CfP: Performances of Belonging? Popular Entertainment, Race, and Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, 1880-today
Since gaining ground in the late nineteenth century due to increased urbanisation and leisure time, popular entertainment has often been a space where transgression and marginality have flourished. At the same time, its influential role in the daily life of the masses has led to its instrumentalisation by political powers and authority figures towards goals of nation-building and inclusion or exclusion along categories of belonging.
This workshop looks at the dynamics of racialisation, ethnicisation and nationalisation revolving around popular entertainment and performance. It draws on recent scholarship on the dynamic appeal of national categories and on the participation of Central and Eastern Europe within a global system of racial inequality. Accordingly, examining such issues must no longer depend on the binary distinction between ‘the imagined hierarchical poles of white and black’ (Baker et al. 2024), or on delimited racialised, ethnicised, and nationalised groups (Ginderachter and Fox 2019, Pârvulescu and Boatcă 2022, Stynen et al. 2020). Instead, the ambiguities and pluralities of the region must be taken into account.
These include but are not limited to: the constitution of groups along racialised, ethnicised, and nationalised categories of belonging; attempts at nationalising everyday life; the treatment of minorities and the racialisation of Jews, Roma, and Muslims across the region; the positioning of Central and Eastern European states vis-à-vis ‘Western’ or ‘Eastern’ powers; the imagining of ideal citizens for strengthening the nation; the position of Central and Eastern European individuals themselves in other regions; and the presence of racialised individuals from other parts of the world in Central and Eastern Europe .
Positioned between the everyday and the extraordinary, we consider the field of popular entertainment and performance one in which these aspects are magnified, providing a fruitful space for examination. Previous research has focused on ethnic shows and the encounter between Central Eastern European audiences and non-European performers (Czarnecka and Demski 2021) and the positioning of cultural entrepreneurs in transnational and local contexts (Dietze and Vari 2023). The workshop wishes to widen the field of enquiry, highlighting the pluralities described above within the region and in connection to other spaces.
We choose a long durée time frame from 1880 to present day to show how the entanglements between popular entertainment, racial inequalities, and nationalism have a long history in the region, and a strong bearing on present concerns. Contents and performances have been reworked, adjusted, censored, and rediscovered over time, strongly influenced by political and social transition. Entertainment has thus been playing a significant role in the construction of national heritage and myths. For example, popular music under Hungary’s illiberal regime is increasingly incorporating an imagined ‘nomadic’ and ‘Eastern’ past. On the other hand, the stigma attached to music produced by Roma performers in Romania has deep-seated historical roots. A long durée perspective allows us to carve out these continuities and discontinuities and we encourage you to consider this aspect in your proposals.
The workshop seeks to address a wide range of topics and questions, including but not limited to:
The relationship between “race,” “ethnicity,” and “nationalism”:
– the racialisation, ethnicisation, and nationalisation of people and spaces in relation to performance;
– the usage of constructed categories such as “race” and “ethnicity” in the context of the region;
– the (nationalist) appropriation or contestation of performers, events, audiences, and venues;
– the careers of performers and cultural entrepreneurs who belong to racialised groups, such as Roma, Jewish, Muslim and Black performers, but also minority groups throughout Central and Eastern Europe;
Mobility and control:
– the mobility of performers throughout the region and outside it;
– the control and channelling of entertainment and mobility by authorities on different levels;
Modernity and tradition in heterogeneous spaces:
– the role of language and religion in the entertainment practices of multiethnic urban spaces;
– the competing forces of modernisation, cultural preservation and national myth-making, and how they are reflected and shaped by performance practices;
Performance as agent and locus of projections:
– the means through which performance reflects and engages with social and political issues, and may also be instrumentalised in the service of nationhood construction;
– the means through which performance can be a space that promotes transnational collaboration and gives voice to marginalised groups;
– the challenges of researching certain performative practices due to marginalisation, precarity and practices of suppression by majority groups and state actors (Taylor 2003);
Case studies and comparative analyses:
– examinations of specific performances, entertainers, or events that highlight the interplay between entertainment cultures, racialisation or ethnicisation of people, and nationalism;
– comparative studies across different time periods and/or different Central and Eastern European countries to understand broader patterns and unique deviations.
Submission Guidelines:
Interested participants are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words along with a short bio (150 words) by October 1st, 2024. Submissions should be sent to alexandra.chiriac@leibniz-gwzo.de or vincent.hoyer@leibniz-gwzo.de with the subject line “Workshop Performances.”
Selected participants will be notified by November 15, 2024. We would like to request pre-circulated draft workshop papers (2-3.000 words) to encourage discussion. These are expected by March 31, 2025.
Funding for Travel and Accommodation:
We have funding available for participants, intended to cover reimbursement for travel and accommodation expenses. Please indicate in your application if you require financial support.
Publication Opportunity:
Selected papers from the workshop will be considered for publication in a special issue of a journal subject to peer review.
Contact Information:
For any inquiries, please contact the workshop organisers at alexandra.chiriac@leibniz-gwzo.de or vincent.hoyer@leibniz-gwzo.de.
Organizing Committee:
Dr. Alexandra Chiriac
Vincent Hoyer, M.A.
Prof. Dr. Maren Röger (all Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO))
We look forward to receiving your contributions and to an engaging and fruitful workshop.
Literature:
Baker, Catherine Bogdan C. Iacob, Anikó Imre, and James Mark (eds), Off white: Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race (Manchester University Press, 2024).
Demski, Dagnosław and Dominika Czarnecka (eds.), Staged Otherness: Ethnic Shows in Central and Eastern Europe, 1850–1939 (Central European University Press, 2021).
Dietze, Antje and Alexander Vari (eds.), Urban Popular Culture and Entertainment. Experiences from Northern, East-Central, and Southern Europe, 1870s-1930s (Routledge Studies in Cultural History, 2022).
Ginderachter, Maarten van and Jon E. Fox (eds.), National Indifference and the History of Nationalism in Modern Europe (Routledge, 2019).
Pârvulescu, Anca and Manuela Boatcă, Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania Across Empires (Cornell University, 2022).
Stynen, Andreas, Maarten van Ginderachter, and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (eds.), Emotions and Everyday Nationalism in Modern European History (Routledge, 2020).
Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2003).
The workshop is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the project “Freizeit unter Kontrolle? – Die Politisierung von Vergnügungskulturen in den multiethnischen Städten Warschau, Posen und Lemberg 1890-1914”, situated at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO). Alexandra Chiriac’s project “Another Jazz Age: Black Performers in Romania, 1910 to 1940” is conducted at the invitation of Prof. Dr. Maren Röger through a Henriette Herz Scouting-Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation.
Performances of Belonging? Popular Entertainment, Race, and Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, 1880-today., In: H-Soz-Kult, 03.07.2024, <www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-145185>.