CREES

This themed issue of Interstitio focuses on the complexity of official celebrations through the dimensions of time, space and agency. The aim is to reveal the multiple voices of memory, strategies of building/contesting new collective identity, emotional feelings of political fear/loyalty, nostalgic remembrances and, especially, the silent experiences that emerged in the relationship “political leaders - ordinary people” as they are reflected in the ambiguous process of building (post)socialist festive culture. The editors invite prospective authors to consider how celebrations offered space and created time for resistance, loyalty or escape; how they serve as frames for hope, solidarity, and remembrance; how socialist performances changed people’s views of their own pasts and identities; as well as how the propagandistic traits of festive culture are being revived, forgotten or marginalized since 1991.

We thus encourage the submission of papers that explore the images, symbols and meanings of public holidays through a concrete focus on the historical emergence of the holidays, and the individuals who created, implemented, celebrated, or ignored them. Papers should focus on the mobilization of holidays by official governments and/or other agents, and their motivations, and effects, and should be based on ethnographic fieldwork and/or historical sources. The editors are also interested in innovative approaches to the methodological complexities posed by the historical-comparative nature of this theme, and encourage authors to consider how (post)socialist festive culture compares with those found outside the region. Suggested focus questions include, but are not limited to the following: What were/are the limits of festive culture in shaping social realities? How did either the producers or the consumers of festive culture adapt to the limits imposed by (post)socialist cultural policies? How did/do ordinary people perceive the festive culture products sanctioned and promoted by the (post)socialist regimes? What practices of adaptation, negotiation, or resistance can be discerned, and how influential were they in undermining the legitimacy of (post)socialist nation-building? What historical narratives and systems of memory have supported the on-going formation of (post)socialist festive culture? What were the (post)socialist transformations in the case of religious or traditional feasts? And how did folklore and folklorists transform socialism and the socialist state? How can the revival of soviet ideological patterns in the festive culture after socialism be explained?

Important dates:
- submission deadline for abstracts: 6 May 2012
- submission deadline for papers: 30 June 2012
- target publication date: 10 September 2012

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically as an email attachment in MS Word format at interstitio@promemoria.md.

Submissions should follow the author guidelines available on the journal’s web-site http://promemoria.md.

Interstitio. East European Review of Historical and Cultural Anthropology (ISSN: 1857-049X) is a peer-reviewed journal published by the “ProMemoria” Institute of Social History at the Moldova State University in cooperation with the Institute of History of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Silesia. The journal provides a forum for discussion on topics of mutual interest to scholars from the field of historical and cultural anthropology and aims to foster interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of history, culture, and anthropology. Editors welcome papers contributing (in terms of empirical research and/or theoretical reflection) in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from the perspective of historical and cultural anthropology.

For any queries, please email the guest editors at lcojocari@gmail.com and cash@eth.mpg.de.