East European Memory Studies
Research Group 2009-10

Conveners

Ziya Meral (PhD Student, Politics and International Studies)
Morag McIvor (PhD Student, Slavonic Studies)
Boran Shin (PhD Student, Slavonic Studies)
Dr Sergei Tyulenev (Slavonic Studies)

Academic Sponsors

Dr Alexander Etkind? (Slavonic Studies)
Rory Finnin (Slavonic Studies)
Dr Harald Wydra (Politics and International Studies)

For more information about the group, please visit their external website: East European Memory Studies blog
(CRASSH is not responsible for the content of external websites)

The Research Group in East European Memory Studies is a transdisciplinary forum concerned with the dynamic interplay between memory, culture, and politics in today’s Eastern Europe. We seek to understand the peculiar regimes of memory and forgetting established by the socialist states of the former Soviet block and the secularist state in Turkey. We also want to situate these intertwined pasts and presents in the new European order.

We aim to employ an array of approaches, partially borrowed and partially invented, in a series of dialogues between scholars and practitioners in history, literature, political science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. We plan to address such questions as:
- How has the state used various practices of memory – recalling not only past glory and achievement but also deportations, political repression, and genocide – to promote independent nationhood?

- How do the memories of Nazi rule and Communist rule shape international relations in Europe?

- How do museums, monuments, literature, film, digital media, and the unsignified ghosts of the past bear witness to the historical trauma?

- What is the contribution of East European memories to identity formation in a united and uniting Europe? Our series of discussions will be organised according to five broad thematic areas:

Memory and Identity (Michaelmas 2009)

Memory and Theory (Lent and Easter 2010)

Memory and Guilt (Michaelmas 2010)

Memory and Resistance (Lent 2011)

Memory and Liberation (Easter 2011)

Administrative contact: Esther Lamb (Grad/Fac Programme and Office Manager)