contributors

Articles by Charlotte Bydler and Dan Karlholm

1. Azerbaijan’s Mysterious Snap Presidential Election

   The proposition that a Presidential Election was held early because it was simply better to ‘get it out of the way’ in order to be able to focus on time consuming other events might appear far-fetched in other contexts. When considering the history of elections in Azerbaijan it appears to make sense. In fact, it is almost more puzzling why elections are held at all – when everybody knows who will win. But, in difference to the predictable result, the rumors and speculations preceding the election are intriguing and do tell us a lot about what is going on in Azerbaijan.

2. Roundtable. Threats to academic freedom

   Academic freedom is under attack. One example of mobilizing in order to protect academic freedom is the roundtable that was organized in connection with 2017 CBEES Annual conference Competing Futures: From Rupture to Re-articulation, at Södertörn University November 30 to December 1.

3. Uprootedeness in the Polish-German Borderlands. The meaning of the transformation revised

   Dystopia’s Provocateurs: Peasants, State and Informality in the Polish-German Borderlands, Edyta Materka, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017, 234 pages.

4. The avant-gardist Ivan Aksionov. A life marked by ruptures and paradoxes

   Vid avantgardets korsvägar: Om Ivan Aksionov och den ryska modernismen [At the cross roads of the avant-garde: On Ivan Aksionov and Russian modernism, Lars Kleberg, Stockholm Natur & Kultur, 2015, 248 pages.

5. Nord Stream, mediation, and the Council of Baltic Sea States

   Recent discussions on expanding Nord Stream highlight the fact that this unilateral effort by Russia and Germany has stirred further unrest among the other littoral states. Here it is argued that the EU, which has been repeatedly proposed as a mediator of the conflict, is unsuitable for this. Instead it is suggested that the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS), are more likely to be accepted as mediators, and more likely to be successful in that role.

6. Nuclear legacies: A saga of modernity

   The conference Nuclear Legacies: Community, Memory, Waste, and Nature took place from September 14 to 16, 2017, at Södertörn University. It gathered about forty scholars engaged in nuclear issues, coming from twelve different countries and representing many different disciplines.

7. The butterfly effect in history-making Conservative subjectivities of women in the anti-communist discourse in Slovakia

   The oral history archive of the non-profit organization Nenápadní hrdinovia (The Inconspicous Heroes) is considered as an example of a wider trend in Slovakia to exploit women’s memories for the purposes of conservative or nationalist interpretations of history, placing women in the traditional roles and discourses of victims, auxiliaries, and self-sacrifice. Using the concrete oral history project as a vehicle and a case study for the argument, the article contributes to the understanding of the current discursive landscape of memory of state socialism and of gender in Slovakia.

8. Female terrorists: political or just mad? Conservative narratives in the historiography of early 20th century female terrorism in Russia

   This article discusses the main narratives employed by conservatives at the beginning of the 20th century to explain the political violence committed by women, and it shows how these narratives have been employed in the scholarly analysis of the topic. The article provides an answer to the question why progovernmental conservative views on the female terrorists and terrorism in prerevolutionary Russia have never been influential in the historiography.

9. Experiences of women at war Servicewomen during WWII and in the Ukrainian armed forces in the conflict in Donbas

   This paper examines women’s contribution to war and the perceptions of that contribution by comparing experiences of women in the Red Army during the Second World War and in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the conflict in the Donbas region. Here it is argued that in both cases structural gender discrimination was ingrained in the military, which accepted women’s contribution to war in times of need, but treated that contribution as subsidiary, thereby distorting men’s and women’s experiences of warfare and facilitating the instrumentalized militarization of women.

10. Beasts, demons, and cold bitches Memories of communist women in contemporary Poland

    Agnieszka Mrozik analyzes the portrayals of women communists in the Stalinist period in Poland, produced in the framework of nationalist history during the illiberal turn. She argues that biographies of women dignitaries served the broader political function of delivering a cautionary tale against “excessive” liberation of women, so that female communists were often presented as beasts and demons rather than political agents.

11. « Older posts

    Newer posts »