Archives: Events

Igor Duda (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula)

Abstract

Under Habsburg rule in the 1840s, the East Adriatic coast saw the emergence of organised tourism. Among the upper classes at the time, seawater and air were considered essential for wellness during winter holidays at seaside health resorts. A century later, in socialist Yugoslavia, the rising working class became domestic tourists, with summer holidays at the beach, predominantly in Croatia, viewed as a pathway to well-being and a higher standard of living. By the 1960s, post-war social tourism was complemented with a booming commercial tourism industry, attracting millions of foreign visitors. This mass tourism reshaped local seaside communities, influenced the needs and expectations of Yugoslavia’s growing travel and consumer culture, and helped to create an open and welcoming international image for the country. The history of Adriatic tourism mirrors Croatia’s history within Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia and later, including the economic, social and cultural changes from the 19^th century to the present.

Bio

Igor Duda is a full professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, and at the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula. He is focusing on history of everyday life and social history of socialist Yugoslavia, particularly on history of leisure, tourism, consumer culture, standard of living, childhood, making of a socialist citizen and citizens’ participation in social self-management.

He was the principal investigator of the research projects Making of the Socialist Man. Croatian Society and the Ideology of Yugoslav Socialism and Microstructures of Yugoslav Socialism: Croatia 1970-1990. At the University of Pula he teaches courses in contemporary history. He also teaches at the PhD programme in modern and contemporary history at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. He is the initiator and head of the annual summer Doctoral Workshop in Pula (since 2015), co-organiser of the biennial conference series Socialism on the Bench (since 2013), as well as the co-editor-in-chief of the journal History in Flux (since 2019). He is co-founder of the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism and the head of the Chair of Late Modern and Contemporary History.

Anna Namestnikov (Universiteit Gent)

Abstract

Na de Bolsjewistische revoluties van 1917 en de daaropvolgende burgeroorlog ontvluchtten meer dan een miljoen Russen hun thuisland en vormden zij Russischtalige diasporagemeenschappen wereldwijd, vooral in Europese steden als Berlijn, Parijs en Praag, maar ook in steden als New York en Harbin. Deze émigré-samenleving, vaak aangeduid als ‘Russia Abroad’, zocht manieren om om te gaan met het verlies van hun prerevolutionaire vaderland en verleden, de opkomst van de Sovjet-Unie en het leven in de nieuwe gastlanden. Dit proces, door Greta Slobin (2013) omschreven als een ‘triangulatie’ van invloedsferen, was cruciaal voor de culturele identiteit en productie van Russia Abroad en resulteerde in een voortdurende interactie met ‘de Andere’.

In deze lezing richt ik mij op een tot nu toe onderbelicht aspect van dit culturele veld, namelijk de literaire vertaling van buitenlandse literatuur naar het Russisch. Welke auteurs, genres en thema’s werden het vaakst vertaald? Wie waren de vertalers, en hoe werd deze vertaalde literatuur gepresenteerd aan de Russische émigré-lezer?

Om deze vragen te beantwoorden, analyseer ik twee populaire mainstream tijdschriften: Illjustrirovannaja Rossija (Geïllustreerd Rusland, Parijs; 1924-1939) en Roebezj (Grens, Harbin; 1927-1945). Beide publicaties brachten regelmatig literaire vertalingen, naast een brede mix van andere content (Russische literatuur, nieuws, satire, kruiswoordpuzzels, modepagina’s, etc.), maar opereerden in verschillende gastlanden (Frankrijk en China). Door deze twee tijdschriften met elkaar te vergelijken, stel ik de vraag centraal of en hoe literaire vertaling werd ingezet om een dialoog met de gastcultuur aan te gaan.

Bio

Anna Namestnikov is an FWO Fundamental Research Fellow at the Russian section of the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University), where she is a member of the TRACE research group. She obtained a Master of Arts in Eastern European Languages and Cultures (Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) in 2019-2020 (Ghent University). Before starting her FWO project, Anna worked as a teaching and research assistant (September 2021 – November 2023, Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Ghent University), where she co-taught courses on Russian grammar and Russian literature and conducted preliminary research for her PhD project. As of November 2023 she has been working on a PhD project on the system of translation in Russian émigré periodicals (1919-1939) under the supervision of Piet Van Poucke.

Sevinj Samadzade (Universiteit Gent)

Abstract

This lecture critically interrogates the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through a feminist lens, questioning both the historical and contemporary peacebuilding efforts that often fail to address the deep-rooted issues of militarism, nationalism, and gender injustices inherently connected with the conflict context. It challenges the prevailing liberal peace frameworks that see gendered inclusion as immanence within the already patriarchal power structures rather than dismantling them. By focusing on the Armenian-Azerbaijani context, the lecture critiques how peacebuilding initiatives have historically sidelined the lived experiences of women and other marginalized genders in conflict zones.

Drawing from the stories of women in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, the lecture reveals the contradictions between peace rhetoric and the reality of heightened militarized masculinities and nationalism, which frequently exclude or instrumentalize women’s subjectivities. This approach critically reflects on the very nature of peacebuilding, calling into question whether current models truly foster sustainable peace or perpetuate cycles of violence and exclusion. It ultimately argues for a radical rethinking of peace and security, one that places the transformative potential of feminist approaches at the centre of conflict resolution efforts.

Bio

Sevinj Samadzade is a PhD Fellow at Ghent University, affiliated with both the Department of Political Science and the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy. She also holds a fellowship at the United Nations University-CRIS, where she is part of the Migration and Social Policy Cluster. Her PhD research explores the ways social work practices can reproduce geopolitical dynamics, aiming to deepen the understanding of the interaction between global and local scales in social welfare provisions.

Sevinj earned her master’s degree in Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asian Security Studies from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her work has primarily focused on the gender, peace, and security nexus in the South Caucasus region. With over a decade of experience working with various civil society groups in Azerbaijan and Georgia, she has been involved in processes related to dealing with the past, researching alternative histories, and the daily politics of armed conflicts. Additionally, she has implemented gender and peace education throughout the wider region.

Florian Wandl (University of Zürich)

Abstract

Research on the system of pronominal clitics so far has mostly focused on the major Slavic languages. Studies addressing issues regarding these clitics in minor Slavic languages or dialects are rare. In this talk, I will discuss the system of pronominal clitics in the Slovenian dialect spoken in in the Resia valley in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northern Italy. This dialect has been in intense language contact with Romance (mostly Friulian and standard Italian) for several centuries which has left an imprint also on pronominal clitics. After having introduced the inventory of pronominal clitics in Resian, the place of these clitics in the clause is established. The emerging system of Resian pronominal clitics is then discussed against the background of Slavic and Romance clitic systems.

Biografie

Florian Wandl is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Zürich. He has a background in historical linguistics and philology, and is also interested in linguistic typology. His main research focus boils down to the question of how the Slavic languages came to be the way they are.

Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg University)

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014, this border region has garnered global attention both in news coverage and on the battlefield. This spotlight has brought a wide array of issues concerning the Donbas’s place on the cultural maps of Ukraine and Russia, which are ranging from the region’s entangled history to the complex relations between regional and national identity within its borders. The image of the Donbas as a contested, unsettled region has gained even more significance with the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war in February 2022.

In my presentation, I will delve into the construction of the Donbas’s image in culture, literature, and cinema since the early 20th century, tracing its evolution and the narratives it has generated over time. However, my primary objective is to examine the Donbas within the context of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. In this conflict, the region serves as both a Russian casus belli and a central element of contemporary Russian imperial imagery, where the Donbas plays a prominent role as the heartland of “Novorossiya” or “New Russia” – a territorial concept that lays claim to southeastern Ukraine as part of the Russian state. Ultimately, I will investigate the strategies employed by contemporary Ukrainian authors to counter Russian imperial claims and reimagine the Donbas as both a Ukrainian and European region.

Biografie

Oleksandr Zabirko completed his studies in Literature and Linguistics at the University of Luhansk (Ukraine) and the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany). He earned his PhD in Slavic Literatures and Cultures from the University of Münster and is currently affiliated with the Slavic Department at the University of Regensburg. His primary research interests encompass literary models of spatial and political order, contemporary literatures from Russia and Ukraine, and fantastic literature as a whole. Notable among his recent publications are “Literary Forms of Geopolitics: The Modeling of Spatial and Political Order in Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian Literature” (in German, 2021) and “Figurations of the East” (in German, co-edited, 2022).