EAST EUROPEAN MEMORY STUDIES NO. 1! EAST EUROPEAN MEMORYOCTOBER STUDIES NO. 2010 1 EastEuropean Memory Studies - Welcome to the first edition of our e-newsletter CONTENTS Welcome to East European News from ‘Memory at War: 1 Memory Studies, a new initiative NEWS FROM ‘MEMORY designed to foster collaboration in Cultural Dynamics AT WAR’ and advance the boundaries of the in Poland, Russia An overview of new emerging sub-discipline of East and Ukraine’ developments in our project European Memory Studies. This monthly e-newsletter, produced by Memory at War is an 3 transnational, transdisciplinary DIARY OF the collaborative research project FORTHCOMING EVENTS ‘Memory at War’, aims to provide an collaborative project investigating the interdisciplinary and transnational cultural dynamics of the ‘memory 3 wars’ currently raging in Poland, NEW PUBLICATIONS forum for news and events in the field. Russia and Ukraine. Employing a 4 collaborative methodology grounded OP-ED: We are keen to make contact in the analytical and critical practices MAPPING MEMORY of the humanities, the project seeks EVENTS with scholars working in East Alexander Etkind European Memory Studies, and to explore how public memory of welcome contributions to the twentieth-century traumas mediates 6 newsletter. These might take the the variety of wars in which East MAIA TUROVSKAIA IN European nations develop in post- THE UK form of: socialist space. ‘Memory and Post-War Russian !information on research-in- Cinema’ symposium and progress; The University of Cambridge is screenings, 4-5 November 2010 !calls for papers; (Cambridge) !details on conferences and leading this project, in conjunction publications; with the Universities of Bergen, Helsinki, Tartu and Groningen. The 8 !news of funding and job HELSINKI SYMPOSIUM project was launched in 2010 and ON ‘THE SOVIET STORY’ opportunities in the field. will run for three years. It is funded 2-3 November 2010 (Helsinki) by the Humanities in the European Research Area Joint Research 9 TO SUBMIT AN ITEM OR TO DIGEST OF CURRENT Programme. MEMORY EVENTS SIGN UP FOR OUR MAILING LIST: [email protected] !!1 INVESTOREAST EUROPEAN NEWSLETTER MEMORY ISSUE STUDIES N°3! NO. 1! OCTOBERFALL 20092010 Maria Mälksoo (Principal Investigator, Tartu) launches her book, The Politics of Becoming European: A Study of Polish and Baltic Post-Cold War Security Imaginaries (Routledge, 2010) News from !Nancy Condee (Pittsburgh) conference papers and other ‘Memory at War’ on Russian memory, contemporary resources. cinema and internal colonisation; Cambridge !Harley Balzer (Georgetown) Blog The website also includes links to on the evolution of the memory of the project’s blog: http:// Events the failed August 1991 coup in Memory at War was launched in cambridgeculturalmemory.blogspot.c Russia; and June with a workshop at King’s om/ !Dan Healey (Swansea) on College, Cambridge. The workshop The blog serves as an interactive medicine in gulag memory. featured a keynote lecture by site for students and scholars with an Videos of all three can be found Professor Jay Winter (Yale); a series of interest in cultural memory in on our website. presentations by members of the Eastern Europe. To apply to become Memory at War also organises Memory at War project outlining their a contributor, please email: occasional events on a range of work plans; and a special panel, [email protected]. themes. In early November, the ‘Katy!: The Site and Events of Helsinki team will host a symposium Memory’. Presentations from the Teaching on the film The Soviet Story; and workshop can be accessed online at Alexander Etkind a n d Cambridge will be host to a the project website. Harald Wydra (Cambridge) have symposium on Soviet cinema (details Memory at War runs regular term- been successful in obtaining a Mellon on all events below). time seminars: the East European Teaching Fellowship at CRASSH, which will enable them to run a new Memory Studies Research Website seminar, ‘East European Memory Group seminar at CRASSH in The Memory at War website is Studies: An Emerging Sub- Cambridge; and Europe East and n o w u p a n d r u n n i n g : Discipline’ in Lent Term ( 2011). For West: Film, History and www.memoryat.war.org. The website includes more information, visit Mourning. Speakers so far this term information on our research and www.crassh.cam.ac.uk. have included: events; video podcasts, articles, !!2 INVESTOREAST EUROPEAN NEWSLETTER MEMORY ISSUE STUDIES N°3! NO. 1! OCTOBERFALL 20092010 Bergen conference held at the Nuffield College, ! 17 November, 5:00pm: Oxford University, 17-19 June. This Volodymyr Kulyk (Ukrainian The Bergen-based research paper is due to be published in a volume Academy of Sciences), ‘The Role of project ‘Web Wars: Digital Diasporas the Media in (Re)Shaping Historical edited by the conference organisers Tarak and the Language of Memory’ has Memory in Ukraine’ (East European Barkawi (Cambridge) and Keith Stanski launched its own website. Serving as Memory Studies Research Group (Oxford) in the Hurst Publishers & the project’s virtual home, www.web- seminar, CRASSH, Cambridge) Columbia University Press Critical War wars.org will become a place where Studies series. In August, Maria joined in ! research results are shared, project 23 November: Europe East the discussion on the role of history news is announced, and conference and West: Film, History and plans are published. A discussion politics in Estonian-Russian relations with Mourning, Cambridge) (details forum invites readers to share Matti Jutila, a MAW project colleague TBA) thoughts and ideas related to the from Helsinki University visiting Tallinn ! project theme: the ongoing memory with Helsinki Summer School students. 1 December: Georgiy Kasianov (Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), ‘The wars in Russian and Ukrainian social Great Famine of 1932-33 and the media. On 4-5 October, Maria gave a paper Holodomor: Memory, History, Identity ‘Memory as Ontological Security: and State-Building’; and Meike Wulf Tartu Competing Securitisation of the Soviet (Maastricht), ‘Changing Memory Legacy in Eastern Europe’ at the Nordic Regimes in Eastern Europe’ (East In May 2010, Maria Mälksoo, Senior Network of Memory Studies workshop European Memory Studies Researcher at the Institute of on ‘Memory, History, Identity’ at the Research Group seminar, Government and Politics at the University of Stavanger, Norway. The CRASSH, Cambridge) University of Tartu, Estonia, and the paper will be published in a conference principal investigator of the MAW sub- volume by Lund University in 2011 and ... and beyond project ‘The Power Politics of Memory in will serve as the conceptual platform for Eastern Europe: Securitising the Legacy the MAW workshop at Tartu at the end ! 2-3 November, Memory at War of Communism in Poland, Russia, and of the next year. Workshop on the Film The Soviet Story Ukraine’ gave an invited talk on the (Aleksanteri Institute, University of subject at the Estonian President's Helsinki) (see page 8) Academic Advisory Board meeting. This talk was later published in the Estonian DIARY OF EVENTS More details on all these events can be found at: www.memoryatwar.org foreign policy journal Diplomaatia (currently available in Estonian only at In the UK... http://www.diplomaatia.ee/index.php? id=242&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews NEW PUBLICATIONS ! 3 November, 5:00pm: Dirk [tt_news]=1145&tx_ttnews[backPid] Uffelmann (Passau), ‘Divided ! Matilda Mroz, ‘Restless Bodies, Buried =559&cHash=259bb9ca22). Memory: Poland’s Double Coloniality’; Texts: Sikorski, The General, and the and Julie Buckler (Harvard), ‘The archive’, Studies in Eastern European In June, Maria gave an invited lecture on Material of Culture: Russian Imperial Cinema, 1:2 (2010) Artifacts Playing Soviet and Post-Soviet her research topic to the doctoral students ! Harald Wydra, Communism and the Roles’ (East European Memory of the International Research Training Emergence of Democracy (Cambridge Studies Research Group seminar, Group ‘Baltic Borderlands: Shifting University Press, 2007; paperback CRASSH, Cambridge) Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the edition to be released December 2010) Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region’ ! 4-5 November: Memory and ! Alexander Etkind and Mark Lipovetsky, visiting Tartu from the University of Post-War Russian Cinema: Film ‘The Salamander’s Return: The Soviet Greisfwald, Germany. She also gave a Critics on the Front Lines (A Catastrophe and the Post-Soviet Novel, paper, ‘Nesting Orientalisms at War: Symposium in Honour of Maia Russian Studies in Literature 46:4 (Fall Turovskaia) (Cambridge) (see page 6) 2010) World War II and the Memory War in Eastern Europe’ at the Orientalism at War !!3 INVESTOREAST EUROPEAN NEWSLETTER MEMORY ISSUE STUDIES N°3! NO. 1! OCTOBERFALL 20092010 MAPPING MEMORY EVENTS IN THE EAST EUROPEAN SPACE OP-ED Alexander Etkind Presented to the Memory at War inaugural workshop, June 2010, King’s College, Cambridge The image shows a protest banner in Poland: ‘The second month is passing [since the Smolensk catastrophe]; is this Poland, or is it Russia already?’. Image source: www.tokfm.pl This project is a large collective enterprise. While secondary to the historical events that they interpret, all of us have individual agendas that are connected to the usually taking place many years or decades later. theme of the project, we are making a rare attempt to work Sometimes, a memory event attains the significance of an together on what we call the emerging discipline of East historical event, therefore blurring the distinction between European Memory Studies. Right now, such a framework the two. But there are also a number of differences. does not exist. Borrowing from the rich tradition of History events – wars, revolutions, murders, discoveries, European Memory Studies exemplified at this workshop by and so on – happen in the present and look to the future. Jay Winter, we are going to test and adjust its concepts in Memory events happen in the present and look to the past. our field. Their cultural genres are many: funerals, repasts, celebrations, revelations, historical debates, museum One aim of this project is to triangulate national openings, geographical namings or rather, renamings, memories.