Call for Papers
Conference dates: Thursday 10 to Saturday 12 September 2009 at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.
Organisers: Dr Kevin McDermott (
) and Dr Matthew Stibbe (
), both in the Department of History, Sheffield Hallam University
Keynote Speakers: Robin Okey (University of Warwick) Pavel Seifter (Former Czech ambassador to London)
The aim of this conference is to take a fresh look at the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe to mark the occasion of the twentieth anniversary in the autumn of 2009. The approach is broadly historical, but we would welcome proposals from a range of different disciplines, such as Cultural and Gender/Women’s Studies, Sociology, Modern Languages and of course History. By bringing together scholars working on the 1989 revolutions in national and transnational contexts, we hope to make a distinctive and worthwhile contribution to this area.
Key themes considered could include:
i.Protest movements and crowds
ii.Strategies and responses of regimes
iii.The origin and role of civic groups
iv.The external context (Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, Bush, Kohl, Thatcher and Mitterand in the West)
v.Round-table discussions, elections and the end of revolutionary protests 1989 in popular and official memory vi.Comparisons with earlier uprisings against communist rule (1953, 1956, 1968, 1980-81)
vii.Sources and archives
We invite contributions from scholars working on all Soviet-bloc Eastern European countries which saw the overthrow of communist rule in 1989/90, including the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. We are also looking for contributions on the role and significance of external players, particularly Gorbachev’s Soviet Union and the leading western nations (USA, Britain, West Germany, France).
A key element of this conference is the planned publication of a selection of papers in an edited volume (projected publication date 2011). The organisers have published two previous collections of essays on post-1945 Eastern Europe: Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule (Oxford: Berg, 2006); and Stalinist Terror in Eastern Europe: Elite Purges and Mass Repression (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming in 2009).
Contributors should seek funding from their own institution in the first instance, but it is anticipated that some support might become available through potential sponsors.
Please send us proposals, including working title and brief description of your paper (max. 350 words), by 31 July 2008.