Announcing the 2015 Annual SOYUZ Symposium

«Shifting Territories: Historical Legacies and Social Change»

February 28 – March 1 2015

Hosted by the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington.

The 2015 Soyuz Symposium seeks to engage scholars in an interdisciplinary debate about contemporary social, cultural, and political transformations in socialist and post-socialist regions world wide. In the previous year, a number of these regions have seen significant turmoil, from the anti-government protests in Egypt, Ukraine, and Venezuela to violent internal conflict in Syria and Sudan. We have also seen the creation of new, sometimes fragile, alliances including the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union, the emergence of unstable, separatist “states” in Ukraine, and the creation of a new socialist party in South Africa. These major world events challenge contemporary social and political boundaries, re-frame historical narratives, and invoke new constructions of statehood, personhood, and human rights.

This year, in cooperation with the Ellison Center at the University of Washington, Soyuz invites papers that address the intersection of historical legacies and contemporary change in socialist and postsocialist regions, such as:

• · Separatist regions and de jure states
• · Emergent nationalisms or nationalist discourses
• · Language policy and linguistic differentiation
• · New forms and narratives of sovereignty
• · Appeals to and ruptures from historical socialist legacies
• · Contemporary economic strategies and (in)equalities
• · New social identities and citizenship claims
• · The uses and limitations of the politics nostalgia

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to Jennifer Carroll(jencarr2@uw.edu) by November 1, 2014.

Please include your full name, affiliation, and paper title. Write “SOYUZ 2015” in the subject line of your email. Papers will be selected and notifications made by December 1, 2014.

For any questions, please email Jennifer Carroll, the Soyuz Programming Coordinator, at jencarr2@uw.edu.

The Soyuz Research Network for Postsocialist Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary forum for exchanging work based on field research in postsocialist countries, ranging from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Soyuz is an interest group in the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and an official unit of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). The Soyuz symposium has met annually since 1991 and offers an opportunity for scholars to interact in a more personal setting.