A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2025, 4: Download.
Articles written by Irina Sandomirskaja
In a conversation with Irina Sandomirskaja, Luba Jurgenson explores how the epoch-making event of Russia’s war in Ukraine has led to changes in the research field Slavic Studies, particularly memory studies and the studies of camp literature. They discuss how ideas of repetition and the return of history have a new resonance, and how increasing concerns are impacting a historical consciousness that demands epistemic justice.
The projection of imperial power through overtly religious pageantry, symbols and narratives has been a key element of Russia’s identity politics under Putin, informing the Kremlin’s aggressive international policies, but also shaping the domestic perceptions of Russia’s global role. In a conversation with Irina Sandomirskaja, Valentina Izmirlieva explores the utility of the Russian Orthodox Church in this process, and the significant transformations within the Orthodox sphere that facilitate the radical militarization of Russian society. She also discusses the role and future of multidisciplinary area studies as such, and in particular Slavic Studies.
The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, CBEES, arranges a series of multidisciplinary roundtables during 2021 with a focus on the 30 years period since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Irina Sandomirskaja in a conversation with philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Trawny on the subject of nationalism and cultural heritage.
The property of the disappeared first becomes mere “things” without name, use, or status. Then they turn into museum artifacts of ethnographic, aesthetic, or historical value (at least those of them that are not stolen by the “conquerors” nor rejected by the experts). Then, again, with the collapse of the museum project, what used to be displayed as cultural heritage turns again into “just things”. They burden their custodians who only wish to get rid of them.
In general, social disasters always result in the disproportionate excess of things: while humans perish en masse, artifacts survive in the form of market commodities and museum exhibit; as human life extinguishes in catastrophes, the life of objects gets more and more active in market exchanges, expropriations, and lootings. The history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century has witnessed many such episodes.
It is here claimed that it is practically impossible to determine whether the collector and connoisseur in question (namely Igor Immanuilovich Grabar, 1879—1960) was, indeed, saving his objects from scattering and destruction — or contributing to their further enslavement by exploiting them in a capacity that was radically alien, if not inimical, to their nature.
The purpose of the conference was to establish new points of contact between the actively developing traditional Bakhtin studies (in literature, language, and cultural theory), on the one hand, and those new directions in research that have discovered the importance of Bakhtin’s ideas in new applications in the humanities, social sciences, education, artistic research, and art practices.
Irina Sandomirskaja, professor of cultural studies at CBEES, Södertörn University, was awarded the most prestigious Russian prize for literary scholarship, […]
The theme of the conference, "Beyond Transition", reflects a critical phase in current research on Eastern Europe and highlights the need for theoretical and methodological revision noted by many.
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.