Call for papers for the conference:
From Samizdat to Tamizdat: Dissident Media out of Central Eastern Europe after 1945

Organiser: Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Potsdam), Stanford University (Stanford), Central European University (Budapest), Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna)
Date/Place: September 12-15, 2006 Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (www.iwm.at)
Deadline for Abstracts: May 15, 2006

Drawing from the disciplines of history, literature, political science, anthropology, sociology, and media studies, this conference takes as a starting point the movement of printed material between Eastern and Western Europe (as well as across the Atlantic) during the Cold War. One of the underlying arguments of this project is that cross-border communication in the late Cold War in its various forms made a major contribution to the rapprochement between Eastern and Western societies through the Iron Curtain by re-creating "a common market of the mind" in Europe. Cultural initiatives crossing ideologically divided societies and aiming at the promotion of non-official culture/literature in communist countries helped to counteract the ever increasing division between the intellectual communities in East and West. An analysis of the unofficial literary exchanges between East and West will initiate a discussion of transnational communication after 1945 that has not yet been fully explored. Beyond taking a closer look at the cultural transfer between East and West, we are seeking primarily contributions that focus on the impact of censorship on media and the ensuing emergence of dissident/underground media. The project will deliberately expand the definition of samizdat and tamizdat and use it as a marker of cultural transfer for the analysis of a broad variety of cultural projects that cross ideological, political or cultural borders. In order to establish a link to today's media, we propose to compare underground circulation of uncensored texts during the Cold War with evolving forms of journalism after 1989, looking at new media and new forms of underground or unofficial communication today.

Questions to address:
. What forces texts/media or culture into the unofficial sphere or across national borders?
. How do censorship, political or economic hardship cause media to operate underground or across borders?
. How do we perceive media differently when they are produced under these conditions?
. What mediating agents (individuals, informal networks and/or institutions) made the transmission of texts and media across borders possible?
. What is the legacy of this form of transnational communication?
. Could strategies adopted by mediators of samizdat/tamizdat mediators be useful today?
. Are samizdat and tamizdat produced in any form today (print, broadcast, or new media)?

The organizers invite especially doctoral candidates and post-doctoral scholars to submit original research papers that discuss any aspect of underground and cross-border initiatives, including but not limited to the following themes:

- Samizdat/Tamizdat: new Theoretical Approaches
- Underground and exilic media throughout time: comparative views
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and Censorship
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as (cultural/political/literary) Dissidence
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as Political and Societal Protest
- Samizdat/Tamizdat through the Eyes of the Officials
- Samizdat/Tamizdat in its Material Existence: an aesthetic approach
- Samizdat/Tamizdat: a Gender Perspective
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as Alternative Culture
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as Belles-lettres
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and other Dissident Media: Broadcast, Music, Arts
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and Transnational Discourses
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and Publishing during the Cultural Cold War
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as a Cross-Border Social Network
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and (Literary) Exile
- Samizdat/Tamizdat as a Social Practice beyond borders
- Samizdat/Tamizdat and its Public/Private Spheres
- New forms of Samizdat/Tamizdat: underground and cross-border (new) media after 1989

Inspired by the concept of "Histoire croisée" we strongly encourage cross-cultural, cross-national and multi-disciplinary approaches. The conference will bring together junior scholars and senior commentators with keynote speakers from dissident publishing backgrounds to present a manifold perspective on the topic.

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered through a grant by the German Volkswagen Foundation. Selected papers will be considered for a publication to appear in the following year.

Please send 1-2 page abstracts and full contact details (email, Telephone, Postal Address) to before May 15, 2006.

Papers of 5000- 7000 words must be submitted by August 15, as they will be pre-circulated among the participants. Presentations of these papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length, and must be in English. For more information please see www.samizdatportal.org, the online platform of the newly founded International Samizdat Research Association [ISRA] or contact
one of the organizers below.

Dr. Jessie Labov
Dept. of Comparative Literature,
Stanford University
Pigott Hall, Building 260
Tel.: 001-650 723 0605


Friederike Kind
Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam
Tel.: 0049-331-2899129


Camelia Craciun
Department of History,
Central European University
Nador Utca 11
1051 Budapest