University of St. Andrews, Scotland
20-21 March 2009

It is with great pleasure that we are able to announce a new postgraduate conference at University of St Andrews. The conference is AHRC sponsored and organised jointly by the Centre for Film Studies and the Centre for Russian, Soviet and Eastern European Studies at the University of St. Andrews.

Bringing together doctoral students from across the UK and Europe, the conference will focus on methodology and the interdisciplinary study of cultural production, primarily related to the visual arts. The objective is to launch a productive dialogue between junior scholars engaged in the study of film and visual culture of former communist countries.

The conference is open to students from across Social Sciences and Humanities and will open Friday 20 March in the afternoon with introductions from Prof. Andrew Wachtel (Graduate Dean, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA) and Prof. Dina Iordanova (Director, Centre for Film Studies, University of St Andrews). 

Continuing throughout the following day, Saturday 21 March, the conference will feature thematic talks dedicated to the status of studies into postcommunist culture, cinema, and visual studies. The day will be a mix of postgraduate panels and keynote talks from invited speakers, who will also undertake it to moderate the postgraduate presentations. The four invited speakers are Prof. Ib Bondebjerg (University of Copenhagen), Prof. Ewa Mazierska (University of Central Lancashire), Prof. Brian McNair (University of Strathclyde), and Prof. Fiona Björling (University of Lund). Bondebjerg has recently completed a pan-European research project on media and television. Mazierska has written widely on Eastern European cinema, travel and cities in European cinema. McNair’s research interests relate to news flows and journalism, and his early work on Soviet media has set the standard for many to follow. Björling has, besides her work on Boris Pasternak, written on forms of cinematic narrative from a Russian perspective.

Postgraduate participants will be able to present their work in the context of two sessions, at panels moderated by the featured speakers. They are invited to discuss aspects of their work, and talk of its challenging and exciting moments. The aim of the conference is to explore collective frameworks for the study of postcommunist cultural production. The study of postcommunism is a growing academic field, which makes the conference an appropriate attempt in identifying problems, uneven comparatives, and the global of this region. How are research students dealing with these issues? Can common ground be found in the study of visual cultural production in a region that has traditionally only been viewed as ‘together’ through ideological eyes? We hope to address these and other important issues.

For more information please see http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/filmstudies/events.php?eventid=63