You can now register for the "Myths, Memories and Economies: Post-Socialist Transformations in Comparison" conference. The event will be held in Warsaw between 28 and 30 October. Attendance is free, only prior registration is required.

Fill out the registration form: https://events.enrs.eu/genealogies2019

Find out more: https://enrs.eu/genealogies2019

The 9th edition of the Genealogies of Memory conference is dedicated to memory of relatively recent, yet turbulent period in the history of Central and Eastern Europe: the post-1989 economic transformations. 30 years after the initiation of the changes, memory scholars from across the continent will gather to analyze the memory sedimentation of characteristic – and often problematic – phenomena of the 1990s.

Topics for discussion include, among others, the key narratives on the period in question, their contested and consensual dimensions, cultural representations and current echoes.

Keynote lectures will be given by Johanna Bockman, Thomas Lindenberger, Adam Mrozowicki and Martin Schulze Wessel.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1: 28 October (Monday), University Warsaw Library

 

9:15-9:40
Introduction

Rafał Rogulski – director of the ENRS

Małgorzata Pakier – head of the Academic Department at the ENRS

 

9:40-10:00

Opening remarks                

Veronika Pehe, Joanna Wawrzyniak – conference convenors

 

10:00-11:30

Keynote lecture: Johanna Bockman

The Other Washington Consensus: Remembering Socialism in Washington, DC
   Chair: Veronika Pehe

 

11:30-12:00  Coffee break

 

12:00-13:30
Roundtable: From Socialist Internationalism to Capitalist Globalisation and Beyond

James Mark

Bogdan Iacob

Tobias Rupprecht

Ljubica Spaskovska

Chair: Joanna Wawrzyniak

 

13:30-14:30 Lunch

 

14:30-16:15
Panel 1. Key Narratives    
   Florian Peters, Shock Therapy Mythologies: Contested Memories of Poland's Balcerowicz Plan      

Muriel Blaive, Velvet Revolution, Economic Reforms, and Lustration: A Trilogy Imposed by Circumstances or by Political Rivalry? Essay in Counterfactual History  

Wolf-Rudiger Knoll, A “Bad Bank” of Transformation: The Role of the “Treuhandanstalt” in the Collective Memory of East Germans after Reunification

Chair and discussant: James Mark

 

16:15-16:45 Coffee break

 

16:45-18:30
Panel 2. Social memory: contested or consensual?
   Rigels Halili, Post-communist Transformation, Social Memory and Blaming of the “Other” – the Case of

Albania

Jill Massino, Pluralism or Plutocracy? Popular Expectations and Perspectives of Economic Change in Post-socialist Romania

Andrzej Pabisiak, Thirty Years After: The Collective Memory of Transition in Poland based on Research on Polish Sejm Transcripts

                Chair and discussant: Ljubica Spaskovska

 

18:30-20:00  Dinner

 

DAY 2: 29 October (Tuesday), University Warsaw Library

9:30-11:30

Panel 3. Memory and Agency

Veronika Pehe, "Let's Start a Business": The Memory of Entrepreneurship and the Czech Student Generation of 1989
Gazela Pudar Drasko, Post-Socialist Transformation in Serbia: Critical Perspective of Intellectuals

Katarzyna Waniek, Biographical experiences of transformation in the cohort born 1980-1990. A case analysis

Chair and discussant: Oldřich Tůma (tbc)   

 

11:30-12:00 Coffee break

 

12:00-13:30

Keynote lecture: Thomas Lindenberger Transformation through Unification = Unification through

Transformation? Regimes of Truth and the Discontent of Memories in the German Transformation

Regime

Chair: Muriel Blaive

 

13:30-14:30 Lunch

 

14:30-16:30  

Panel 4. Cultural Memory and Economy   

Alex Condrache, That is how Billionaires Smoke: The Nouveau Riche of the Transition in Romanian Post-Communist Cinema   

Olga Gontarska, Cinema without an Audience: Experience of Transformation Depicted in Ukrainian films

Saygun Gökarıksel, “The Great Betrayal”: 1989 and the “Secrets” of Poland’s New Capitalism

Mykola Makhortykh, We Were Hungry, but we also Were Free: (Counter)Narratives of the Russia’s first post-Soviet Decade on Instagram

                Chair and discussant: Ksenia Robbe

 

16:30-17:00 Coffee break

 

17:00-18:30  (TBA)

 

19:00 Dinner

 

DAY 3: 30 October (Wednesday), University Warsaw Library

9:30-11:00

Keynote lecture: Adam Mrozowicki

Coping with System Change: the ‘Grand History’ of Transformation and Biographical Experiences of Polish Workers

Chair: Małgorzata Pakier

 

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

 

11:30-13:30

Panel 5. Memory and Labour

Till Hilmar, Drawing Moral Lessons from Economic Transformations: Economic Memory, Deservingness and Social Relations in post-1989 (East) Germany and the Czech Republic

Anna Calori, Nostalgia for the Global: Peripheralization in a (post)socialist Bosnian Workplace     

Joanna Wawrzyniak, Karolina Mikołajewska, Nostalgia and Moral Economy in Post-socialist Industry: Poland

Mariusz Jastrząb, How Did We Survive? Official Corporate Histories from the Period of Systemic Change

Chair and discussant: Florian Peters

 

13:30-14:30 Lunch

 

14:30-16:00

Keynote lecture: Martin Schulze Wessel (tbc)

Title tba

Chair: Jan Rydel

 

16:00-16:30 Coffee break

 

16:30-18:15

Panel 6. Current Echoes of the Transformation

Sabine Volk, Populist Memories of the 1990s Economic Transformations in East Germany: How PEGIDA Mythologizes the Saxon Economy 

Sabine Stach, Guiding through Memory: A Case Study on (Post)Communism Tours

Bartłomiej Krzysztan, Capitalizing Socialism in Postcolonial Georgia. Post-socialist Economic Reality and Structure of Memory on Peripheral Flea Market

Chair and discussant: Bogdan Iacob

 

18:15-18:30

Final remarks

Veronika Pehe and Joanna Wawrzyniak

 

About the Project:

Genealogies of Memory in Central and Eastern Europe is an international academic project run since 2011. Its aim is to facilitate academic exchange between Central and East European scholars of individual and collective memory, and to promote this region’s study of memory among the broader international academic community through workshops, seminars and conferences.

Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak
Conceptual Team & Initiators of the Project

Venue:

University of Warsaw Library, Dobra 56/66, 00-312 Warszawa

 

Main Organiser:

European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS)

 

Co-organiser:

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

 

Partners:

Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw

Institute for Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

University of Exeter

Leverhulme Trust

Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe

 

Media partners:

New Eastern Europe

Rzeczpospolita

 

Conference convenors:

Dr Veronika Pehe (Institute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Dr Joanna Wawrzyniak (Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw)

 

Academic council of the conference:

Prof. Wiesława Kozek (University of Warsaw)

Prof. Jan Rydel (ENRS/ Pedagogical University of Cracow)

Prof. Martin Schulze Wessel (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

Dr Oldřich Tůma (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)

The ENRS is funded by:

Ministry of Culture and Heritage (Poland)

Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (Germany)

Ministry of Human Capacities (Hungary)

Ministry of Culture (Slovakia)

Ministry of Culture and National Identity (Romania)

The event is carried out as a part of international series of conferences "1989 – Changes and Challenges" devoted to the collapse of communism in Europe.