{"id":29166,"date":"2022-01-12T10:53:17","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T10:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=29166"},"modified":"2022-01-12T10:53:17","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T10:53:17","slug":"cfp-spatial-politics-in-authoritarian-and-totalitarian-regimes-open-questions-and-new-research-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=29166","title":{"rendered":"CfP: Spatial Politics in Authoritarian and Totalitarian Regimes: Open Questions and New Research Approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Graduate students and other researchers are invited to submit proposals for a workshop titled \u201cSpatial Politics in Authoritarian and Totalitarian Regimes: Open Questions and New Research Approaches.\u201d The workshop will take place on 12th<\/sup> of April 2022<\/strong> in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the premises of the Study Centre for National Reconciliation (Tivolska 42, 1000 Ljubljana).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thematic focus<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the defining features of the \u201cshort 20th<\/sup> century\u201d has been the rise of the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Although the differences between many of those authoritarian and totalitarian states have been profound, there were also a number of similarities and common characteristics. One of those was the extensive employment of spatial politics (e. g. building monuments, fostering certain architectural styles, developing new urban spaces etc.) as means of projecting power, expressing values or (re)shaping a new man. One need only think about many building projects undertaken (or projected) by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, characterized by their excessive monumentality coupled with classicist architectural aesthetics. However, the spatial politics of totalitarianism was far from exclusively reactionary or monolithic, as it was also deeply connected with new avant-garde forms of architecture and urbanism.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its complexity, as well as the fact that architectural and urbanist projects continue to shape urban environments and cultural landscape in general until today, has contributed to the fact that this research topic has already drawn much attention from international humanities and social sciences, especially since the 1980s. This rise in interest has been influenced by a simultaneous turn towards cultural history in its variegated forms. As spatial politics occupies a complex point at the intersection of political power, ideology, collective memory and identity formation, it offers a unique research opportunity not only for cultural history, but especially for interdisciplinary research. Scholars have thus extensively studied a number of research topics connected with the field of spatial politics, but most of the existing research remains confined within single national or ideological paradigm. Therefore, there exist a number of detailed studies dealing with, say, the history of architecture and its functionality in Nazi Germany, but not a lot of work studying this topic in a comparative and\/or transnational perspective. Furthermore, there are also a number of (newer) research approaches which can be successfully applied to the study of spatial politics in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, such as the methodology of border studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workshop is intended to stimulate new insights in this research topic by bringing together scholars working on those research questions from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. It is intended primarily for doctoral students who have completed substantial archival research, but senior researchers working on the theme at hand are invited as well. Workshop themes include (but are not limited to) the following broadly conceptualized interrelated research questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n