[KOSME] International Winter School ‘Slavic – Caucasian – Asian – Baltic – Soviet Entanglements: Revisiting Disciplinary Borders,’ Tübingen, 12.-14.02.2026

[Forschungsstelle KOSME]

  Dear Colleagues,

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.

With kind regards,

Aleksandra Konarzewska
Anastasiia Sergeeva

--------------------------
‘Slavic – Caucasian – Asian – Baltic – Soviet Entanglements: Revisiting 
Disciplinary Borders’

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?
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).

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

Organizers: Dr. Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anastasiia Sergeeva

Program:

_12th February 2026, Thursday_
10:00-10:30    Opening, Welcome Speech
Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anastasiia Sergeeva

10:30-12:00    Keynote lecture & Discussion: Prof. Dr. Botakoz 
Kassymbekova (Zürich)
“Destalinization as Decolonization”
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Schamma Schahadat (Tübingen)

13:00-15:00    Panel I: Rethinking Discourses and Paradigms
•    Dr. Diana Kudaibergenova (London): “Postsoviet no more or Multiple 
Pasts?”
•    Dr. Galyna Spodarets (Potsdam): “Cancel Culture: Rethinking an 
Imported Concept through a Postcolonial Lens”
•    Prof. Alima Bissenova (Astana): “Nation-building and Postcolonial 
Discourses "from below" and Changing Linguistic and Cultural Hierarchies 
in Kazakhstan”

15:30-17:00    Panel II: Literature, Culture and Nation (Re-)Building in 
Caucasus
•    Natso Beridze (Tübingen): “Neither Voice nor Exit: Medea and the 
Limits of Postcolonial Agency”
•    Sona Mnatsakanyan (Berlin): “Mkrtich Armen’s Yerevan (1931) and the 
Limits of Soviet Anti-Orientalism”

18:00-19:30    Book Presentation: Routledge Handbook of Contemporary 
Belarus, edited by Aliaksei Kazharski (2026)
Discussants: Prof. Aliaksei Kazharski (Prague), Dr. Aleksandra 
Konarzewska (Tübingen)

_13th February 2026, Friday_
10:30-12:00    Keynote lecture & Discussion: Dr. Zaal Andronikashvili 
(Berlin)
“Hegemony without the State: Cultural Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century 
Georgia”
Moderation: Dr. Olena Saikovska (Tübingen)

13:00-15:00    Panel III: Perspectives from Central Asia
•    Dr. Aksana Ismailbekova (Berlin): “The Politics of Kinship 
Concepts: Uruu, “Clan,” and the Afterlives of Soviet and Western Knowledge”
•    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”
•    Jonas Wieschollek (Cambridge): “Russian Legal Orientalism: 
International Law and the Conquest of Central Asia (1850–1910s)”

15:30-17:00    Panel IV: History and Memory
•    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)”
•    Dr. Aleksandra Konarzewska (Tübingen): “World War II and the Blind 
Spots of Western Modern Memory”

18:00-19:30    Keynote lecture & Discussion: Prof. Dr. Susanne Frank 
(Berlin)
“Facing epistemic imperialism: Focusing literature's locatedness”
Moderation: Anastasiia Sergeeva (Tübingen)

/Gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und 
Raumfahrt (BMFTR) und dem Wissenschaftsministerium Baden-Württemberg im 
Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie von Bund und Ländern/

-- 
Aleksandra Konarzewska

*Aleksandra Konarzewska, Dr. phil. (she/her) *
/Historytelling. Narrating the Past in Contemporary Polish Gonzo 
Literature / (DFG, 2021-2026)
Institute of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Tübingen · Germany
+49 7071 29-78492
www.slavistik.uni-tuebingen.de
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