|
General
Information
Programme
Accommodation,
Meals and Registration
Travel
Information
Abstracts
AB,
CDEF, GHIJ,
KL, MNO, PQR,
ST, UVWXYZ
Macrea-Toma, Ioana
Maguire,
Muireann
Marozka, Katsiaryna
Marsh, Cynthia
Martinková, Michaela
Mascauteanu, Mariana
Medic, Ivana
Merlin, Aude
Miazhevich, Galina
Miller, William
Minns,
Emma
Mironenko, Sergey
Mitchell, Rebecca
Mladenova, Olga M.
Mole, Richard
Moran, Dominique
Morgunova, Oksana
Murphy, Emilie
Myhr, Annika Bøstein
Naxidou, Eleonora
Nekorjak, Michal
Nemenyi, Maria
Newman, John Paul
Oates-Indruchova, Libora
Orlov, Vladimir
Ovsjannikova, Maria
|
Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge, UK
27
– 29 March 2010
Abstracts
M-O
Macrea-Toma,
Ioana
Challenging Pierre Bordieu’s Theory: The Cultural Field in
a Communist Country
Pierre Bourdieu has been often criticized for not comprising the cultural
fields subjected to totalitarian power in his analyses. By operating a
database of more than 1000 cases, the discussion on the general relevance
of sociological field theory is now possible. The intricate relations
existing between intellectual status, professional position and socio-economical
situation will reveal not just a particular functioning of culture under
communism, but will reframe the understanding of the concept of “autonomy”.
By resorting to methods pertaining to literary sociology and social history,
this research traces back the institutional landscape of literature in
order to reveal the force as well as the limits of a mobilizing project
and to estimate the cultural subjects’ range of freedom of action. The
socio-comprehensive approach is thus destined to explain the paradox of
subordinating the arts while allowing them certain independence and to
identify the strategies of intellectual professionalization which, without
leading directly to politicization, are nevertheless influenced by state
centralization.
Maguire,
Muireann
‘Chelovek, kotoryi ne spit’: The Inventions of Professor Wagner
Professor Wagner, ‘the man who never sleeps’, remains one of the most
famous creations of Aleksandr Beliaev (1884-1942), the Soviet science
fiction writer, editor and journalist. Over the decade following his first
appearance in 1926 in the pages of Vsemirnyi sledopyt, Wagner personified
both the hubris of Soviet scientific ambition and the growing irony of
socialist utopia lost. An eccentric professor of biology who famously
trains both lobes of his brain to work independently, Wagner began his
public career with a trial for dog-napping, before being himself kidnapped
by evil German industrialists. His greatest moment is his transformation
into a ‘Chelovek-prizrak’ – a man who can literally walk through walls
– thanks to an ingenious breakthrough in molecular physics. Most striking
of all are his inventions – from perpetual motion machines to artificial
worlds and flying carpets. Beliaev uses his character’s achievements as
an index of Soviet scientific and ethical preoccupations, including rejuvenation,
cryogenics, the artificial prolongation of life, the resurrection of the
dead and the transplantation of organs between species. Beliaev skillfully
blends ideas and tropes borrowed from the philosopher Nikolai Fedorov,
from contemporary scientists such as Sergei Voronov and even from the
writers Mikhail Bulgakov and Aleksandr Pushkin to create a character who
Russianizes the cliché of the mad inventor while gently satirizing
the pretensions of Stalinist science. This paper analyses Wagner’s fictional
inventions in the context of both science and literature in prewar Soviet
Russia.
Marozka,
Katsiaryna
Minsk Theological Seminary: Features of Functionality (Second
Half of the 19th Century)
In the second half of the 19th century, there were several theological
educational institutes treated as part of educational department of Minsk
diocese. These are a seminary in Minsk, three county religious schools
(Minsk, Pinsk and Slutsk) and two female theological schools in Minsk
and Parichi, Babruisk county (later moved to Pinsk). Of these higher education
institutions only Minsk seminary prepared pastors for the Orthodox church.
The clergy continued to fulfil a sacred function as bearer of spiritual
culture, helping to sustain the social, cultural and educational needs
of the society. Its function was to develop the mental and spiritual needs
of parishioners, to promote servile attitude among peasants. This became
particularly topical because of growing of anti-government movements.
Career of clergyman depended on the level of education, social origin,
to a lesser extent on age. Functionality of Minsk seminary, as the only
higher religious educational institute, quality of educational processes,
economic component of its existence largely depended on the success of
its graduates. Thus, the purposes of this paper is to analyse the quantitative
data and origins of the seminary students, have a deep look at the curriculum,
financial sources and living conditions of the seminary, its general economic
condition. The analysis of Minsk Theological Seminary in the second half
of the 19th century discovered a number of problems relating to educational
and economic spheres of its activity. Insufficient funding, support of
the Sunday school, rising prices and general poverty of students forced
the seminary superiors to cover the annual debt from the funds for students
that affected their education and life. Lack of sufficient number of student
accommodation and paid medical treatment in the seminary hospital, made
education for children of priests even more difficult. Even the poorest
of them had to pay half of tuition fees. Ease of entry examinations, because
of the reform of secondary religious institutions of Minsk diocese,led
to insufficient knowledge of certain disciplines. Methodology of teaching,
lack of requirements for verification of acquired knowledge affected the
performance. Inconsistency of the seminary curriculum, insufficient number
of professors, affected the process of teaching of students and reduced
the level of knowledge in the seminary. However, despite the fact that
after graduation only 1/3 of its student could be employed by Minsk diocese,
few of them left the clergy. The reasons were: 1) personal calling; 2)
high social status of the cleric; 3) legal restrictions; 4) personal liability
to the seminary.
Marsh,
Cynthia, Turbine, Vikki, Chmielewska, Ella, Kosmala, Katarzyna, Kay, Rebecca,
Stella, Francesca and Swain, Geoff
'Ideas that Never Meet': Navigating Inter Disciplinary Knowledge
and Practice within Slavonic and East European Studies
Area studies have traditionally embodied a range of disciplinary and methodological
practices in order to explore the multiplicities of social, cultural and
historical phenomena characterising Slavonic and East European societies.
As such, they provide a potentially stimulating intellectual context within
which to consider the ways in which different knowledges and understandings
might be exchanged, combined and transformed in order to generate innovative
approaches to understanding the region more deeply. In recognition of
this, the roundtable aims to further debate around two main themes:
(i) east/west ‘knowledge
exchange’ with a specific focus on the interpretation/use/reworking
of particular western concepts in the ‘eastern’ context as well as reflections
on comparable east-west movements and the ways/means of facilitating/assessing
such exchanges.
(ii) the nature and character of knowledge exchange and dissemination
in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences with a view to facilitating
innovation in these areas.
Martinková,
Michaela
Genitive Forms After Indefinite Quantifiers in Czech: Singular,
or Plural?
Distribution of Czech equivalents of much and many (moc, hodne, mnoho)
is not dependent on ‘countability’ of the noun that follows but rather
on stylistic factors; they all combine with nouns in both the genitive
singular and the genitive plural. When it comes to the choice between
a singular and plural genitive form of a particular noun, however, the
‘countability’ of the noun matters: “words denoting quantity are used
with the genitive singular of mass nouns and the genitive plural of count
nouns” (Kresin 2000: 245). I will first present concrete statistics of
genitive singular and plural forms of nouns after Czech indefinite quantifiers
in the SYN2005 component of the Czech National Corpus (CNC). I will then
focus on cross-linguistic differences in conceptualization between English
and Czech as far as the count/mass distinction is concerned: on noun phrases
with indefinite quantifiers where either the Czech noun differs from the
English noun in number, or both number forms are possible, but the meanings
of the English and Czech nouns do not match. Though countability is not
a grammatical category in Czech but only a semantic category (it is not
systematically marked in Czech dictionaries; Czech, like other Slavic
languages, has no grammatical category of definiteness), its reflection
in the category of number, especially due to cross-linguistic differences,
is a source of problems for English speakers learning Czech, as proved
by an analysis of errors made by five advanced English students of Czech
(test based on sentences from CNC).
Danii, Olga
and Mascauteanu, Mariana
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership
(EaP) and Moldova: ‘falling between two stools’?
Based on a nation-wide survey, focus-groups, elite interviews and school
essays conducted in Moldova during 2008-9, the paper investigates the
progress and difficulties in the development of the Moldova-EU relations,
through the ENP and EaP perspectives. The paper will proceed in four sections.
Section one provides a brief historical overview of the Moldova-EU relations,
also accounting for the recent turmoil related to the aftermath of the
parliamentary/presidential elections. Section two discusses particular
progress made by Moldova in the process of building relations with Europe
(following the ‘boundary-politics’ framework set in the first paper).
Third section examines existing difficulties and obstacles in facilitating
this cooperation, from the Moldovan perspective. In particular, the section
examines the role of geopolitics (the Russian factor, especially in handling
the ransdniestrian conflict) and culture (public and elite perceptions;
awareness; attitudes/values and expectations) in the Moldova-EU relations.
The paper concludes by discussing the future prospects for the development
of the Moldova-EU relations, and objectives that Moldova sees as essential
for making the ENP/EaP effective and appealing for the participating sides.
Medic,
Ivana
Vasilije Mokranjac's Piano Works in the Context of Serbian
Moderated Modernism
Vasilije Mokranjac (1923-1984) belongs to the generation of Serbian composers
who began their careers immediately after the Second World War, and thus
were inevitably affected by the socialist realism imposed upon the entire
musical community. Mokranjac produced the most remarkable piano works
in the Serbian post-WW2 music. At the same time, his stylistic trajectory
is paradigmatic of all the composers who had the misfortune to start off
at this creatively unstimulative moment, and then spent the rest of their
careers struggling to "modernise" their, initially inevitably
conservative, idiom. My aim is to observe Mokranjac's piano works in the
context of Serbian moderated modernism (which, since the early 1950s,
gradually replaced socialist realism), and to evaluate these works from
today's point of view, bearing in mind all the conflicting tendencies
and ideals which shaped up Serbian moderated modernism.
Merlin,
Aude
Violence in Ingushetia and Dagestan: Chechen Conflict Spill
Over or Isolated Endogeneous Conflicts?
This paper aims to analyse if spreading violence in Ingushetia and Dagestan
is either linked with a spill over of the Chechen conflict or triggered
by internal tensions within those Republics. Actually, no week goes by
without violence erupting in those Republics. Armed attacks against policemen
and representatives of power, repressions from the authorities follow
one other in a vicious circle. We propose to scrutinize this topic through
a double point of view. On the one hand, violence increasing through the
whole Eastern North Caucasus may be a sign of spill over of very internal
violence inside Chechnya. In this respect, one has to remember the very
tight links built between Basaev and North Caucasian fighters during the
1992-1993 Abkhaz War. Then, as the first Chechen war broke out in 1994,
and as the second war begun in 1999, some of those fighters came to Chechnya
in order to support the fight against Russia. And in the last five years,
the Jamaat phenomenon has been developing very quickly and Jamaat's leaders
have obviously tight links with Chechen leaders of the Islamic «
resistance ». Evloev (“Magas” in Ingushetia) or R. Khalilov in Dagestan
are typical of this evolution. On the other hand, the context in Ingushetia
as well as Dagestan breeds domestic contestation. The increasing hardening
of local powers in the context of counter-terrorist operations triggers
a vicious circle with people being abducted and police forces exerting
repression against any form of protestation. In this context, where the
political arena is very limited, political opposition has no way to express
itself and goes underground. We will try to analyse those tendencies in
the light of an analysis of conflict transformation. What is at stake
here? How can one characterize today's situation in East-Northern Caucasus?
As a counter terrorist regime is from time to time reinstated in those
Republics, the authorities’ strategic choices are likely to avoid negotiations
with someone in the underground resistance. Beyond this, it raises the
question of the core issue at stake in this conflict. We will enumerate
types of conflicts occurring in Northern Caucasus, basing our analysis
on two oppositions: illegal fighters v. legal official forces ; religious
fight v. secularism.
Miazhevich,
Galina
The Deployment of Sexual Excess in Eurovision as a Tool for
Nation Branding in Post-communist Europe
This paper investigates how recent transformations of sexuality displayed
at Eurovision and societal attitudes towards it in two ex-Soviet countries
shape the reconstruction of the boundaries of taste in the post-communist
nations, and how this in turn enables them to reconfigure their own position
within the New Europe. I argue that post-Soviet attempts to engage with
the culture of sexual and aesthetic excess characteristic of Eurovision
are twofold. On the one hand, they involve intracultural dialogue. Here
I draw attention to how the performers mediate between state delineations
of the limits of the sexually permissible (cf. recent examples of homophobia
in fSU, such as the prohibition of the Gay Pride parade in Russia) and
popular, grassroots currents within which sexual ‘deviance’ and excess
is openly explored . Thus, the Eurovision performances constitute a bridge
between rigid, official conceptions of the national self and alternative
non-mainstream identities. In this context, the long-standing role of
pop culture and its relationship with ‘high art’ in the building of (post)Soviet
national consciousness must be accounted for. On the other hand, I analyse
the intercultural and transnational aspects of Eurovision. Here post-communist
performances of excessive and aberrant sexuality can be read in terms
of an implicit dialogue with West European constructions of 'bad taste'
and the emergent notion of Euro-trash. Thus, post-communist Eurovision
performances are treated as a ‘double voiced’ act which self-consciously
parody western imaginings of an exotic, yet sexually promiscuous East
(hence the frequent inclusion of ethnic ‘pastiche’ alongside sexual excess).
Miller,
William
A Convergent Popular European Legal Culture?
By ‘popular legal culture’ we mean public perceptions of, and attitudes
towards, law and law-enforcement. In recent years there has been pressure
towards a convergent European legal culture both across the EU and in
the wider Europe. Some welcome that convergence, others resent it. Using
data from our 84 focus groups, 5,000 extensive interviews with the general
public, and 1,000 with Muslim minorities this paper looks in detail at
popular legal culture in England, Norway, Poland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine
– at the current extent of convergence, and at popular reactions towards
perceived pressures towards greater convergence.
(This paper
is part of the research project ‘Legal Cultures in Transition’ which is
funded by the Norwegian Research Council under Award No.182628. The project
period is 2007-11.)
Minns,
Emma
Russia
sees herself: the role of the portrait in the ‘Peredvizhniki’exhibitions
The
first Peredvizhniki exhibition
(1871-72) visited the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and Khar'kov.
Subsequent exhibitions also took in Riga, Orel, Vilnius, Odessa and Kishinev.
Indeed, the Peredvizhniki exhibitions would spend more time
in total in Russia's provincial cities than in Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Portrait painting had a strong presence in these annual exhibitions;
in the second Peredvizhniki exhibition
portraits accounted for 25 percent of the total number of works on display
and of these, many were portraits of Russia's literary elite, commissioned
by the merchant and patron Pavel Tret'iakov. However, before these paintings
found a permanent home in Tret'iakov's Moscow gallery, they toured the
provinces, giving audiences throughout the Russian Empire perhaps their
only opportunity to see life-size colour representations of their literary
heroes. This paper examines the portraiture displayed in the Peredvizhniki exhibitions
of the 1870s and 1880s, and in particular those portraits of Russian
literary and cultural figures. It questions what contribution these portraits
might have made to the formation of a Russian national consciousness
at this time. Using reviews from regional newspapers as well as from
the Moscow and St. Petersburg press, this paper explores reactions to
the portraits and whether their inclusion further established those portrayed
as sources of collective pride and as alternative representatives of
Russia.
Mironenko,
Sergey
Stalin and the Beginning of World War II
The lecture is devoted to the analysis of the results of
the latest historical research into the pre-history and opening stages
of the Second World War, the USSR’s policies, and Stalin’s role in the
evolution of the international crisis of 1939-1941. It provides answers
to the questions: Why did Stalin agree to form an alliance with Hitler?
To whom was the alliance more beneficial – Germany or the USSR? Why did
Stalin, to the very end, refuse to believe in the possibility of a German
attack on the Soviet Union?
Mitchell,
Rebecca
'Germanness' and Music in Late Imperial Russia: The Case of
Nikolai Medtner
In early twentieth-century Russia, connections between cultural identity
and music were hotly contested. Musicians and critics sought to define
the unique attributes of "Russian" music in contrast to music
of other nations, most notably Germany (the country whose musical culture
had one of the deepest impacts on Russia). Musical "Germanness"
thus emerged as a conceptual category with specific philosophical, cultural,
historical and social assumptions. Commonly acknowledged as one of the
foremost Russian musical Germanophiles, Nikolai Medtner was believed by
many of his contemporaries to symbolize "true" and "universal"
Germanic values, both in his life and his music. This contrasted with
contemporary German composers, who were believed to embody the decline
of modern culture through their abandonment of universal laws governing
music in favour of individual expression. This paper examines Nikolai
Medtner’s personal writings, selected musical compositions and contemporary
responses in order to uncover conflicting Russian interpretations of musical
"Germanness" and its historical significance. The concept itself
was fluid, and shifted with historic developments, most notably the outbreak
of the First World War. Through closer analysis of changing Russian ideas
of "Germanness", we can gain a better understanding both of
how contemporary Russians imagined their own place and significance in
human history, and of the central place that music was believed to hold
in human existence.
Mladenova,
Olga M.
Textual Evidence on the Substitution of Non-finite Verb Forms
in Bulgarian
One of the important markers of subordination in the Slavic languages
is ±finiteness. This is true of most contemporary Slavic languages
and even more so of Old Church Slavonic which besides an infinitive also
featured a supine and various participial constructions. The well-known
exceptions are the Balkan Slavic languages. One of the manifestations
of the pervasive trend towards analytism which came to oust synthetic
structures in these languages is the loss of the infinitive and its replacement
with a da-construction. There is however no reason to privilege the infinitive
on the synthetic side of the divide and the da-construction on its analytic
side. The comprehensive text-based study of the variety of early modern
Bulgarian replacements of finite & non-finite verbs demonstrates that
speakers had at their disposal analytic options ranging from coordination
by means of the most frequent connector i ‘and’ to the connector ta with
intermediary properties between coordination and subordination and the
subordinative connector da. Comparison with the non-Slavic Balkan languages
brings to the fore a similar picture. The paper argues that i in this
slot is a bookish feature that did not reflect actual linguistic use.
For Bulgarian ta one can reconstruct a path from a focus particle first
to a coordinative and later to a subordinative connector. This amounts
to a radical change of distribution from exocentric to endocentric constructions.
The paper discusses the evidence for and against the hypothesis that subordinative
da took a similar path but at an earlier age.
Mole,
Richard
Homophobic Discourse and the ‘National Threat’ in Post-communist
Latvia
The aim of this paper is to understand why attitudes towards gays and
lesbians in Latvia – one of the more secular post-communist states – are,
according to Eurobarometer, worse than in all other EU member states.
While I analyse the impact of the legacy of communism, the reaction against
communism and the role of the Church, I argue that it is the perceived
threat to Latvian national identity that best explains negative attitudes
to gays and lesbians. Drawing on Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory,
I will analyse political discourse of ‘homosexuality’ to show that politicians
seek to naturalise same-sex desire not just as being beyond the boundaries
of Latvian identity but that it negates it. I will conclude by showing
that, when seeking to legitimise their intolerance of gays and lesbians,
Latvian politicians either misunderstand the concepts of democracy and
universal human rights or wilfully distort them, a development that has
serious ramifications for other areas of social and political life.
Pallot, Judith,
Moran, Dominique
and Gavrilova, Sonya
Mapping the Gulag: Geographies of Imprisonment in Russia
This paper introduces a new website which represents the first attempt
to map, systematically, the changing geography of Russia's penal institutions
over an eighty-year period from the 1930s to the present day. By mapping
the Gulag through time we can correct the impression that there was a
complete and continuous coverage of the USSR with labour camps in the
Stalin era. In reality, the geography of the Gulag was complex and penal
institutions were not fixed in time and space; as new camps were formed,
others were closed, and certain regions experienced intense development
at certain times and others not, depending upon the economic and political
priorities of the day. The maps included on this site try to capture this
changing geography, showing the geographical spread of penal institutions
in the USSR at critical periods in its history - the eve of the Great
Terror, the War years, on the eve of Stalin's death and of the Secret
Speech, what was left after the major wave of prisoners' releases, and
the contemporary geography of imprisonment in Russia. The paper will introduce
the website via a live weblink.
Morgunova, Oksana
Digitising Migrants’ Memories: to Save or not to Save?
Expanding on the importance of Internet sources and web-communications
in contemporary Russian-speaking diaspora, the paper examines specific
ways migrants use this medium to keep in touch with each other; search,
create and refer to information on-line; and engage with local as well
as transnational bodies. The focus of this paper is on problems related
to the collection, testing and analysing of electronic data for research
and preservation purposes.
Murphy,
Emilie
She Spoke Russian Badly...Or Did She? French Language and Culture in Russian
Women's Diaries, 1800-1825
This paper investigates three francophone Russian women life-writers’
depiction of their mastery of French and Russian and their literary, spoken
and cultural bilingualism and emphasises the curiously unproblematic representation
of the coexistence of French and Russian culture in their lives. The reign
of Alexander I not only saw the influence of French language and culture
reach its height in Russia but witnessed the practice of keeping a diary
flourish amongst Russian women and play an important role in contemporary
female scriptural activity. This paper brings into question the stereotypical
image of Russian noblewomen at the turn of the nineteenth century who
neglected their native culture and who could not manipulate their native
tongue. Evidence in the texts under consideration suggests that the Russian
language and culture had an important but defined place in the lives of
Russian noblewomen. The life-writers represent themselves as shifting
their cultural identities and using different languages according to the
social or cultural situation in which they find themselves. There is a
clear divide between the French and Russian linguistic and cultural spheres
of influence. Although French is represented as the life-writers’ dominant
tongue overall, the French language and culture are shown to be connected
to social life and the arts, external manifestations of culture, while
Russian linguistic and cultural influence is based on religious, practical
and everyday foundations. Different social contexts are depicted as imposing
different cultural discourses. The life-writers portray themselves as
neither exclusively French or Russian by culture, but bicultural.
Myhr,
Annika Bøstein
Language Strategies and Literary Heritage in Denis Gutsko’s
novel “Russkogovoriashchii”, Andreï Makine’s “Le testament français”
and Mikhail Shishkin’s “Russkaia Shveitsariia. Literaturno-istoricheskii
putevoditel”
Literary heritage is clearly influencing the ways the question of (national)
identity is being negotiated in post-Soviet Russian migrant fiction, and
my paper will be a discussion of how and why this is so. Russkogovoriashchii
by Denis Gutsko describes how censored and classical Russian literature
influence a young man struggling to handle the transition from being a
Russian in Soviet Georgia to being a Georgian Russian in post-Soviet Russia.
In Le testament français by Andreï Makine, French cultural
heritage influences the mind of a young boy growing up in the Soviet Union
with the stories of his French grandmother as a bridge to a Russian past
where French language and culture was highly influential. And, finally,
in Russkaia Shveitsariia. Literaturno-istoricheskii putevoditel' by Mikhail
Shishkin, Switzerland is seen through the eyes of Russian authors who
have written about their journeys to the country. In each of the three
novels, the idea of the migrant’s imaginary homeland, (to which (s)he
cannot return, because it no longer exists outside of the migrant’s mind
and memory), is clearly a literary construction, more than a place. I
will apply theory on cultural memory and postcolonial theory in a discussion
of how and why narratives from the pre-revolutionary Russian literary
past resonate in contemporary migrant literature’s negotiation of the
question of ((trans-)national) identity. A comparison of the three novels
and the linguistic strategies of their authors will also allow for an
interesting discussion of language choice in the works of migrant authors.
Naxidou,
Eleonora
Different Aapproaches of the “National Ppast” in the Balkans:
The Case of Grigor Parlichev and Margaritis Dimitsas (19th Century)
Before the emergence of nationalism in modern times the Balkan Orthodox
people lived together under the Ottoman political rule. Their centuries-long
coexistence led to the formation of a cultural background with many common
features. The most important connecting link was their Christian faith.
However, as national ideology gradually prevailed, each ethnic community
started looking for and highlighting those elements strengthening its
internal cohesion and at the same time differentiating it from the other
ones. Among them, the most important were common origin with the implication
of the existence of relative bonds, common language and tradition and
local culture. Yet, this «procedure of separation» was not
always an easy task: to whose historical past belonged the institutions
or the experiences they shared in common for so many years? The difficulty
was greater in areas inhabited by «mixed» populations, that
is by groups speaking different languages and having different ethnic
descent, such as in Macedonia. The purpose of this paper is to negotiate
how one such common institution, the Archbishopric of Ohrid, was included
in different ethnic traditions, the Bulgarian and the Greek by Grigor
Parlichev and Margaritis Dimitsas respectively, two intellectuals who
promoted different national ideals. In this way, they both condemned
the abolition of this Balkan Church in 1767 by the Patriarchate of Constantinople
and supported its re-establishment for exactly the opposite reasons:
the former because he considered it an ecclesiastical organisation safeguarding
the Bulgarian national identity and the latter because it regarded it
as the stronghold of Hellenism.
Kostlan, David
and Nekorjak, Michal
Roma Pupils in Czech and Slovak Schools: A Comparative Analysis
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia Roma are the largest ethnic group that
faces multiplied deprivation and long-term social exclusion. Exclusionary
mechanisms have also been observed within the framework of school systems
of both the countries. In general, Roma do not only face the discrimination
on labour market, but as a rule they leave school system very early and
their low level of education does not allow them to take other than marginal
and fragile jobs. In spite of their recent reforms the school systems
of both the countries apparently do not stimulate Roma to higher education
and do not promote their education aspirations on more massive scale.
In both countries, geographical exclusion has been increasingly overlapping
with social and economic exclusion. As parents are free to choose schools
for their children in both the countries, so called white flight from
the poorer school districts with higher proportion of Roma population
has been massive. Poorer communities, Roma including are concentrated
in schools that are ignored by majority population. As a result, children
from majority and minority groups have been growing up in mutual isolation.
Separation of Roma in school systems of these countries also has institutional,
social and cultural causes. Some of them are shared by both the countries,
however, in spite of long common history of Czechoslovakia (1918 – 1992)
there have been also differences in the character of Roma communities
in both countries, For that reason, despite certain similarities the situation
in both countries varies. In our paper, we will introduce the survey phase
of the international project EDUMIGROM (http://www.edumigrom.eu/) that
enables mutual comparison of collected data. We will show in which areas
the situation of Roma pupils in Czech Republic and Slovakia resembles
and varies. Preliminary, we will briefly introduce the school systems
of both countries and the specifics of local communities, in which our
data has been collected. Then we will compare social background of our
respondents, their school results, attitudes towards school, relations
to their teachers, difficulties and conflicts they have been facing, individual
aspirations and future plans. This comparison will also comprise majority
pupils of both the countries. The focus of the comparison is to show which
structural conditions worsen the situation of Roma pupils or, on the contrary,
can help overcome their social handicaps.
Nemenyi,
Maria
Being Othered: the Construction of Minority Ethnic Identity
Among Roma Adolescents in Hungary
Based on results of the Hungarian EDUMIGROM survey the proposed paper
will discuss self perception and identity formation of students’ and of
Roma students’ in particular. Roma students constitute 20% of our 611
sample of students in their last year of primary school in two towns and
neighboring villages. The paper will examine what does ethnicity, ethnic
background mean to Roma children studying in an ethnically integrated
school environment. The following issues will be discussed in particular:
how do both positive and negative experiences with teachers and peers
influence Roma students’ position at school; how does (if does) the school
environment contribute to the feeling of being „othered”; how open or
hidden discrimination and segregation of minority ethnic students in schools
shapes students’ self-perception and whether these phenomena drive Roma
children to hide or contrarily to strengthen their ethnic identity.
Newman,
John Paul
‘For the Honour of the Fatherland’ the role of Serbian Veterans in the
Interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia
My paper will focus on veterans of the Serbian army who served in the
Balkan wars and/or the first world war and the role they played in the
interwar kingdom of Yugoslavia. The central thesis of this paper is that
the sacrifice of Serbian soldiers during the war years created a structure
of attitude and reference through which much of the social, cultural,
and political history of the interwar kingdom can be understood. The paper
will propose a reading of history which restores Serbian soldiers’ ‘voices’
to discourses in the interwar kingdom by focussing on veterans’ associations
such as the Union of Volunteers, National Defence, and the Organisation
of Chetniks of the Fatherland, as well as considering the careers of influential
individuals such as Stepe Stepanovic, Stanislav Vinaver, Dragiša Vašic,
Kosta Pecanac, Ilija Trifunovic, Dimitrije Ljotic, and Puniša Racic. Original
research on these associations and individuals will be used to gauge the
extent to which narratives of Serbian wartime sacrifice and triumph influenced
political debates surrounding the passing of the Vidovdan Constitution,
the promulgation of King Aleksandar’s dictatorship, the Cvetkovic-Macek
‘Sporazum’ and the subsequent ‘Serbs Rally Together!’ movement, and the
entry of Yugoslavia into the Second World War. As well as trying to ‘read’
the war into political discourses, the paper will also analyse a number
of important texts from the interwar period, including literary and historical
accounts written by Serbian veterans, the landmark film ‘For the Honour
of the Fatherland’ directed by ex-soldier and radical right-wing journalist
Stanislav Krakov, and Rebecca West’s epic travelogue ‘Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon’.
Oates-Indruchova,
Libora
Subversive Gender Discourses in Czech Culture of the Perestroika Period
The state-socialist rhetoric of the emancipation of the sexes produced
unexpected side effects in the form gender discourses subversive of the
state-socialist ideology on the one hand, and of the emancipatory rhetoric
on the other. Textual analysis of popular "cult" novels of the
time showed how traditional images of femininity and masculinity were
employed to confront the normativity of the "socialist lifestyle"
and of the "harmful" effects of emancipation. Those same texts,
however, contained also proto-feminist elements subverting the traditional
imagery. The result is a discordant discourse, foreshadowing the contentious
discussions concerning gender issues that developed after the fall of
state socialism in academia, media and even legislation.
Orlov,
Vladimir
Soviet Cantatas and Oratorios by Sergei Prokofiev
Monumental genres ‘with words,’ like opera, oratorio, and cantata had
a top position in the hierarchy of the Soviet music; it might be viewed
as the most eloquent mouthpiece of the cultural policy of the state. “They
should propagandize the valuable ideas and heroic images, […] i.e. to
perform the certain role in music which Lenin determined for the ‘monumental
propaganda’ by means of sculpture and poetry,” as it was postulated by
an ideologist. Considering cantatas and oratorios as a certain ‘litmus
test’ of the Soviet contemporary policy, cantatas by Prokofiev outlined
the main history of the ideology during the epoch of significant achievements
of the state (including the 1930s, Great Patriotic War, and the start
of the Cold war). During nearly two decades of his Soviet career, Prokofiev
created six Socialist realist cantatas and oratorios, all of which had
a very different perception by the audiences and officialdom. The political
myths embodied in the cantatas, include the Myth about Revolution (Cantata
for the 20th Anniversary of October Revolution, 1937), Prokofiev’s collaborative
project with Sergei Eisenstein (Alexander Nevsky, 1939, in which the historical
hero is presented), Myth about the Father of Nations (Zdravitsa, 1939),
Myth about the Soviet Heroes (Ballad of an Unknown Boy, 1943), Moscow-myth
(Flourish, Mighty Country, 1947), Stalin’s ‘war for peace’ (On Guard for
Peace, 1950). The paper will observe social-political content implemented
in these cantatas, changes in the political outlook, Prokofiev’s artistic
evolution, official responses, the posterior history of these compositions.
Ovsjannikova,
Maria
Prepositional Government and Semantic Development of Russian
Primary Prepositions
Some strongly grammaticalized primary prepositions of Russian tend to
be widely employed in various verb patterns (e.g. nadejat’sja na ‘hope
for’), where they “lose their independence from the verb and are somehow
subsumed under its meaning” [Lehmann 1988: 89]. The fixation of prepositional
government is usually regarded as lexicalization. However, the question
arises whether any paths of such fixation could be generalized and if
that process is connected with the semantic development of the preposition.
My diachronic corpus-based study shows that for Russian primary prepositions
there are two ways of such fixation: 1) the combination of a verb with
a preposition is lexicalized as a whole both the verb and the preposition
acquiring a new more abstract meaning, e.g. the verb vxodit’ ‘enter’ can
be used with various local adjuncts governed by semantically motivated
spatial prepositions; however, in the combination vxodit’ v in the sense
‘be.included.in’ only the preposition v can be used; 2) on the earlier
stages of language development the preposition had acquired a meaning
which was lost later remaining only in certain verb patterns where the
verb-preposition combination was fixed semantically and syntactically,
e.g. gotovyj na ‘ready for’ (the preposition na ‘on’ formerly had a meaning
of purpose). Although the two ways are diachronically diverse, their results
are indistinguishable synchronically: the head verb determines the (semantically
abstract) interpretation of the preposition. The process of the fixation
of prepositional government is to a great extent connected with semantic
development (loss and acquisition of new meanings) of prepositions.
Back
to Top of Page |
