Call for Papers

Conference:

Aesthetics of Resistance. Partisan Art and Feminist Partisan Cultural Practice in Yugoslavia and Carinthia

When: 27. and 28.10.2023

Where: University of Klagenfurt (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt/Celovec)

Short description

Our goal is to organize a conference that addresses and questions current artistic and scientific positions on partisan art through the lens of gender and gender-theories. The focus lies on art and culture both of the partisan movement and about the partisan movement in Yugoslavia and Carinthia.

The question that guides this conference is: how – in addition to politically and socially rooted themes such as the struggle for liberation, the question of class, the socialist revolution, and the victory over Nazism – can we pinpoint aesthetics of the “partisan” that conveys specific revolutionary and emancipatory narratives, and how can this aesthetic be (re)interpreted through a gender-focused gaze?

The conference aims to generate scientific knowledge that encompasses cultural-theoretical, historical-scientific and art-analytical positions, that explores the formats of the partisan aesthetic.

The conference will address the following themes and questions as well as other topics:

• specifics of the cultural activities, in particular of partisans within the people’s liberation movement during World War II in Yugoslavia and Carinthia
• artistic and political (mass) mobilization and concepts of femininity
• the depiction of women partisan combat and the de- or reconstructed gender arrangements in literature, art, film, photography, comics, songs, monumental architecture and other art forms in the war and post-war period
• iconography of the women Yugoslav resistance fighters as feminist practice and propaganda
• concealment of gender hierarchies through the romanticization of women partisans
• misogynous interpretations of armed partisan women
• women, and in particular women partisans as producers of art, film, literature, music, theater, comics, literature and architecture in the post-war period
• the influence of the partisan movement on fashion and interior design in post-war Yugoslavia
• queerness and partisans
• specifics and differences of „feminist-partisan“, „feminist-socialist“, or „feminist-anti-fascist“ (post-)Yugoslavian art
• mapping and curating of the partisans in archives, museums or at political memorial sites or monuments to the revolution
• significance of the figure of the women partisan for post-Yugoslav feminist activism after 1990

Conference languages: English is recommended, but Slovenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and German are also very welcome.

Contact/Abstracts: If you are interested to participate, please send a short abstract (up to 1000 characters), the title of your presentation and your biography to:

Elena Messner, elena [dot] messner [at] textfeldsuedost [dot] com

Markus Gönitzer, markusgoenitzer [at] gmx [dot] at

Cristina Beretta, cristina [dot] beretta [at] aau [dot] at

Deadline for abstracts: 10.05.2023

We are looking forward to seeing you in Klagenfurt/Celovec!

Markus Gönitzer, Forum Stadtpark & Muzej/Museum Peršman
Dr. Elena Messner, Universität Wien, Institut für Slawistik
Assoc. Prof.ⁱⁿ Dr.ⁱⁿ Cristina Beretta, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt/Celovec, Institut für Slawistik