CENTRAL Workshop: "(Post)colonialism and Race in Central and Eastern Europe"

This internal workshop is a cooperation between the University of Vienna, the University of Warsaw, ELTE Budapest and Charles University Prague.

Venue: Erika-Weinzierl-Saal, Main Buiding, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna

This CENTRAL Workhop will feature a public Transformative Seminar by Prof. José M. Faraldo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) on Russophobia: Between Ideology and Stereotypes, please join us for this event.

Can we speak of colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? And can we use categories of (post-)colonialism to analyze the history and present of the region? The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has brought these questions to the fore with urge. They tie in with a broader debate about the place of the region in global political geography, as a former "Second World" of the Cold War era and economic "semi-periphery" in past and present. Here, the issue of race also acquires great significance: given the region's in-between position, are Central and East Europeans "fully white" in global hierarchies of race? And how do they, in turn, negotiate racial difference within and beyond the region? Bringing together senior and junior scholars working on the global history of CEE and on the history of race in the region, these workshops will discuss these key topics of historical and contemporary analysis.

Workshop Program:

Thursday, 16 October

11:30-13:00
Welcome lunch at the conference venue

13:00-14:30

  • Keynote: José M. Faraldo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): Russophobia: Between Ideology and Stereotypes

  • Chair: Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET)

14:45-16:15

  • Tomasz Zarycki (U Warsaw): Political economy of the post-communist transformation and its implications for symbolic hierarchies in Central and Eastern Europe

  • Anton Saifullayeu (U Warsaw): Decolonization and Its Limits in Eastern Europe

  • Zofia Rohozińska (U Warsaw): Catching Up with the West: Poland Between Empires and the Memory of Socialist Realism in the Transformation of 1989

  • Chair: Mikuláš Pešta (Charles University)

16:30-18:15

  • Kateryna Ruban (RECET): Degeneration of the Nation: Dr. Sofia Parfanovych and Anti-Alcohol Campaigns in Interwar Lviv

  • Zsuzsanna Kiss (ELTE): Everyday "national indifference" in interwar Hungary (case study).

  • Lucija Balikic (ELTE): Conceptualizing biological difference and social hierarchy: Yugoslav and Hungarian intellectuals on the body in the post-imperial situation.

  • Naum Trajanovski (U Warsaw): Anthropogeographic imaginaries: Studying the real ethnic character of interwar South Serbia

  • Chair: Tomasz Zarycki (U Warsaw)

19:00

Dinner at Gasthaus Rebhuhn (Berggasse 24)

 

Friday, 17 October

9:30-11:00

  • Matěj Křepinský (Charles University): Colonial discourse within the Eastern Bloc? Possibilities for a postcolonial analysis of Czechoslovak-Albanian relations during the 1950s

  • Márkus Keller (ELTE): Globalization in everyday life. Hungarian construction workers in Libya.

  • Jiří Janáč (Charles University): Agents in their own service? Czechoslovak international hydro experts in Cold War hierarchies

  • Chair: Zsombor Bódy (ELTE)

11:15-12:45

  • Mikuláš Pešta (Charles University): From a hub of anti-colonialism to a hub of anti-communism. Foreign students in Czechoslovakia in a time of post-socialist transition

  • Jan Dawidowicz (U Warsaw): Whiteness as a strategy of renegotiating peripherality in Poland in the context of migration

  • Daniel Jerke (RECET): “Looking for Race in ‘Raceless’ Societies: Polish Refugees in Austria and Canada in the 1980s”

  • Chair: Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET)

13:15

Lunch at Café Einstein (Rathausplatz 4)

 

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apl. Prof. Dr. Jannis Panagiotidis RECET / Scientific Director
Irena Remestwenski RECET / Managing Director