[URBANTH-L] CFP: The Socialist 1960s: Popular Culture and the Socialist City (Urbana-Champaign)

[Angela Jancius]

May 22, 2009
The Socialist 1960s: Popular Culture and the Socialist City,
06/24-26/2010, Urbana-Champaign

Deadline: October 15, 2009

Call for Proposals
The Socialist 1960s: Popular Culture and the Socialist City in Global
Perspective
2010 Fisher Forum, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
June 24-26, 2010

The 1960s witnessed an explosion of cross-cultural fertilization in a
time of world competition for the hegemony of two enduring "systems" -
capitalism and socialism. As a moment when decolonization created
immense possibilities for liberation movements throughout the world, the
1960s became the heyday of the "Second World" appeals to the newly
decolonized societies of the "Third World," as well as the reemergence
of a European "First World" as a postwar consumer society in reaction to
American hegemony. This was the moment when the "orderedness" of the
three worlds was arguably the most prominent in popular discourse and
culture, and a moment when that order was contested and destabilized.
The patterns that first emerged in the 1960s - cultural contest,
political mobility, urbanization and the rise of urban youth movements,
women's rights, the hegemony of popular over "high" culture driven by
technology - form the bases of today's discussions of globalization, its
challenges, dangers, and contestation.

The purpose of this conference will be to use the Second World, the
socialist societies of the 1960s, as the center from which to explore
global interconnections and uncover new and perhaps surprising patterns
of cultural cross-pollination. This forum will be structured around
cities as the units of analysis, and it will focus on the arena of
popular culture as played out in these city spaces. More specifically,
we invite paper proposals that focus on one of three realms of urban
popular culture - media (including cinema, television, popular music);
material culture (including spaces and their uses as well as
commodities), and leisure (including tourism and other activities). We
consider these exemplary of the circulation of objects, images, sounds,
and impressions on a level different from political programs, literature
and "fine arts." Several thematic threads will tie together this
consideration of the circulation of popular culture around and through
the Second world: mobility and cultural transmission; youth cultures and
student movements; gender; consumerism and hedonism; the state and
cultural exchange; technology and cultural dissemination; cosmopolitan
political mobilization. Our aims will be to consider what the "1960s"
meant in socialist countries, and to discuss the balance in the 1960s
between cultural global integration and continuing political
differentiation.

The core of the forum will be the socialist societies of eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union, but the forum would be enriched by participation
from scholars who study other socialist societies. We anticipate that
the conference will result in a published volume: submissions should be
original work, not previously published.

The conference organizers are Diane P. Koenker, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign (dkoenker at illinois.edu)
and Anne E. Gorsuch, University of British Columbia
(gorsuch at interchange.ubc.ca). We welcome advance inquiries.

Please send proposed paper title and abstracts to each of the organizers
by October 15, 2009. Proposals should indicate which of the conference
themes the paper addresses, and the term "Sixties" or "1960s" should be
explicit in the paper title. Selection of participants will be made by
November 30, 2009, and conference papers should be submitted by April 1,
2010.

The Ralph and Ruth Fisher Forum is held in conjunction with the Summer
Research Laboratory on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. The
conference is made possible by Mary and Hal Zirin's generous gift to the
Ralph and Ruth Fisher Endowment Fund in honor of Professor Ralph Fisher
and his wife Ruth. Ralph Fisher is Professor Emeritus of History at the
University of Illinois and founder of the Russian, East European, and
Eurasian Center and the Summer Research Lab.

Tracie L Wilson, PhD
Associate Director
Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
104 International Studies Building
910 South Fifth Street
Champaign, IL 61820
217.333.6022
wilsont at illinois.edu