November 5th – 7th 2015, Prague
The Center for Central European Studies (joint workplace of the CEVRO Institute University and the Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Call for Papers – English (pdf)
The goal of the conference is to bring together the often separated debates about interwar, wartime and postwar Europe, as well as to consider the year 1945 a key moment of historic change, on which the nationalist revolutions after the Second World War were based. The events of 1945 ushered in many significant changes in Europe. The National Socialist regime collapsed; postwar economic, social and bureaucratic systems were formed. In the words of Ian Kershaw, the year 1945 is the intersection of the history of destruction, which culminated in the interwar European crisis and the Second World War, and the history of a new beginning, the rise of leftist socialism and the political constellation of the Cold War.
Nationalism and the national question were the central problems not only in Germany, but also, in different forms, in other Central European regions. Current historiography charts the creation of national, ethnically homogeneous societies most often using the example of the displacement of the German population, but rarely goes beyond the horizon of explicit national conflict. The conference’s central perspective should encourage crossing over individual national narratives by comparing or examining the transnational phenomena that are common to the individual nations. The revolutionary fervor of 1945 can serve as a tool to investigate the continuity and discontinuity in the societies that were going through complex political and economic changes. Significant connections can be found, for example, in the legacy of Nazi social policy in the newly established national systems of social provisions or in the organization of the state and society, where the role of the state or the significance of technocractic elites increased in comparison to the interwar period in East and West alike. Contributions to the conference should compare national cases with an emphasis on the character and depth of the social change.
Conference topics may be:
- the construction of a nation and patriotism in political thought;
- the collaboration of national elites;
- the working class and the project of the welfare state;
- population politics;
- renewal of political partisanship;
- national socialism, leftist socialism, capitalism and labor (the science of labor and social practice);
- property relocations: from aryanizationsm to nationalization;
- relationship with the “nemy” – national identity and economic interests.
Conference languages: English, Czech (interpretation will be provided)
The organizers will cover accommodation and meals.
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Please send in your abstracts of 500 words maximum by 15th June 2015 to: conference1945@gmail.com
Other conference-related queries shall be gladly addressed by: Radka Šustrová, sustrova@mua.cas.cz