PROGRAMME
‘Communist Nostalgia’
Conference at the University of Glasgow, 11-13 September 2015
Main Building, West Quadrangle
PROGRAMME
Friday 11 September
9.30-10.00am Registration and coffee (Main Building (MB), Gilbert Scott Room 253)
10.00-11.00am Opening plenary session(MB, Room G466)
Stephen White (University of Glasgow), ‘Communist Nostalgia and the Demise of the USSR’Chair: Vassiliki Kolocotroni
11.00am-12.30pm Parallel sessions:
1a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Gavin Bowd
Mioara Anton (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History), ‘Why was it better before? Generational communist nostalgia in Romania’
Maria Alina Asavei (Charles University of Prague), ‘Nicolae Ceausescu between Vernacular Memory and Nostalgia’
Corina Snitar (University of Glasgow), ‘Why a Communist nostalgia in post-Communist Romania?’
1b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Maud Bracke
Petra Rethmann (McMaster University), ‘The Politics of Temporality and Hope: a View from the East European Left
Zuleykha Mailzada (University of Glasgow), ‘How Nostalgia Is Incorporated in the Management of Social Rights in Azerbaijan’
Vikki Turbine (University of Glasgow), ‘Remembering rights? Women’s narratives of social(ist) democracy and everyday rights talk in contemporary Russia’
12.30-1.30pm Lunch(MB, Gilbert Scott Room 253)
1.30-3.00pm Parallel sessions:
2a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Gavin Bowd
Alexandra Bardan (University of Bucharest), ‘Communist Nostalgia in Romania: Branding the Heritage’
Iulia Statica (La Sapienza University of Rome), ‘Spatial Nostalgias. Metamorphosing remembrance in the communist and post-communist city’
2b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Vassiliki Kolocotroni
Argyro Filippaki (University of Glasgow), ‘Missing Communism, 1985 and 2015: Renio Dragasaki’s Short Film Daddy, Lenin and Freddy’
Yuliya Komska (Dartmouth College), ‘The Blurred Object of Nostalgia for Radio Free Europe’
Vangelis Makriyannakis (University of Edinburgh), ‘Nostalgia for Utopia in the films of Theo Angelopoulos’
3.00-3.30pm Coffee and tea break(MB, Gilbert Scott Room 253)
3.30-5.00pm Parallel sessions:
3a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Keith Reader
Philip Cooke and Gianluca Fantoni (Nottingham Trent University), ‘The new cult of Enrico Berlinguer: nostalgia for an old era or reinterpretation?’
Gino Raymond (University of Bristol), ‘PCF and Front de Gauche: exploiting a communist nostalgia in France?’
Jennifer Wood (NUI Galway), ‘Rafael Alberti and Communist Nostalgia: Testimonials of an Exile’s Return’
3b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Vikki Turbine
Kjetil Duvold (Dalarna University), ‘Back to the future; retrospective regime evaluation in the Baltic states’
Karolina Golinowska (University of Kazimierz Wielki), ‘Culture accessible for everyone? Remarks on the 25 years of the Polish transformation’
Ivan Maksimovic (Ethnographic Museum, Belgrade), ‘From Yugoslavia to Yugonostalgia: an analysis of political elements in narratives about life in the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia’
5-6.30pm: Plenary Session
‘Growing up communist’: Brian Pollitt and Doug Chalmers in conversation, chaired by Stephen White (MB, Room G466)
Saturday 12 September
9-30-11am: Parallel sessions
4a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Anne McShane
Amieke Bouma (VU University of Amsterdam) ‘Interest Organizations of Former GDR Party- and State Functionary Elites in Unified Germany: Nostalgia, Strategies, and Identity Change’
Stefanie Kreibich (Bangor University), ‘Post-Ostalgia: The Metamorphosis of Memory of the GDR’
4b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Bridget Fowler
Meredith Gill (University of Minnesota), ‘Who are The Americans? Nostalgia and the Spectre of Communism’
Robert Leach (University of Edinburgh), ‘How Communism Saved the British Theatre from Irrelevance: Joan Littlewood, Ewan MacColl and Theatre Workshop’
11.00-11.30am Coffee and tea break(MB, Gilbert Scott Room 253)
11.30am-1.00pm Parallel sessions:
5a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Vassiliki Kolocotroni
Ana Bogdanovic (University of Belgrade) and Ulrike Gerhardt (Leuphana University, Lüneburg),
Locating Socialist Nostalgia: Cinematographical Spaces as Mnemonic Topographies’
Valeriya Klets (La Sapienza University of Rome), ‘The slow onset of nostalgia for communist architecture. Can it be accepted?’
Tanel Rander (artist, Estonia) ‘From nostalgia to re-politicization and resistance’
5b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Neil Munro
Hongsheng Jiang (Peking University), ‘The Forgetting and Remembering of the Cultural Revolution in China’
Alexei Gugushvili (St Antony’s College, Oxford), ‘Stalin’s Russia vs Georgia’s Stalin: Similarities and Differences in Public Attitudes’
1-2pm Lunch(MB, Gilbert Scott Room 253)
2-3.30pm Parallel sessions:
6a (MB, Room G466) Chair: Bridget Fowler
Helena Duffy (University of Wroclaw), The Old Apartment: the Tension between Postmodern Poetics and Post-Soviet Nostalgia in Andreï Makine’s Work
Alla Ivanchikova (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), ‘Soviet Afghanistan: An Impossible Object of Nostalgia’
Ekaterina Kalinina (Södertörn University), ‘Bio-politics, patriotism and war nostalgia in Russia’
6b (MB, Gilbert Scott Room 356) Chair: Tanya Biletskaya
Natalia Koulinka (University of California, Santa Cruz), ‘Making the Laboring Men Invisible: Changes in Journalistic Practices and Ethics in Belarus in the 1990s’
Kirsty Strang (University of Glasgow), 'Remembering Red Clydeside: the afterlives of John Maclean and Mary Barbour, featuring a showing of 'Red Skirts on Clydeside' (1984).
3.30-4.00pm Coffee and tea break(MB, Gilbert Scott Room 253)
4.00-5.30pm Closing Plenary (MB, Room G466) Chair: Gavin Bowd
Owen Hatherley: ‘Trotsky, Colonel Sanders and Me: A Trotskyist Childhood in 1980s Hampshire’
Agata Pyzik: ' History against nostalgia – how to make nostalgia militant again'
6.15pm Conference Dinner
Sunday, 13 September
11am - 4.30 pm Excursion to New Lanark
New Lanark is a textile mill village, important in the Scottish collective memory for pioneering educational reforms, the idea of socialism, and, in particular, for the genesis of Robert Owen’s two most well-known works: A New View of Society (1813) and A Revolution in the Mind and the Practice of the Human Race (1817)