HOW TO PUBLISH A MONOGRAPH

Thursday, 12 October, 4pm GMT on Zoom

Join acquisition editors for the history and politics lists at Central European University Press to get top tips for publishing your academic monograph. This session will cover topics including:

• What to consider when looking at potential publishers for your book

• How to complete a publisher's proposal form - top tips/ what to do/ what not to do

• How academic publishing works - step-by-step guide through proposal and peer review to publication

• New developments in open access publishing

Given by two highly-experienced acquisition editors with past roles at Manchester University Press, Wiley, DeGruyter, Emerald, Peter Lang and Palgrave Macmillan, Jen McCall and Tony Mason will give you a practical guide to the business of publishing your book, a helpful outline of what to expect from the process, and plenty of hints and tips on how to get the best outcome possible for your project.

This session will also introduce you to exciting new developments for scholars of Central and Eastern Europe at the CEU Press, including the Opening the Future open access book initiative launched in 2021. Founded in 1993, the CEU Press publishes books by authors from around the world in a wide range of subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences, including political philosophy and practices of open society, history, Jewish studies, economics, medieval studies, literature, legal studies, nationalism, human rights, political science, international relations, higher education policy, gender studies, media studies, and art history.

 ZOOM Registration

Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: Historical and Educational Work in the Conditions of War

Speaker: Dr Tetyana Zabolotna, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

The presentation is devoted to changes in the work of Ukrainian historians in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The author characterizes the main areas of activity with a focus on the promotion of historical knowledge for the general public. The main projects of the Institute, the work on which has already been completed, are noted. The projects on which work is still in progress are also indicated. 

Speaker

Dr Tetiana Zabolotna is a researcher in history at the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv). Her dissertation “Everyday life of Kyiv during the Nazi occupation (1943-1944)”. Participant of the research project "Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-1933 in the collective and individual memory of Ukrainians and in the information space of the Second World War" in the framework of a grant competition Holodomor Research and Education Consortium Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2017-2020рр). Scientific interests include the history of Ukraine during World War II, social history, the history of everyday life, and Nazi occupation.

Registration

Retranslation of Heroic Discourse in Ukrainian Children’s Picturebooks about War

Speaker: Dr Nadiia Akulova, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

The children’s picturebook is a socially determined part of visual culture. Being a product of a specific historical time and cultural space, it cannot avoid such influences. Everyday visual practices and social myths are a potential source of verbal and visual senses in the children's picturebook. Thus, its iconotext can indicate the cultural meanings. By focusing on the children's picturebook as a socio-culturally constructed visual text, this presentation explores the features of retranslation of heroic discourse in Ukrainian children's picturebooks about war, which were created in 2022. The major research question is what messages – social myths and values of culture, as well as concepts of identity – do they transmit? It also focuses on how the process of the meaning construction takes place, and the ways the intracultural transfer of ideas is regulated, considering the young reader’s perspective.

Speaker

Nadiia Akulova is Associate Professor at the Department of Ukrainian and Foreign Literature at Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University. She defended her PhD at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in 2010. Her research examined the particularities of the semantics and poetics of Mykhailo Ivchenko’s prose works through the aesthetic paradigm of Impressionism. Her current project focuses on wartime visual practices and how they are reflected in contemporary Ukrainian fiction. Her research has been supported by the Fellowship within the Slavonic and East European Studies category via the Royal Historical Society (RHS), British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES), Ecclesiastical History Society (EHS) and German History Society (GHS) Scholars at Risk Programme. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the School of Modern Languages and CRSCEES at the University of St Andrews.

Registration

The recipient of the Polish Studies Article Prize, Dr Mackenzie Pierce from the University of Michigan, will deliver a masterclass. His talk, entitled ‘Hearing Poland Abroad: Chopin, Music Diplomacy, and Cold War Internationalism’ will take place during the annual PSG Norther Workshop on Thursday, 25 May, 15.30-16.30 GMT. The event will be transmitted online as part of the BASEES Talks 2023 cycle.

More details to follow.

Registration

The Phenomenon of the Multiple Loyalties in Eastern Galicia in the 19th Century

Speaker: Dr Natalia Gromakova, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

The spread of new ideas and the formation of new values and worldview orientations became an important factor in modern transformations in Eastern Europe, which were constructed by new identities and models of social behaviour. The secularization of public life required new forms of self-identification, in which the individual choice of a person played an increasingly important role. Those choices were influenced by various factors, including the immediate environment and family environment, level of education, social status and professional activity, etc. At the same time, specific group norms and spatial localization played an important role, which made it possible to build horizontal communication networks. The horizontal connections become dominant in the conditions of the formation of new identities that seek quantitative growth through the mobilization of the population. This, in turn, actualizes the problem of loyalty, which is closely related to the process of self-identification of a person, determining his belonging to a certain social group and choosing life strategies.

The history of Eastern Galicia in the 19th century and its inhabitants provides very interesting material to research the problems of finding one's "self" in imperial conditions and the models of behaviour with the help of which they tried to solve the dilemmas of dynastic, imperial, territorial and national loyalty. The spread of the phenomenon of multiple loyalties among the inhabitants of the region was determined by the socio-political and ethno-cultural conditions in which their everyday life took place. And although throughout the entire period, the attitude towards the ruling Habsburg dynasty played an important role, it was always combined with a sense of belonging to a local, ethnic or social group, and from the end of the century - with the need to define one's attitude towards the corresponding national project (Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish). This assumption allows us to assert that loyalties, like the self-identification of a person, had not only a multiple but also a fluid character, often changing during a person's life.

Registration

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Galicia (1946–1968): Strategies of Survival and Resistance in the Underground

Speaker: Dr Kateryna Budz, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

During the Second World War, Eastern Galicia, a part of Poland during the inter-war period, came under Soviet rule. In 1946, the Soviet regime officially abolished the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the Eastern-rite Church subordinated to the Vatican, through its forced merger with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Under state pressure, most parish priests formally joined the ROC. In contrast, the Greek Catholic hierarchy as well as a part of the clergy refused to “reunite” with the ROC despite arrests and persecutions.

What motivated the latter to adopt a nonconformist stance? Was the opposition of the “non-reunited” Greek Catholics fuelled by political, nationalist, or religious sentiments? How did the members of the banned Church navigate Soviet daily life?

This talk focuses on the strategies of survival and resistance employed by the Ukrainian Greek Catholics who did not “reunite” with the ROC and went underground. On the one hand, the members of the clandestine community tried to adjust to the Soviet surroundings. On the other hand, they employed multiple strategies of resistance, ranging from legal forms of protest to outright confrontation with the representatives of the Soviet state.

The analysis of the clandestine Greek Catholics’ modes of dealing with the Soviet state reveals the complexity of their motives. Oscillating between accommodation and resistance towards the Soviet state, members of the underground Church were able to preserve their denominational identity in a hostile environment up to 1990, when the UGCC was finally legalised.

Registration

Cooling the Hot Zone: Transformations of Chornobyl Zone Image in Popular Culture

Speaker: Dr Tetiana Ostapchuk, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk

The image of Ukraine in popular culture has often been presented through lenses of a nuclear threat. When the Russian war against Ukraine dawned on 24 February, the Chornobyl Zone of Exclusion on the border with Belarus became one of the first territories fully occupied within the first days of the invasion. The violation of the state borders of the independent country, the intrusion of the foreign army and weaponry on the contaminated territory, and the Russian military control over the workers and settlers of the Zone brought back the fears of a new nuclear disaster. Thus, Chornobyl once and again became a contested space. In my talk, I suggest looking back at contradicting narratives oscillating between “Chornobylphobia” and “Chornobylphilia” in popular culture, periods of visibility and invisibility, and efforts of art(iv)ists to create, maintain, and re-interpret the image of Chornobyl from a space of absolute “doom and gloom” to a cool and internationally attractive borderscape.

Registration

On the occasion of the centenary of the Russian revolution, the BASEES Study Group for Russian and Eastern European Music will hold its 2017 conference at Goldsmiths, University of London, on Friday 15th December. The theme of the conference is ‘Music and Revolution’, and our speakers explore a broad range of revolutionary moments in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe: from Decembrists to Bolshevists, from Springs to Singing Revolutions and the collapse of communism. The full programme may be found here.

Registration is free and all are welcome to attend. To register, please email reemstudygroup@gmail.com by Friday 8th December.

Themes include:

-        Music at the time of and in response to revolution

-        Protest music and revolutionary song

-        Sounds and soundscapes of revolution

-        Musical change and continuity post-revolution

-        Politicisation of music

-        Emigration, exile and changing musical landscapes

The conference’s official language is English. 

This conference is supported by the British Association of Russian and East European Studies, the Royal Musical Association and the Centre for Russian Music at Goldsmiths.

Accommodation suggestions:

• Greenwich Travelodge, Blackheath Road: 15 minutes’ walk from Goldsmiths, or take the 53, 453 or 177 bus. 
• The London Greenwich Hotel (Premier Inn), Greenwich High Road: 15 minutes’ walk from Goldsmiths, or take the 53, 453 or 177 bus.  
• Travelodge on Greenwich High Road: 25 minutes’ walk, or 177 bus. 
• Or you’ll find options such as apartments and spare rooms at AirBnB.

Transport: The nearest stations to Goldsmiths are New Cross Gate and New Cross. These are served by the London Overground (the orange line on the tube map) and national rail services. You can plan journeys here. 

REEM has a modest amount of money available to assist speakers, especially postgraduates and those without access to other funds, with the costs of attending. If you would like to be considered for such funding, which is likely to cover only an element of your travel and/or accommodation, please indicate this in your proposal.

Convenors: Tamsin Alexander, Philip Bullock, Pauline Fairclough, Katerina Levidou, Ivana Medić, Danijela Špirić-Beard and Patrick Zuk.

Any enquiries should be sent to reemstudygroup@gmail.com

One-day conference

17 June 2017

University of East Anglia

‘The “female” war has its own colours, smells, lighting and sensory space. Its own words. There are no heroes and extraordinary deeds, there are just people, busy with their inhuman human affairs’. (Svetlana Aleksievich, 1988)

 The Second World War saw women become participants in armed combat, perpetrators, victims and survivors of violence, bystanders and, in some cases, all of these at once. War histories, however, tend to be written from the masculine point of view and thus often exclude women’s direct knowledge of political violence or include it in an instrumentalised way that reveals little about women’s experiences. Lack of access to such knowledge results in incomplete histories of events, historical periods, and populations. Close investigation of female narratives of war, on the other hand, can provide a more inclusive historiography: the focus on women’s experiences and their incorporation into the history of all aspects of war will improve our understanding of war as such, and reveal that gender roles constructed in the context of warfare reflect wider gender dynamics in societies involved in a war. Some aspects of women’s active participation in political violence in general and in the Second World War in particular have been perceived as empowering. Women clearly demonstrated their ability to perform the same roles as the men. On the other hand, it is undeniable that women who took an active part in warfare did so in a masculinist setting, and the acceptance of women in traditionally masculine roles often lasted for the duration of the conflict only. The roles women played and the contexts in which they operated differed from country to country, but there were also many similarities in their experiences. This conference aims to explore women’s experiences of the Second World War by examining where they fit in the grey zones between empowerment and exploitation. 

Applications are sought from scholars (including post-graduates and early career), focusing on the following themes relating to female experiences of World War II, although this list is not exhaustive and other relevant themes will be considered (comparative papers are particularly encouraged):

• women in regular military formations;

• women in guerrilla warfare;

• political violence and civilian women;

• female forced labourers;

• sexual violence in the context of political violence;

• gender perspective of collaboration;

• female prisoners (including prisoners of war);

• representations of women in the context of the Second World War in literature, commemorative sites and practices, popular culture.

Please submit your proposals for 15-minute presentations (300 words abstract and 100 words biographical statement) to o.khromeychuk@uea.ac.uk by 5 pm on 1 February 2017.

There will be limited funding available to cover travel expenses and accommodation costs. Please indicate in your application if you wish to apply for this funding.

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA 

THE LEVERHULME TRUST

The BASEES Study Group for Russian and Eastern European Music is holding its 2016 annual conference at the School of Music (Cardiff University), on Friday 24 June. The theme of the conference is ‘Migration and Mobility’. See here for the full programme.