Erik Martin is a scholar of Slavic studies and works on conflicting time regimes in Russian literature, ecocriticism, and Eastern European Realisms. He is currently working as a postdoc researcher in the project “Europäische Zeiten / European Times – A Transregional Approach to the Societies of Central and Eastern Europe” (EUTIM) at the European University Viadrina.
Kategorie: TraFo
TraFo
Memory and the Repressed: The Possibility of Therapeutic Histories of the 1980s
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
By Idriss Jebari. In their hearts, historians are first storytellers who seek to offer intelligible narratives of the past. Ever since Hayden White’s Metahistory, the border between history and literature has become less meaningful – to the joy of some and anxiety of others. Yet, valid questions remain: can a passage from a novel be used with the same factual authority as, say, a newspaper clipping, a police report, or a population register? What about a personal diary or a set of exchanged letters?
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Against Remembering: The Fictional Truth of a Massacre
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
By Samad Alavi. Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness anthologizes poems that testify to some of the last century’s darkest political tragedies. In her introduction, Forché establishes her basic criteria for selection. First, she includes only poems, as she wishes to demonstrate that the old “arguments about poetry and politics ha[ve] been too narrowly defined” and that it is possible to understand poems as residing between the personal and the political.
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Rethinking East European Studies in Times of Upheaval: Some Reflections on Ukrainian Studies in Germany (and Not Only)
by editorial board •
By Andrii Portnov. Ukrainian history and literature in the German higher education system are the disciplines whose institutional weakness is more than obvious. Ukraine itself, in the eyes of a large part of German (including academic) society, still does not have enough cultural and historical agency and remains ‘in the shadow of Russia’.
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A New Iran Has Been Born — A Global Iran
by editorial board •
Interview with Asef Bayat. This interview was published in Persian on Oct. 10 by the Tehran daily Etemaad. Shortly after its publication, the Iranian authorities ordered the newspaper to take the interview down from its website. The interview had already gone viral in Iran and abroad, and several other outlets that had reposted it were likewise forced to unpublish it.
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Picturing the Labor Landscape: The Silahtarağa Power Plant and Istanbul’s Electrical Infrastructure
by editorial board •
By Nurçin İleri. This essay centres on a series of photographs, which I first came across at an auction in November 2020. These black and white images depict Istanbul’s first urban scale power plant, the Silahtarağa campus and extension of the grid to the city in the early 1910s.
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Faith Without Compulsion: Reflections on Iran
by editorial board •
By Zahiye Kundos. Above and beyond the heartache that recent events in Iran engender among Muslims and people who are in solidarity with us, it harms what we truly and communally care about: finding creative ways to reassert who we are and what we stand for.
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Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe – Papers II
by eutim •
This blogpost is the second part of a summary of the contributions to the EUTIM conference “Time Out of Joint: Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe”. At the centre of the event were were narratives of time and conceptualizations of history in Central and Eastern European poetry, novels, film, and drama.
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Figuring a Women’s Revolution: Bodies Interacting with Their Images
by editorial board •
By L. Is the uprising in Iran a feminist revolution? This essay is an attempt to understand an intuition born of experiencing a gap: A gap between viewing photos and videos of protests online, and presence in the street. It’s an effort to explicate the short-circuit that courses in the opening between these two domains—virtual space and the reality of the street—in this historic moment.
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Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe
by eutim •
At the centre of the EUTIM annual conference 2022, entitled “Time Out of Joint: Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe”, were narratives of time and conceptualizations of history in Central and Eastern European poetry, novels, film, and drama. The event featured some of the leading scholars of Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, Czech, Polish and Ukrainian literatures. This contribution is the first part of a dossier with the paper abstracts.
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How Iran’s Rich Literature Can Help You Better Understand the Protests of Today
by editorial board •
By Letitia Nanquette. The images of the current protests in Iran are striking and possibly unexpected for some. However, there is a long history of political movements in Iran, and throughout this history, literary creations and politics have influenced each other.
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Ukrainian Comics and War in Ukraine
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
By Svitlana Pidoprygora. In the autumn of 2013, Euromaidan started in Ukraine as a response to the authorities’ decision to end European integration processes and focus on the Customs Union with the Russian Federation. Thousands of people went to protests on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (literally, ‘Independence Square’) in Kyiv and the central squares of other Ukrainian cities, demonstrating society’s support for the European vector of development and protesting against the arbitrariness of the authorities.
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Normalization of Violence Against Women in Iran
by editorial board •
On 14 September, Mahsa Amini was detained by the Iranian Police because of an „improper hijab.“ Two days later, she was dead. For Iranians living under the fundamentalist state’s oppression of women during the last 43 years, this is not an exceptional incident.
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Remembering Atrocities through Comedy: Maghrebi Comedians on European Stages
by MECAM •
By Yousra Sbaihi. Not many Maghrebis have the chance to perform on some of Europe’s most prestigious comedy shows. However, the few who have successfully climbed their way up to the stage, I advance, are disrupting the theatrics of white francophone stand-up shows.
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La comédie pour la mémorisation des atrocités : Les comédiens maghrébins sur les scènes européennes
by MECAM •
Par Yousra Sbaihi. Peu de Maghrébins ont la chance de se produire dans les spectacles d’humour les plus prestigieux d’Europe. Cependant, les rares qui ont réussi à se frayer un chemin jusqu’à la scène, à mon avis, viennent bousculer la théâtralité des spectacles de stand-up francophones blancs.
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Web Scraping and Digital Archives: A Program for the Retrieval of the Transcripts of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia
by editorial board •
By Katarina Ristić and Nikola Ristić. Digital archives have created a number of opportunities for researchers, from accessing files and material collections irrespective of the archive’s location, to the possibility to search and obtain large amounts of material in a short time. At the same time, digital collections might be overwhelming, amounting to hundreds or even thousands of files which might be of interest for the research.
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Time Out of Joint – An Interview with Bohdan Tokarskyi and Alexander Wöll
by eutim •
From the 15th to the 17th of September 2022, the second EUTIM Annual Conference, “Time Out of Joint: Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe”, will take place at Potsdam University as a hybrid event. We spoke to the conveners, Bohdan Tokarskyi and Alexander Wöll, to learn more about the conference and how it connects to current political and cultural developments.
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Turkish Literature as World Literature – Book Review
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
By Simla Dogangun. There has been a drastic change in the traditional conception of world literature in the last two decades: from a space that consists of canonical, high-cultural texts which have traditionally acted as arbiters of literary value, it has transformed into a capitalist-driven nebulous field in which literary works circulate in the same manner as goods do.
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طاقةُ الدراساتِ الأدبيةِ العربية:(إعادة) تموضع حقل الدراساتِ الأدبيةِ العربية بين الفروع ’المنهجية‘ ودراسات المناطق في الأكاديميا الغربية
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
ربارة وينكلر (الدراسات العربية، جامعة مونستر، ألمانيا). إذا ما كان يُنظر إلى الإنسانيات عمومًا على أنّها أقلّ تهيّؤًا من العلوم الاجتماعية والطبيعية وعلوم الحياة لمواجهة تحدّيات راهنة أو إنتاج ’معرفة قابلة للاستخدام‘، فإنّ هذا يصحّ أكثر على الفروع التي تُعنى بالأعمال التخييلية والجماليات. ويميل الطلّاب في حقلنا – حقل الدراسات العربية أو الإسلامية أو الشرق أوسطية – إلى اختيار مواضيع متعلّقة بالإسلام السياسي أو الحركات الاجتماعية أو الشريعة الإسلامية، إذ يبدو أنّ هذه المواضيع توفّر فرصًا أفضل للعمل قياسًا بسواها. وكذلك يركّز الخطاب العامّ الأوسع على هذه الضروب من المواضيع بصورة أساسية.
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The Potential of Arabic Literary Studies: (Re)Situating the Field Between ‘Systematic’ Disciplines and Area Studies in Western Academia
by Forum Transregionale Studien •
By Barbara Winckler (Arabic Studies, University of Münster, Germany). If the humanities in general are commonly perceived as less apt to address actual challenges or produce ‘utilizable knowledge’ than the social, natural and life sciences, this is even more so for disciplines dealing with fictional works and aesthetics.
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The Military Destruction of the Late Soviet Urban Space in Ukraine and the Demise of the Soviet Man
by editorial board •
By Vadym Ilin. In the pre-war address in 2022 Vladimir Putin transparently hinted at the significance of the material space as a factor to “rewrite” history: “We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine”.
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Ukraine: Between West and Different Easts
by eutim •
By Andrii Portnov. ‘Ukraine between East and West’ is one of the most common metaphors of Ukrainian historiography. It has been regarded as a stable metaphor, one that is simultaneously productive, open and topical.
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Academic Freedom between Ideals and Daily Challenges
by editorial board •
By Jernej Letnar Černič. For decades, pluralism, the rule of law, and human rights have been the backbone of constitutional democracies. Those ideals have been embraced by academia, at least in constitutional democracies.
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Nothing New in the East? What the West Overlooked – Or Ignored
by eutim •
By Andrii Portnov. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 came as a surprise to many in Western Europe. Perhaps even more surprising was the firm Ukrainian resistance. But why was this unexpected? Apparently, Putin’s worldview and Ukrainian reality were ignored for a long time.
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Im Osten nichts Neues: Was der Westen übersah – oder ignorierte
by eutim •
Die russische Invasion in die Ukraine im Februar 2022 kam für viele in Westeuropa überraschend. Vielleicht noch überraschender war der entschlossene Widerstand der Ukrainerinnen und Ukrainer. Doch warum? Putins Weltsicht und die ukrainische Realität wurden offenbar lange ignoriert.
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Ever-Present Tobacco Dust: Women’s Labor Conditions at the Cibali Tobacco Factory
by editorial board •
By Zehra Betül Atasoy. In early Republican Turkey (1923–1945), women workers – predominantly in tobacco, weaving, and the food industry – were gathered mainly in Istanbul, where industry was relatively more developed. Although the number of female workers in industrial production gradually increased, gender-based wage differences continued, with women earning less, and these workers were subjected to long hours and inadequate health and safety conditions.
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“A New Form of Evil Emerges Now” – A Conversation with Olha Honchar
by editorial board •
In March of this year, IIn mid-March of this year, I interviewed Olha Honchar, the head of Territory of Terror Museum in Lviv and the initiator of the Museum Crisis Center. We discussed the Territory of Terror in the context of Ukrainian political events, heritage protection during the war, and how Russian aggression compares to historical events.
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Digging Deeper: Contested Livelihoods and Sociocosmological Relations among Artisanal Miners in Laos
by editorial board •
By Oliver Tappe. When I first visited the Lao tin mining area by the river Nam Phathaen in 2019, I was struck by the image of local villagers digging small pits and tunnels next to the roaring excavators of a Chinese mining company operating in the area.
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Women Forgotten in the History of the Trade Union Movement: The Figure of Chérifa Messaadi
by MECAM •
By Arbia Selmi. Despite its important role in the history of Tunisia, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) is one of the most telling examples of the perpetuation of gender inequalities in Tunisia. The trade union environment is considered a male universe and is dominated by a patriarchal culture where women, until today, do not really find their place.
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Commemorating International Struggles at UGTT Sfax: Palestinians and Saddam Hussein
by MECAM •
By André Bank. Internationally, the standing and profile of Tunisia’s General Labor Union (French: ‘Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail’, UGTT) has been shaped by three broad images: The first image emanated from the UGTT’s active participation in the so-called Jasmine Revolution in 2011, when its leadership and members protested the ‘ancien régime’ of President Zine Abidin Ben Ali.
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Semantic Geo-Annotation for Ancient History and Beyond
by editorial board •
By Elton Barker. Sometime in the second century CE, Pausanias of Magnesia wrote the Periegesis Hellados (Description of Greece). Representing a unique deep dive into ancient Greece’s built environment to the level of individual statues and paintings, this text projects a tour of the Greek mainland in ten books, from Attica (I) to Phocis (X), in a clockwise circuit around the Peloponnese.
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Seven Men and One Table: The 20th Century through a Photograph
by MECAM •
By Elizabeth Bishop. A photograph near the bottom of the wall caught my attention at the Habib Achour exhibit in the Kerkennah branch of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT, General Union of Tunisian Workers). A caption provides the information that the black-and-white photograph was taken on 26 January 1978.
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Touche pas à ma UGTT: The Syndical Movement as a ‘Secular Sacred’ Value
by MECAM •
By Alyssa Miller. In a 2012 essay published on the webzine Nawaat, sociologist Hela Yousfi alleged that the Ennahda party – then head of Tunisia’s transitional government and dominant partner in the ‘Troika’ coalition – was surreptitiously attacking the UGTT by dumping garbage in front of its regional branches.
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The Rational Factory, Labour, and the Fordist Visual Imaginary
by editorial board •
By Rick Halpern. The first decades of the twentieth century were a remarkable period for heavy industry across much of North America and Europe. Mass production of goods such as rubber and steel – and consumer products like automobiles and radios – reached unprecedented levels.
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Trauma and the 1980s in Arabic Literary Studies
by editorial board •
What is a literary history of the present? There are many ways to imagine such a project and its debt to Foucauldian genealogy, from accounts of how literature writes history to how the notion of literature is a historical aspect of the present. This essay, part of the upcoming workshop, “The Literary 1980s in the MENA: Towards a History of the Present”, asks what trauma has come to name in Arabic literary studies since the 1980s.
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The UGTT: A “Counter-Power” in Contentious Times – Notes from the Field
by MECAM •
By Alyssa Miller and Arbia Selmi. Since the time of its foundation in 1946, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) has shifted its focus from trade union activism to political action. Due to its participation in the independence struggle, alongside the national liberation movement led by the Neo-Destour party, the UGTT has enjoyed unparalleled historical legitimacy on the Tunisian political scene.
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Constructing Global Order – Book Review
by editorial board •
By Ulf Engel. Four years after his ground-breaking presidential address to the International Studies Association (ISA) in 2014, in which the author called for decentring the Western-dominated field of international Studies, Amitav Acharya has produced a monograph on global order in which the contours of a different way of practicing international studies are outlined.
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Philology and Microhistory: A Conversation with Carlo Ginzburg
by editorial board •
Islam Dayeh in conversation with Carlo Ginzburg. In this Philological Conversation, Carlo Ginzburg reflects on the place of philology in his work and explores the connections between philology, microhistory, and casuistry. We talk about the people who inspired his early thinking, including his father Leone Ginzburg, his mother Natalia, and his grandfather, moving on to Erich Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, and Sebastiano Timpanaro.
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Notes from Another Exodus: The Four-Month Struggle to Evacuate Afghan Poets and Scholars
by editorial board •
By Fatemeh Shams. On 15 August 2021, Kabul fell to the Taliban, after twenty years of US-led military occupation. As the situation escalated over the following days and weeks, harrowing footage of airport stampedes, Taliban violence, protestors, chaos, and panic dominated the news. Four months later, the news cycle may have quietened, but the crisis in Afghanistan intensifies every day.
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The Russian War against Ukraine: Middle East Food Security at Risk
by editorial board •
By Eckart Woertz. As a region, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the world’s largest grain importer. Approximately 30 per cent of global exports of wheat and barley, 20 per cent of corn, and a whopping three-quarters of sunflower oil come from Ukraine and Russia.