On December 10, Professor Robert A. Saunders will give the seminar Getting over Borat: Exploring the (After-)Effects of Parody in the Post-Soviet Realm.
Dr. Robert A. Saunders is Professor of History, Politics and Geography Farmingdale State College (SUNY), Dept. of History, Politics, and Geography, NY.
When: December 10, 3.15-4.45 pm Where: Niagara Building, Block C, Seminar room, 9th floor (External participants, please wait at the Reception by the C elevators at 3 pm)
Warm thanks to all participants at the Fourth Annual RUCARR Conference Nov 21-22 – thanks for joining us at Malmö University, for very interesting presentions and discussions!
Prof. Karina Vamling published the article New Initiatives in Diachronic Linguistics – Atlases of Language and Culture in the festschrift for Academician Thomas Gamkrelidze – Akademikosi Tamaz Gamqrelidze 90, Tbilisi University Press, 2019. pp. 151-161.
On November 19, Ass. Prof. Per-Anders Rudling will give the paper “History as a political instrument in the Cold War: the 1941 Pogroms, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the CIA”. When: 15.15-17.00, Nov 19 Where: Niagara building, room C0826 Abstract The intersection of Stalinist, Nazi, and Ukrainian nationalist violence profoundly, and irreversibly changed the social and demographic situation in Ukraine. The Holocaust, the expulsion and massacres of the Polish minority turned a multiethnic borderlands of what used to be eastern Poland into ethnically highly a homogenous heartland of Ukrainian nationalism. In west Ukraine, the Holocaust started with a wave of massive anti-Jewish violence, in which local nationalist militias played a central role. After the war, several hundred thousand Ukrainian nationalists ended up as political refugees in the West, where they set up intensely anti-communist political communities. A historical memory, centred around Ukrainian suffering while excluding the plight of Jews and Poles came to constitute the basis of the Ukrainian diaspora’s identity. During the Cold War, this memory culture was successfully instrumentalized for political purposes by Western intelligence services, in particularly, the CIA. After the collapse of the Soviet Union this memory culture was “re-exported” to Ukraine. After the “Orange Revolution” of 2004/05 and the “Euromaidan” of 2013/14 a highly selective historical memory was elevated to state ideology, and radical nationalist groups such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its leaders were posthumously rehabilitated. My lecture deals with the difficult legacy of the 1941 anti-Jewish pogroms, their absence in Ukrainian “national memory,” and the migration of memory between homeland and diaspora during and after the Cold War.
Per Anders Rudling An associate professor of history at Lund University, Per Anders Rudling, currently is a Senior Lecturer in European Studies at Malmö University, and a Research Associate at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University College. He holds MA degrees in the Russian language and literature from Uppsala University (1998) and in history from San Diego State University (2003). After completing his Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 2009, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Universities of Greifswald (2010-2011) and Lund (2012-2014). In 2015, he was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna, and 2015-2019 Senior Visiting Fellow and Coordinator of the European Studies Program at the National University of Singapore.
Numerous conflicts have ripped through post-Soviet Eurasia over the last decades. Some of them involve non-state actors and belligerents with different power resources at their disposal. Christofer Berglund, Malmö University, and Emil Aslan Souleimanov, Charles University, have authored an article on the concept and characteristics of these “asymmetric” conflicts: What is (not) asymmetric conflict? From conceptual stretching to conceptual structuring (Journal Dynamics of Assymetric Conflict)
Prof. Oliver Reisner, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, gave a seminar to staff and students during his visit to RUCARR, Malmö University on October 9-10. The topic of his presentation was Social Cohesion and Political Developments in Contemporary Georgia, which was followed by a lively discussion. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas and research on this timely topic!
On October 9 Michel Anderlini, PhD Student in Global Politics, presented his thesis work in the first 20% seminar in new the Global Politics PhD programme. The title of the presentation: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”: Role contestation of the EU Special Representative and Selective Compliance in Georgia. Discussant: Prof. Patrik Hall.
Dr. Kamal Makili-Aliyev, Researcher at Faculty of Law, Lund University and the Dept. of Global Political Studies, Malmö University: The evolution of the principle of self-determination: from Åland Islands to Nagorno-Karabakh and Catalonia.
When: September 10, 15.15-17.00. Where: NIC0826, Niagara building (Nordenskiöldsgatan 1).
The seminar will introduce part of the research efforts of Kamal Makili-Aliyev in comparative international law and conflict resolution. The right of peoples to self-determination and its evolution from the international legal point of view is one of the key topics of his research. The full results of his research will feature in the upcoming monograph titled “Contested Territories and International Law” that is scheduled for the release in late October 2019 by Routledge and will introduce a comprehensive international legal analysis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and the Åland Islands precedent.
Silence as a Narrator: The Case of the Georgian History Textbooks
Guranda Bursulaia,
PhD Candidate at Free University in Tbilisi (Georgia) and Swedish
Institute visiting researcher at Caucasus Studies, Malmö University,
will give the presentation: “Silence as a Narrator: The Case of the
Georgian History Textbooks” at the Caucasus Studies web & campus
seminar on May 7.
Where: Glocal Classroom C0502 (http://bit.ly/2UKX1fg),
5th floor, Niagara Building. Please, write to caucasus.studies@mau.se
in case you are interested in following the seminar online. When: 15.15–17.00, May 7.
The seminar is about the construction of collective
memory about the 1992-1993 war in Abkhazia in the Georgian school
history textbooks. Guranda will discuss the transformation of the
textbooks throughout the last 25 years marked with major political and
social changes in the country. Besides, silencing, as an instrument of
major narrative formation, and masterminds behind it will be analyzed
using the example of the Georgian textbooks.
The RUCARR seminar on March 26 will welcome three presenters from the Department of History, Lund University:
Klas-Göran Karlsson: “The Armenian genocide: An interpretive framework”;
Maria Småberg: “Giving voice to Armenian and Yazidi women – the transnational life stories of Alma Johansson and Maria Anholm”
Maria Karlsson: “Genocide denial: the Armenian example”
Klas-Göran Karlsson is Professor of History, working with genocide studies and several other areas within international contemporary history. Maria Småberg, PhD in History and Assistant Director of Studies at the National Graduate School of History, works with a project on the Swedish missionary and genocide eyewitness Alma Johansson. Maria Karlsson has written a PhD thesis on genocide denial, “Cultures of Denial: Comparing Holocaust and Armenian Genocide Denial”, and works within the research project “The Lessons of Communist and Nazi History”, conducted by Klas-Göran Karlsson. They all represent the Department of History, Lund University.
When: March 26, 15-17 (for external participants, please come to the reception at 14.45)
Where: Room C0929, Niagara building, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, Malmö
Armenian Genocide Memorial complex of Tsitsernakaberd, Yerevan, Armenia
