Positioning Post-1989 Eastern European Transnational Identities
Seminar Organizer(s):
- Oana Popescu-Sandu (University of Southern Indiana), Ioana Luca (National Taiwan Normal University)
After the Cold War, the post-socialist bloc was discussed in relation to post-colonial questions (Moore 2001, Kovacevic 2008, Popescu 2010, Hammond 2011), new forces of globalization (Forrester et al. 2004, Hammond 2005, Chernetsky 2007) or the mutual constitution of Eastern and Western histories (Gille 2010). This panel aims to examine literary and filmic production from or aboutthe former Eastern European bloc, and the way recent representations reveal an Eastern European imaginary within a transregional, transnational, and global perspective. It engages with relational and comparative standpoints on post-1989 Eastern Europe. Papers are invited to explore (but not limit themselves to) the following questions:
- Where is Eastern Europe positioned at the turn of the 21st century, what are the coordinates used to define it in contemporary literature/film/culture?
- What role do other spaces or supranational entities (EU, IMF, NATO, UN) play in the (self)definitions of Eastern and Central Europe?
- How is belonging or not-belonging to Europe, or the Schengen space, represented in literature and culture?
- How is the Cold War triangulation (West-Eastern Europe-Soviet Union) reconfigured to reflect a more global multidirectional world?
- How is Eastern and Central Europe used to define other world identities?
- What are the post-1989 Eastern European global interconnections?
SEMINAR KEYWORDS: Eastern Europe, post-1989 representations of Eastern Europe, global Eastern Europe, triangulating identities in Eastern Europe, transnationalism, transregional, supranational