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<div class="moz-forward-container"> Dear Colleagues,<br>
<br>
We are excited to invite you to the international winter school
‘Slavic – Caucasian – Asian – Baltic – Soviet Entanglements:
Revisiting Disciplinary Borders,’ which will take place on
12.-14.02.2026 at the Institute of Slavic Languages and
Literatures, University of Tübingen.<br>
<br>
With kind regards, <br>
<br>
Aleksandra Konarzewska<br>
Anastasiia Sergeeva<br>
<br>
--------------------------<br>
‘Slavic – Caucasian – Asian – Baltic – Soviet Entanglements:
Revisiting Disciplinary Borders’<br>
<br>
This interdisciplinary Winter School examines the shifting
boundaries of Slavic, Soviet, Caucasian, Asian, and Baltic Studies
in light of current geopolitical transformations and the academic
“decolonization” of Slavic and East (Central) European Studies.
Building on the insight that inherited disciplinary frameworks –
often shaped by Cold War logics and Soviet- or Russian-centered
perspective – no longer suffice to analyse post-Soviet dynamics,
the program foregrounds voices long marginalized within
traditional scholarly paradigms. Key questions include: How can
postcolonial and decolonial approaches be adapted to the study of
former Soviet spaces? What new intellectual, literary, and
cultural alliances are emerging across these regions? How do
practices of multilingualism, canon formation, and resistance
reshape categories of identity and affiliation? <br>
The Winter School fosters collaborative, transdisciplinary
approaches that combine close literary and cultural analysis with
historical, political, and sociological perspectives. By mapping
overlaps, frictions, and redefinitions between post-Soviet,
postcolonial, and transregional currents, provides a platform to
formulate new answers to pressing questions about academic and
cultural identity, discipline borders, and knowledge production
across former Soviet spaces (and beyond).<br>
<br>
Venue: University of Tübingen, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074 Tübingen
(rooms 037 and 426). Visitors are kindly requested to register in
advance at slavistik[at]uni-tuebingen.de<br>
<br>
Organizers: Dr. Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anastasiia Sergeeva<br>
<br>
Program:<br>
<br>
<u>12th February 2026, Thursday</u><br>
10:00-10:30 Opening, Welcome Speech<br>
Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anastasiia Sergeeva<br>
<br>
10:30-12:00 Keynote lecture & Discussion: Prof. Dr. Botakoz
Kassymbekova (Zürich)<br>
“Destalinization as Decolonization”<br>
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Schamma Schahadat (Tübingen)<br>
<br>
13:00-15:00 Panel I: Rethinking Discourses and Paradigms<br>
• Dr. Diana Kudaibergenova (London): “Postsoviet no more or
Multiple Pasts?”<br>
• Dr. Galyna Spodarets (Potsdam): “Cancel Culture: Rethinking
an Imported Concept through a Postcolonial Lens”<br>
• Prof. Alima Bissenova (Astana): “Nation-building and
Postcolonial Discourses "from below" and Changing Linguistic and
Cultural Hierarchies in Kazakhstan”<br>
<br>
15:30-17:00 Panel II: Literature, Culture and Nation
(Re-)Building in Caucasus<br>
• Natso Beridze (Tübingen): “Neither Voice nor Exit: Medea and
the Limits of Postcolonial Agency”<br>
• Sona Mnatsakanyan (Berlin): “Mkrtich Armen’s Yerevan (1931)
and the Limits of Soviet Anti-Orientalism”<br>
<br>
18:00-19:30 Book Presentation: Routledge Handbook of
Contemporary Belarus, edited by Aliaksei Kazharski (2026)<br>
Discussants: Prof. Aliaksei Kazharski (Prague), Dr. Aleksandra
Konarzewska (Tübingen) <br>
<br>
<u>13th February 2026, Friday</u><br>
10:30-12:00 Keynote lecture & Discussion: Dr. Zaal
Andronikashvili (Berlin)<br>
“Hegemony without the State: Cultural Sovereignty in
Nineteenth-Century Georgia”<br>
Moderation: Dr. Olena Saikovska (Tübingen)<br>
<br>
13:00-15:00 Panel III: Perspectives from Central Asia<br>
• Dr. Aksana Ismailbekova (Berlin): “The Politics of Kinship
Concepts: Uruu, “Clan,” and the Afterlives of Soviet and Western
Knowledge”<br>
• Yultus Savrova (Berlin): “The Geopoetic Symbolism of Cities
in Ziya Samedi's Historical Novel "The Mystery of the Years": A
Uyghur Soviet Writer's Perspective”<br>
• Jonas Wieschollek (Cambridge): “Russian Legal Orientalism:
International Law and the Conquest of Central Asia (1850–1910s)”<br>
<br>
15:30-17:00 Panel IV: History and Memory<br>
• Evgeny Zavadskiy (Tartu): “The Image of the Border between
the Empire of the "Red Dictator" and Europe (Based on Material
from Russian Newspapers in Estonia of the early 1930s)”<br>
• Dr. Aleksandra Konarzewska (Tübingen): “World War II and the
Blind Spots of Western Modern Memory”<br>
<br>
18:00-19:30 Keynote lecture & Discussion: Prof. Dr. Susanne
Frank (Berlin)<br>
“Facing epistemic imperialism: Focusing literature's locatedness”<br>
Moderation: Anastasiia Sergeeva (Tübingen)<br>
<br>
<i>Gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und
Raumfahrt (BMFTR) und dem Wissenschaftsministerium
Baden-Württemberg im Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie von Bund und
Ländern</i><br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Aleksandra Konarzewska <br>
<br>
<b> Aleksandra Konarzewska, Dr. phil. (she/her) </b> <br>
<i> Historytelling. Narrating the Past in Contemporary Polish
Gonzo Literature </i> (DFG, 2021-2026) <br>
Institute of Slavic Languages and Literatures <br>
University of Tübingen · Germany <br>
+49 7071 29-78492 <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="http://www.slavistik.uni-tuebingen.de"
moz-do-not-send="true">www.slavistik.uni-tuebingen.de</a> <br>
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