Images of Imperial Legacy, 
Copenhagen, 20-21.5.2005

 

 Conference announcement/call for papers:

 Images of Imperial Legacy

 An international interdisciplinary conference on ideas and
representations of the legacies of the Ottoman and Habsburg
empires in South Eastern Europe.

 Copenhagen, May 20-21, 2005.

 Most of South Eastern Europe has until the 19th century, and in
many places until 1917, been part of a multinational empire. The
Ottoman and the Habsburg empires dominated the history of these
areas for hundreds of years and naturally left great imprints on
societies there.

 As the young nation states of South Eastern Europe have later
defined and presented their individual identities, the imperial
legacies have consistently been central - in negative as well as
in positive perceptions. Imperial history has been evoked in
arguments about civilization and cultural belonging, but also in
attempts to distance some nations and groups from others. In this
way representations of imperial heritage are also connected to
identity construction, cultural politics, and relations both
between nations and states and between minority and majority
groups.

 This conference will investigate and discuss how imperial
heritage has been imagined and represented within different
states, nations and other groups in South Eastern Europe
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Its particular aims will
be to address the questions of how such images are employed in
representations of the character and identity of one* ¦’"s own
group and others, how images have been stable or changing, and
how they have related to regional and international political
circumstances.

 The theme of the conference calls for a comparative and
interdisciplinary approach. We wish to analyze the images of two
quite different, but both multinational, empires, within an area
of national as well as multinational states and of communist and
non-communist post-war histories. Ideas of imperial heritage are
produced and presented in a variety of fields: historiography,
literature, politics, public debate, and others. In order to
appreciate the multifaceted character of its theme the conference
will involve several scientific disciplines, bringing together
scholars of history, language and literature, sociology and
political science.

 By establishing a broad forum for investigating images of
imperial heritage within South Eastern Europe* ¦’"s complexity of
fields and contexts the conference should be able to shed new
light on central issues in the modern history of this area and,
more generally, on the relations between image-making and
political and historical circumstances.

 The conference is organized by the Department of East European
Studies, University of Copenhagen, and the Institute of History
and Area Studies, University of Aarhus.

 The conference is open. The working language will be English. We
welcome proposals for presentations of a general relevance to the
topic and the geographical areaSouth Eastern Europe including
Turkey * as well as specific case studies within this field.
Scholars and students who wish to give a talk at the conference
should send a short abstract of their presentation to the
conference secretary, Tea Sindbaek, either by email to:

 [mailto:histts@hum.au.dk] histts@hum.au.dk (please mark the
message * ¦’±S.E.E. Conference* ¦’") or by ordinary mail to:
S.E.E. Conference Department of East European Studies University
of Copenhagen Snorresgade 17-19

 2300 Copenhagen S

 Denmark

 Please send your proposal before November 19 2004.


 On behalf of the organisers,

 Per Jacobsen Associate professor, Department of East European
Studies, University of Copenhagen/Tea Sindbaek PhD student,
Institute of History and Area Studies, University of Aarhus