine wissenschaftlich zu rechtfertigen. 

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Which factors influenced the knowledge production of non-dominant groups in hierarchized contact zones? This question is discussed with the example of the Ukrainian Shevchenko Scientific Society in Habsburg Galicia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This young institution was the only centre of the Ukrainian scholarly community during this period, enabling investigation into nascent Ukrainian science through the history of this association. Although this book deals with a group of nationalizing scholars, the focus is not exclusively on conflicts, but rather on European entanglements as well as the possibilities, limits, and delineations of Ukrainian science in its pursuit of justifying the existence of Ukraine.

Workshop ‘Towards an institutional ethnography of late socialism’, 16-18 December 2021 (HSE St Petersburg, online)

 

You are cordially invited to the online workshop on practices and performances of late-Soviet institutions — from communist party structures and government ministries to plants, collective farms, schools and pioneer camps, the military and the police, and to the institutions of science and cultural production. We explore such institutional cases from the broadest range of perspectives, including microhistory, microethnography and historical sociology, and in doing so address a significant conceptual gap in the anthropology of the state and historiography of late socialism. 

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES

 Alexei Yurchak (UC Berkeley) ‘Bodies Lenin: a laboratory of Soviet sovereignty’

 Sergey  Abashin (European University at St Petersburg) ‘Soviet kishlak- Soviet kolkhoz: towards institutional ethnography

Links to the workshop webpage, including its conceptual summary and programme with paper abstract is here (as well as further below in this message):

https://spb.hse.ru/humart/chr/news/488812040.html

*The conference is bilingual, with simultaneous translation provided. Конференция двуязычна, с синхронным переводом.

*In the order of appearance of the Russian or English paper titles and the names of presenters, the first is the language in which the paper will be given, and the language of its abstract. В двуязычном тексте программы, доклад первым упоминается на языке, на котором он подан на конференцию и на котором написано его резюме (абстракт).

*Timetable follows Moscow time zone / Время московское!

To receive zoom link to attend, please register here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSew_vI2uX-xymDK0s5CWTUAhP04oENc__F6Zieo94lLpWC3NQ/viewform

Workshop summary: 

[Epigraph] "The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is. There is a state-system: a palpable nexus of practice and institutional structure centred in government and more or less extensive, unified and dominant in any given society. There is, too, a state-idea, projected, purveyed and variously believed in in different societies at different times. We are only making difficulties for ourselves in supposing that we have also to study the state - an entity, agent, function or relation over and above the state-system and the state-idea. The state comes into being as a structuration within political practice; it starts its life as an implicit construct; it is then reified - as the res publica, the public reification, no less - and acquires an overt symbolic identity progressively divorced from practice as an illusory account of practice."

— Philip Abrams, Notes on the Difficulty of the Studying the State(1988 [1977])

Philip Abrams has been seminal for outlining what is now a flourishing field of ethnographies of the state. Yet, if these insights have been instrumental in generating research into the ‘imagined state’ (Gupta 1995) — what Abrams described as the reified life of the state-idea — they have ironically been much less conducive to institutional ethnography. There is important work which details the circulation of the state ‘as if’ an entity or agent beyond state institutions (Navaro-Yashin 2002; Ssorin-Chaikov 2003; Reeves 2014). But what happens within the institutions themselves? The analytics of sovereignty (Hansen and Stepputat 2005; Bryant and Reeves 2021) has been effective in the exploration of subject/citizen/refugee/outcast, etc., but less so in what Abrams called the ‘palpable nexus of [institutional] practice and structure’. Paradoxically, while the anthropology of the state has been recently advanced by research into everyday life and materiality of documents within state institutions (Messick 1996; Riles 2006; Hull 2012; Reeves 2013; Mathur 2016), it stops short of generating its own institutional analysis thus effectively relegating it to institutional economics and political science.

The Anthropology of the State

The workshop aims at addressing this asymmetry. We call for papers that will do so from a particular local and temporal vantage point: we are interested in charting the workings of late-Soviet institutions. The workshop hails from a basecamp of a major research project ‘The social anthropology of the late-Soviet institutions’ that we have just started at the HSE. Its aim is to fill the gap in the historiography of Soviet and Soviet-type societies which s contours very much, if surprisingly, resemble those just outlined for the anthropology of the state more generally.

Soviet Historiography

Everyone agrees that the state plays the key role in the organisation of Soviet order but there is precious little actually done on state institutions (including communist party institutions) of the late-Soviet period. Exceptions include Humphrey (1984), Ssorin-Chaikov (2003 and 2016), and Abashin (2015) on collective farms; or Mitrokhin (2021) the party apparatus and industrial ministries. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. Important research has been done on knowledge production, including economic mathematics and cybernetics (Leeds 2016 Kirtchik and Gouarné 2021) and on late-Soviet subjectivity (following Yurchak 2006). Yet in focus is knowledge rather than power in the Foucauldian knowledge/power nexus, and citizen/subject rather than the institutional locations and practices (but see Verdery 2014; 2018). Institutional microhistories, microethnographies and historical sociologies thus remain unexplored systematically despite (or perhaps indeed because) bureaucracy, red tape, overregulation and secrecy have been a cliche that is inseparable from the image of late socialism, if not all Soviet order. There are assumptions about institutional structure and practices that implicitly underpin the analyses of Soviet subjectivities, materialities, economies, science and knowledge, and ideological hegemonies. But these assumptions remain taken for granted, rather than being explicitly addressed.

Institutional Analysis

Soviet order comprised and saw itself(in the sense of Scott [1998]) through different collective organisations — perhaps even modes of existence/collectivesin the usage of Latour (2013). These were various establishments, factories, work collectives, kolkhoz brigades, housing cooperatives, party cells, construction bureaus, amateur hobby circles, etc. Yet all these have been integrated into a complex institutional system of state socialism — interconnected, and constituted through, formal and informal administrative and governance procedures. These might be called grammars of state socialism(to paraphrase Samanani, Fedirko, and Williamson 2021) with dependent and independent clauses, as in complex sentences, and various organisational orders. Tellingly, this system has never been systematically examined neither from the perspective of classic Durkheimian or Parsonian sociology nor from to those of institutional economics, theories if institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983), Weberian approaches to bureaucracy and the ANT. Pertinent questions such as how institutions think(Douglas 1986), how the states write (Messick 1996) and what is the agency of state documents (Hull 2012) have been hardly asked about state socialism.

Programme (*Timetable follows Moscow time zone / Время московское!):

*The conference is bilingual, with simultaneous translation provided. Конференция двуязычна, с синхронным переводом.

*In the order of appearance of the Russian or English paper titles and the names of presenters, the first is the language in which the paper will be given, and the language of its abstract. В двуязычном тексте программы, доклад первым упоминается на языке, на котором он подан на конференцию и на котором написано его резюме (абстракт).

16 DECEMBER

10:00: Welcome coffee

10:30 Introduction: Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (HSE St Petersburg)

PANEL #1 ВИТРИНЫ И КУЛУАРЫ /BACK-STAGE AND FRONT LOBBY ACTIVITIES

11:00 Natasha Wilson (University of Melbourne) Cultures of Reform and Dissent: The Affair of the Young Socialists at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in the Late Brezhnev Years.

Наташа Уилсон (Университет Мельбурна) Культуры реформы и инакомыслия: дело «Молодых социалистов» в Институте мировой экономики и международных отношений (ИМЭМО) в позднебрежневскую эпоху

11:20 Amy Garey: (University of Chicago / Moscow State Pedagogical University) Forbidden but Possible: State Traditions of a Banned Pastime

Эми Гэри (Университет Чикаго / МГПУ) Запретное, но возможное: государственные традиции запрещенных занятий (доклад на английском)

10:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

12:00 Белякова Надежда (Институт всеобщей истории РАН, Сеченовский медицинский университет) и Клюева Вера (Тюменский научный центр РАН) Практики сохранения культурного наследия в СССР в конце 1960 – середине 1970-х гг.: микрокейс студенческого строительно-реставрационного отряда МИФИ

Belyakova Hadezhda (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences) and Vera Klueva (Tumen Scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences) Soviet Heritage Preserving Practices in the late 1960s – mid 1970s: Microcase of Student Reconstruction-construction Brigade of MEPhi

12:20 Илья Кукулин, Мария Майофис, Мария Четверикова (НИУ ВШЭ Москва) Позднесоветский литературно-издательский процесс и роль «кулуарных» коммуникаций в его институциональной структуре

Ilya Kukulin, Maria Mayofis, Maria Chetverikova (HSE Moscow) Late Soviet Literary and Publishing Process and the Role of «Backstage» Communications in Its Institutional Structure

12:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

13:00-14:30 Lunch/обед

PANEL #2 THE INSTITUTIONAL INSIDE / ИЗНАНКА ИНСТИТУТОВ

14:30 Catriona Kelly (University of Cambridge) Working Like a State: The Management of the Movie Industry in the Brezhnev Era

Катриона Келли (Кембриджский университет) Работать как государство: управление киноиндустрией в брежневскую эпоху

14:50 Elena Kochetkova (HSE St Petersburg) Industrial Creativity and the Functioning of Soviet Industrial Enterprises, 1940s-80s

Елена Кочеткова (ВШЭ Санкт-Петербург) Промышленное творчество и функционирование советских промышленных предприятий, 1940-1980-е гг.

15:10 Discussion / Дискуссия

15:30 Alexey Golubev (University of Houston) Knowledge and Money: Funding the Soviet Mass Scientific Literacy Campaign

Алексей Голубев (Хьюстонский университет) Знания и деньги: финансирование советской массовой кампании по повышению научной грамотности

15:50 Александр Фокин (ТюмГУ) Институт советских выборов: нормы и практика

Alexander Fokin (University of Tumen) Soviet Elections Institute: Norms and Practices

16:10 Discussion / Дискуссия

16:30 Coffee break

PANEL #3 ЛАБОРАТОРИИ ПОЗДНЕГО СОЦИАЛИЗМА / LABORATORIES OF LATE SOCIALISM

17:30 Katerina Kulinicheva (HSE Moscow) Experimental sports equipment industry in the late USSR

Екатерина Кулиничева (ВШЭ, Москва) Экспериментальная индустрия по производству спортивной экипировки в позднем СССР

17:50 Tamar Qeburia (Ilia State University & University of Göttingen) “Zetaponi’s Ferroalloy factory supports our institute and operates as a true factory-laboratory”

Тамар Кебурия (Государственный университет Ильи и Гёттингенский университет) «Зестафонский ферросплавный завод поддерживает наш институт и выступает в качестве настоящего завода-лаборатории»

18:10 Discussion / Дискуссия

18:30 Coffee break

KEYNOTE ADDRESS / ПЛЕНАРНЫЙ ДОКЛАД

19:00 -19:45 Akexei Yurchak (UC Berkley) Bodies Lenin: a laboratory of Soviet sovereignty

Алексей Юрчак (Калифорнийский университет в Беркли) Ленинские тела: лаборатория советской суверенности

19:45 Discussion / Дискуссия

17 DECEMBER

PANEL #4 ON THE PLANTATION / НА КАРТОШКУ

10:00 Alexandra Kasatkina (HSE St Petersburg) Institutions in the mundane: institutional design of Soviet collective gardens of factory and office workers

Александра Касаткина (ВШЭ, Санкт-Петербург) Институты в миру: институциональный дизайн садовых товариществ советских рабочих и служащих

10:20 Tania Voronina (Университет Цюриха) Комсомол в вологодской деревне: сельские миры и социалистическая модерность в позднем социализме

Tatiana Voronina (University of Zurich) Komsomol in Vologda Village: Rural Myths and Socialist Modernity in the Late Socialism (доклад на русском)

10:40 Costanza Curro (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Vakht’ang K’ek’oshvili (Georgian American University, Tbilisi, Georgia) Missing the good life: The labour colony of Khoni, Georgia

Констанца Курро (Хельсинкский университет, Финляндия) и Вахтанг Кекошвилли (Грузинский американский университет, Тбилиси, Грузия) Тоска по хорошей жизни: исправительно-трудовая колония в Хони, Грузия

11:00 Discussion / Дискуссия

11:30 coffee break / Кофе-брейк

PANEL #5 DOCUMENT WORLDS OF SOVIET PLANNING AND DESIGN / ДОКУМЕНТАЛЬНЫЕ МИРЫ СОВЕТСКОГО ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЯ

12:00 Вячеслав Некрасов (СурГПУ/Фонд научно-технологического развития Югры) «Церберы» Госплана: практики принятия экономических решений в начале 1960-х гг.

Vyacheslav Nekrasov (Ugra Science and Technology Development Fund) Gosplan «сerberus»: Decision-making Practices in the early 1960s

12:20 Алексей Сафронов (РАНХиГС) Практики работы Госплана СССР в Брежневский период

Alexey Safronov (RANEPA) Gosplan Work Practices in the Brezhnev Era

12:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

13:00 Ksenia Litvinenko (University of Manchester) Paper Collaborations: Materialities of Paperwork of a Soviet Design Institute

Ксения Литвиненко (Манчестерский университет) Сотрудничество на бумаге: материальность бумажной работы советского института дизайна

13:20 Yi Lu (Oxford University) Documentism and its Discontents: Managing Bureaucratic Information in Mao's China

И Лу (Оксфордский университет) Документизм и его связанные с ним проблемы: управление бюрократической информацией в Китае при Мао

13:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

14:00 Lunch / Обед

KEYNOTE ADDRESS/ ПЛЕНАРНЫЙ ДОКЛАД

15:00 Сергей Абашин (ЕУСПб) Советский кишлак — советский колхоз: об инстуциональной этнографии

Sergei Abashin (EUSPb) ‘Soviet kishlak- Soviet kolkhoz: towards institutional ethnography’

15:45 Discussion / Дискуссия

18 DECEMBER  

PANEL #6 BETWEEN MORAL ECONOMIES AND IDEOLOGIES / МЕЖДУ МОРАЛЬНОЙ ЭКОНОМИКОЙ И ИДЕОЛОГИЕЙ

10:00 Hamlet Melkumyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Armenia) Soviet Ideology and Utopian futures in the Urban system of “Closed” City in Soviet Armenia

Гамлет Мелькумян (Институт археологии и этнографии, Армения) Советская идеология и утопические будущее в городской системе «закрытого» города советской Армении

10:20 Арина Колодина (ЕУСПб) ВЛКСМ как эксперт в определении критериев «морального»: жалобы советских граждан на комсомольцев и их последствия в 1950-1960-е гг. (на материалах ленинградской организации)

Arina Kolodina (EUSPb) VLKSM as an Expert in Defining Criteria of the «Moral»: Soviet Citizens Claims about Komsomol Members and Their Consequences in the 1950s-1960s (using Leningrad materials)

10:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

11:00 Xenia Cherkaev (HSE, St. Petersburg) “Group Egoism” – and the Inglorious End of Socialist Property

Ксения Черкаева (ВШЭ, Санкт-Петербург) «Групповой эгоизм» и бесславный конец социалистической собственности

11:20 Svetlana Stephenson (London Metropolitan University). Theatres of absurd cruelty: Public shaming meetings in the late Soviet Union.

Светлана Стивенсон (Университет Лондонской Метрополии) Театр абсурдной жестокости: общественное порицание в позднем Советском Союзе

11:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

12:00 Lunch / Обед

PANEL #7 LATE-SOVIET BIOPOLITICS / ПОЗДНЕСОВЕТСКАЯ БИОПОЛИТИКА

13:00 Jessica Lovett (University of Nottingham) Demography and the Soviet State Under Brezhnev

Джессика Ловетт (Ноттингемский университет) Демография и Советское государство при Брежневе

13:20 Michele Rivkin-Fish  (UNC-Chapel Hill), Pavel Vasilyev (HSE St. Petersburg), Alexandra Konovalova (HSE Moscow), Oral Contraceptives, Fertility Trends, and the Making of A Late Soviet Biopolitics

Мишель Ривкин-Фиш (Университет Северной Каролины в Чапел-Хилле), Павел Васильев (ВШЭ, Санкт-Петербург), Александра Коновалова (ВШЭ, Москва) Создание позднесоветской биополитики: оральные контрацептивы и рождаемость

13:40 Discussion / Дискуссия

14:00 coffee break / Кофе-брейк

PANEL #8 GATHERERS / СОБИРАТЕЛИ

14:30 Anna Sokolova (Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology (Moscow) / University of Zurich) “I have never felt jeans as a shortage-goods” – commercial berry gathering in Late Soviet Karelia

Анна Соколова (Институт этнологии и антропологии, Москва / Цюрихский университет) «Я никогда не воспринимал джинсы как дефицитный товар» - коммерческий сбор ягод в позднесоветской Карелии

14:50 Olga Belichenko (Università Ca’ Foscari & Muséum National de l’Histoire Naturelle) and Valeria Kolosova (Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences) Berries, harvesters and plan: the practices of two procurement points of Northwestern Russia in 1970-90s

Ольга Беличенко (Университет Ка-Фоскари и Национальный музей естественной истории), Валерия Колосова (Институт языкознания РАН) Ягоды, собиратели и план: практики двух закупочных пунктов в северо-западной России в 1970-1990-е гг.

15:10 Discussion / Дискуссия

PANEL #9 HOUSING/ ЖИЛИЩНОЕ СТРОИТЕЛЬСТВО

15:30 Ольга Никонова (Южно-Уральский национальный государственный университет, Челябинск) Социальные программы предприятий и производство «социалистического образа жизни»

Olga Nikonova (South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk) Enterprises` Social Programs and Production of a «Socialist Way of Life»

15:50 Lois Kalb (European University Institute) Late Soviet Practices of Housing Distribution and Maintenance on Kiev’s Left Bank

Лоиз Калб (Европейский университетский институт) Позднесоветские практики распределения и содержания жилья левобережного района Киева

16:10 Discussion / Дискуссия

16:30 Concluding discussion / Заключительная дискуссия /Online reception/ Онлайн фуршет

Registration Form

To receive zoom link to attend, please register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSew_vI2uX-xymDK0s5CWTUAhP04oENc__F6Zieo94lLpWC3NQ/viewform

WORKSHOP ORGANISING COMMITTEE

The international academic council of the project ‘Social anthropology of late Soviet institutions’, comprising:

Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (HSE) (projects PI)

Alexei Yurchak (Berkley)

Galina Orlova (HSE)

Doug Rogers (Yale)

Caroline Humphrey(Cambridge)

Roman Abramov (HSE)

Jeremy Morris (Aarhus)

Slava Gerovitch (MIT)

The International Max Planck Research School "Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities" invites applications for 5 doctoral positions

The International Max Planck Research School "Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities" (IMPRS-KIR) invites applications for

5 doctoral positions, to begin on September 1, 2022.

Each position will run for 3.5 years, with the possibility of extending once by six months.

The IMPRS-KIR is a new, research-driven PhD program based in the history and philosophy of science, technology, and medicine (HPSTM). It is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin. The IMPRS-KIR will trace the deep entanglements of knowledge and its resources from a long-term and global perspective. Key to its agenda is a "historical-political epistemology" that highlights how knowledge is shaped historically by a great variety of resources—political systems, technological infrastructures, social interaction, material objects and media technologies. Knowledge, in turn, is understood as a means to define and unlock such resources, while being, in and of itself, one of the key resources of human culture.

The School offers training in historical-political epistemology, combining HPSTM with regional and global studies, Science & Technology Studies (STS), all fields of history, media studies, museum studies, archaeology, art history, literary studies, philology, environmental studies, and digital humanities research. Prospective doctoral students with projects on any specialty and period within these and related fields are invited to apply.

The doctoral positions are open to applicants of all nationalities holding a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in the aforementioned fields and having proficiency in English, and, preferably, in one or more additional languages. Candidates are expected to be able to present and discuss their work and that of others in English; dissertations may be submitted in German, English, or any of the supervisors’ working languages. Selection criteria relate to the excellence of the individual candidate and project and the closeness of the project’s fit with the School’s agenda.

The IMPRS-KIR is located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Dahlem, Berlin. Students will work in a stimulating international and interdisciplinary research environment. The School’s program entails one year of courses held in conjunction with the three Berlin universities involved in the IMPRS-KIR (FU, HU, TU), as well as mentored reading groups, workshops, training in digital humanities methods, a tailored coaching program, and language courses. A research budget will be available for travel to archives worldwide. Additionally, students may opt to spend up to one semester at one of our international partner universities (University of Pennsylvania, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore University of Technology and Design).

The PhD degrees will be awarded by one of the Berlin university departments represented in the Principal Teaching Faculty. Additionally, an IMPRS certificate of the Max Planck Society will be awarded.

Applicants are asked to submit the following materials:

a cover letter with a personal statement of your motivation for applying to the IMPRS-KIR (max. 1,000 words)

a dissertation proposal (max. 2,500 words, excluding bibliography) including working title, abstract (max. 250 words), research topic and state of the art in the field of study concerned, research questions and objectives, methodology, short description of the project’s feasibility and how it would be carried out (including a list of archives if applicable), bibliography (max. 30 titles)

a curriculum vitae (1–2 pages)

copies of degree certificates/proof of the finishing date of your Master’s degree

transcript of grades achieved during your Master’s studies

proof of fluency in English (preferably at level C1, but at least at level B2). If English is your native language or if you went to a university where the language of instruction was English, you do not need to submit an English certificate.

contact details of two academic referees. Our Selection Committee will contact referees for shortlisted applicants.

Please submit these materials as separate PDF documents, exclusively through the following application portal: https://recruitment.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/position/19628037

Only complete applications submitted via the application portal will be accepted. The portal will close on January 31, 2022, 23.59 Central European Time.

The IMPRS-KIR aims to foster diversity within its four collaborating institutions. We welcome applications from all qualified individuals regardless of age, disabilities, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion or sexual orientation.

For more information, please consult the FAQs on the IMPRS webpage (https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/departments/imprs).

CfP: History of Intellectual Culture

History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) is seeking new contributions for publication in Volume 2 (2023). We are inviting proposals for (1) individual articles for sections I & III as well as (2) guest editors for the thematic section II.

HIC focuses on the modern period (from the long 19th century onward) and takes on a decidedly transatlantic and/or continental view of Europe and ‘America’ (including Canada, the U.S., and Latin America).  Each volume is divided into three sections: The first part is open to individual papers that fall within HIC’s general profile (please see our website for more details: https://www.degruyter.com/serial/HICU-B/html). The second section presents a theme, bringing together four to five articles and an introduction on one specific overarching topic. The third section aims to engage with the field at large, for example through review essays, conversations, theoretical, methodological, or conceptual contributions.

In general, we seek original research that fruitfully ties empirical research to larger theoretical and methodological debates. In particular, we encourage articles that are structured as well-grounded arguments and aim at contributing to the general scholarly development of the field of the history of knowledge.

Articles for section I and II should be c. 8,000 words. The format of section III is more flexible and should be between 4,000 and 8,000 words. The thematic section II can include up to five individual contributions as well as a framing introduction and conclusion by the guest editors (the total word-count for section II is 40,000-50,000 words).

Proposals for section I and III should be c. 500 words, accompanied by a short CV. Please also indicate which section you would like to contribute to. 

Proposals for a thematic guest editorship of section II should include a 500-word overall description as well as at least three confirmed contributors with working titles and 200-word abstracts each(further contributors should be recruited through an open call for papers). Please include short CVs of guest editors and confirmed contributors.

Please submit proposals in one pdf file by March 15, 2022 to HIC@lmu.de

We particularly welcome new, diverse voices and the work of early career researchers. Guest editors are encouraged to be aware of this policy. Grounded in the discipline of history, we distinctly encourage interdisciplinary approaches with the aim of stimulating productive exchanges, expanding conventional notions, and enriching public discourse.

History of Intellectual Culture (HIC): International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society is edited by Charlotte A. Lerg, Johan Östling, Jana Weiß.

Томас М. Бон, Аляксандр Далгоўскі, Маркус Кшоска: Зубрыны неруш і сусветная спадчына [Wisent-Wildnis und Welterbe]. Пераклад з нямецкай Жанны Некрашэвіч-Кароткай. Мінск: Галіяфы 2021.

 

Белавежская пушча, якая раскінулася на польска-беларускім памежжы, з XVIII стагоддзя лічыцца апошнім прытулкам зуброў. У 20-х гадах ХХ стагоддзя ледзь не дайшло да вымірання “валадароў нерушу”, аднак дзякуючы мэтанакіраванай рэінтрадукцыі, якая ажыццяўлялася ў сярэдзіне ХХ стагоддзя, папуляцыя зуброў ізноў пачала павя­лічвацца. Апошні ў Еўропе нізінны неруш набыў міжнароднае значэнне спачатку як зона палявання польскіх каралёў і рускіх цароў, пазней як польска-беларускі нацыянальны парк і нарэшце як аб’ект сусветнай спадчыны ЮНЕСКА. У кнізе прадстаўлены нарыс гісторыі Белавежскага нацыянальнага парку пачынаючы з ранняга Новага часу да нашых дзён.

Асноўныя тэмы гэтай кнігі — стаўленне да прыроды як да вытворчага рэсурсу і як да запаведнай зоны, а таксама паўсядзённае жыццё жыхароў пушчанскага рэгіёна пры розных палітычных уладах і дзяржаўных сістэмах ХХ стагоддзя.

Konstantin Starikov and Melissa L. Miller (eds.) The Russian Medical Humanities Past, Present, and Future. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2021. ISBN: 978-1-4985-9215-4

 

For the first time in English, The Russian Medical Humanities: Past and Present argues that the medical humanities is a vibrant and emerging field in Post-Soviet Russia. In a unique collaboration that brings together diverse experts from both Russia and America, this volume showcases the Russian medical humanities as an interdisciplinary project that combines insights from philosophy, bioethics, anthropology, history, and literature in order to provide more compassionate medical care to patients in the twenty-first century. The chapters in this volume explore past and present humanistic trends in Russian medical training, as well as examine how Russian authors and cultural figures, some physician-writers, some without professional background in medicine of any kind, have positioned healthy and ailing bodies in their creative work. This volume’s contributors, who range from literary scholars, educators, translators and poets to medical historians, librarians, museum curators, and social workers, provide empathetic insight into the experience of medical encounters which all cultures grapple with. Their work will prove useful not only to current and future health practitioners, but also to a broader audience of readers who are seeking to make compassionate and informed decisions about healthcare for their loved ones and for themselves.

Международная конференция «Шестые Лемовские чтения» (Самара, 29-31 марта 2022 года)

 Приглашаем принять участие в международной конференции, посвящённой научной фантастике, «Шестые Лемовские чтения». Конференция состоится 29-31 марта 2022 года на базе кафедры философии Самарского университета совместно с кафедрой русской и зарубежной литературы и связей с общественностью под эгидой Научного совета при Президиуме РАН по методологии искусственного интеллекта и когнитивных исследований (НСМИИ РАН) и Самарского научного центра (СНЦ) РАН.

Сборники материалов Первых, Вторых, Третьих, Четвёртых и Пятых Лемовских Чтений доступны в открытых источниках: 

Фантастика и технологии. Самара, 2009; 

Вторые Лемовские чтения. Самара, 2014; 

Третьи Лемовские чтения. Самара, 2016; 

Четвёртые Лемовские чтения. Самара, 2018;

Пятые Лемовские чтения. Самара, 2020. 

Темы для обсуждения

Художественное и философское наследие Станислава Лема; 

Теоретические основания научной фантастики: теоретико-литературные и философские подходы; 

История и современное состояние научно-фантастической литературы: темы, идеи, авторы; 

Модели будущего в научной фантастике: неочеловек и альтернативные социальные модели; 

Научная фантастика и война идеологий; 

Кибернетическое бессмертие и трансгуманизм; 

Этика искусственного интеллекта и машинное творчество; 

Научная фантастика и научно-технологический прогресс: прогностические модели реальной науки и их история; 

Педагогический потенциал научной фантастики. 

В рамках конференции планируются открытые лекции и круглые столы, посвящённые:

столетию Станислава Лема; 

теории и практике технического и художественного творчества; 

советской научной фантастике; 

актуальному состоянию научной фантастики в России и мире. 

В рамках конференции планируется конкурс детского научно-фантастического рассказа. Лучшие работы будут изданы.

Сборник материалов будет сформирован по результатам конференции. 

Участникам конференции необходимо не позднее 21 февраля 2022 года направить в адрес оргкомитета заявку, включающую ФИО, место работы и должность, название доклада с аннотацией объёмом 2000-2500 знаков.

Ключевые даты

1 ноября 2021 года – первое оповещение о конференции;

21 февраля 2022 года – завершение приёма заявок на участие;

29-31 марта 2022 года – проведение конференции;

12 сентября 2022 года – завершение приёма статей;

декабрь 2022 года – публикация сборника конференции и индексация статей в РИНЦ.

Руководитель:

Нестеров А.Ю., доктор философских наук, профессор, председатель Самарского регионального отделения НСМИИ РАН.

Контакты

Заявки, предложения и комментарии следует направлять Нестерову Александру Юрьевичу и Дёминой Анне Ивановне по адресу lemovskiye.org@gmail.com или phil@ssau.ru с пометкой «шестые лемовские чтения» в теме письма, телефон: +7(846)267-47-87.

Конференция пройдет в смешанном формате. Место проведения очной части – большой конференц-зал Медиацентра Самарского университета (корп. 15, ауд. 408). Ссылки для онлайн-участия будут опубликованы дополнительно.

С уважением,

оргкомитет НСМИИ РАН

Katrin Steffen: Blut und Metall: Die transnationalen Wissensräume von Ludwik Hirszfeld und Jan Czochralski im 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2021. ISBN 978-3-8353-5013-7

 

Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts hatte die Erforschung von Stoffen wie Blut und Metallen Hochkonjunktur. Katrin Steffen zeichnet in einer Doppelbiographie, wie der Serologe Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954) und der Metallurge Jan Czochralski (1885-1953) als international anerkannte Spitzenforscher maßgeblich dazu beitrugen und ganz neue Wege der Forschung beschritten.

Die Autorin betrachtet lokale Arbeitsumfelder in verschiedenen Laboren in Deutschland, der Schweiz, Serbien, Polen und den USA in Kombination mit transnationalen epistemischen Gemeinschaften, um aufzuzeigen, wie Wissen generiert wurde. Im Zeitalter der Weltkriege und der zunehmenden »Nützlichkeit« von Wissenschaft für die Nationalstaatsbildung war die Expertise beider Wissenschaftler eine Schlüsselressource für gesellschaftliche Systeme wie Militär, Industrie oder der Biopolitik. Dies erzeugte sowohl in Deutschland als auch in Polen ein komplexes Feld von nationalstaatlicher Loyalität, wissenschaftlicher Unabhängigkeit und epistemischer Ideale. Es führte auch zu Situationen von Anfeindung und Verfolgung, die für Ludwik Hirszfeld aufgrund seiner jüdischen Herkunft während des Zweiten Weltkriegs besonders drastisch war.

Katrin Steffen, geb. 1967, ist seit 2020 DAAD-Professor of European and Jewish History and Culture an der University of Sussex in Brighton. Zuvor hat sie am Deutschen Historischen Institut Warschau, an der Martin Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg und am Nordost-Institut in Lüneburg gearbeitet. 2017 war sie Gastprofessorin an der L`École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Veröffentlichung u. a.: Jüdische Polonität. Ethnizität und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen jüdischen Presse 1918-1939 (2004).