Congress – 2015. List of sections and panels

Continuing the panel held last year, this year we plan to organise it in a wider form with several sessions. The panel will discuss migration of books beyond the printing of Supraśl in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 17-18 centuries. Belarusian printing was mainly developed by the Basilian Order, as well as by the “brotherhoods”, who were secular associations on Belarusian and Ukrainian lands, and carried out church typography. The provenance, that is the origin of the books being held in the current libraries, as well as the ways in which the Belarusian books appeared in the cultural and religious institutions of Western and Central Europe – study of all these questions may enrich our knowledge about the relationship of Belarusian culture with Europe in the age of the GDL.

Meeting at the Congress will provide an opportunity to tell about the history of the Belarusian Cyrillic editions, about rare copies, which are stored in the funds of libraries and museums around the world, to share experience of the description of the Cyrillic editions and to tell about  provenance studies (stamps, bookplates, owner’s records).

The panel will focus on the rich history of book culture of Belarus and modern theoretical book studies.

History of Belarus of the 19th century

History of Belarus of the 20th century

Belarusians abroad reflect the presence of a “split nation”, the phenomenon which is not yet comprehended by Belarusian intellectuals. The existence of about a quarter of compatriots outside of their homeland is the result of economic and political emigration, as well as geopolitical processes which changed the frontiers of Belarus. Today, the process of active emigration continues, but no regular studies of the phenomenon of Belarusians abroad exists. Being scattered up and down different countries and continents, the cultural-historical heritage of compatriots joins the historical discourse of Belarus very slowly. On the one hand, the purpose of this section is to create a platform for researchers from various countries in order to share exploratory works which study history and present day of the Belarusians abroad. On the other hand, its participants will be able to discuss concrete possibilities and ways of getting the historical and cultural heritage of the Belarusians abroad included in the intellectual space of their parent state.

The writing culture of the Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians has been marked by profound reverence to literary activities and writers throughout the histories of these peoples. At the same time, the aesthetics of the twentieth century (first and foremost in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, and Hans Robert Jauss) gradually saw an increase in the critical position towards the role of the author, and there have been attempts to reassess his or her interrelations with the literary text. The antipositivist urge to denounce the attitude to the literary process as a gallery of writers’ portraits started to have a negative impact on the literary studies discourse. New approaches to the assessment of the role of the author were suggested by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). The renowned philosopher underscored the role of the author in creating or transmitting the cultural capital that can function as symbolic capital as well as can transform into the habitus of the agent of the cultural production field. In its turn, forming habitus and ways of transmitting symbolic capital is closely connected with the ways (or, modes) of positioning. In this scientific concept, heavy emphasis is placed on the triad “position”/“positioning”/“disposition”. The notion of author’s positioning makes it easier for us to understand the view of Jorge Luis Borges that every writer creates all his predecessors himself and that his or her creative work changes drastically our ideas of not only the future but also the past. The literary process of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine reveals quite a striking picture as far as the modes of author’s positioning in the field of literature are concerned. The objective assessment of these modes correct, if not change, our ideas about the future and the past of our national literature. Revealing specificities of author’s positioning in different time periods and in different cultural contexts allows to properly assess the role of the author (agent of the field) in the process of both emergence (production) and material embodiment of the literary text and also in the subsequent reception of it by others, of its inclusion in the process of cultural production and in the creation of the corresponding positions in the field.

Even though the literary process of the 19th century in Belarus has been regarded as to a great extent investigated, there are still many questions which the Belarusian history of literature has only slightly touched upon. A large number of anonymous texts and some doubts about the real authorship of seemingly attributed works set new challenges to literary historians in the 21th century.

The section fosters ongoing discussion about new academic translation of the Bible into Belarusian. Three major thematic fields are in focus: firstly, biblical translation theory and strategies, textual sources, academic approaches and methodologies; secondly, problems of interpretation facing translator; thirdly, philological difficulties of translation, including questions on terminology, idiomatic usages, as well as adaptation of biblical names into Belarusian.

The focus of modern linguacultural and pragmalinguistic researches is studying of communicative behavior of multilingual ethnos in comparative aspect (by F. Batsevich, S. Bogdan, I. Korolyov, I. Seryakova (Ukrainian), R. Koženiauskienė, M. Ramonienė, A. Usonienė, J. Šinkūnienė, A. Lichačiova (Lithuanian), I. Borisova, V. Glushak, A. Pavlovskaya, Z. Popova, K. Sedov, J. Sternin, S. Ter-Minasova (Russian), J. Austin, H.P. Grice, G. Leech,  J. Searle, A. Wierzbicka, etc.). The aim of our project is to formulate and prove multidimensional lingual-pragmatic concept of communicative behavior of Slavonic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and German ethnicities in different types of communication; carrying out the system analysis of a complex of language means, strategies, tactics, types and models of verbal behavior in different situations of dialogue of the native Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages speakers. Project realization provides the analysis of mental structures and linguacultural portraits – modes, with help of which it is possible to modulate the communicative behavior of Slavonic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and German ethnicities in different types of communication. In case of realization of the offered project the collective monograph on the outlined problematic further will be prepared and a number of articles in leading scientific editions will be published that also will serve as an illustration and presentation of the investigated material.

The purpose of the panel is to understand the Belarusian literature and its development during the last fifteen years of the new century and new millennium. Have the new trends and specific features that distinguish it from the number of literatures of the twentieth century appeared during that time in the national literature? Have the hierarchy of genres, aesthetic guidelines, creative contacts with neighboring literatures changed? Is it correct to identify “modern literature” with the beginning of the 21^st century or  look for a starting point of a new period in the late 1980s – early 1990s of the 20th century, the period, when the independent creative associations “Tutejšyja” and “Free men of literature” appeared?
Researchers of literature from Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, the UK and Germany are expected to take part in the panel.

In recent years the studies on Polish writers, who were connected to Belarus, have unveiled the fact that Belarusian context is either absent or shallow and incorrect in the concepts of literature studies. Belarusian researchers have added, clarified and reviewed numerous facts from cultural studies during research and practical expeditions. Belarusian context is an essential element of scientific completeness of existing knowledge, and it may lead to re-evaluation and emergence of new directions of study. A need for such studies and dissemination of their results exists not only in Polish literature studies, therefore we invite other researchers of this subject to participate in the panel.

The panel aims to provide an overview of modern philosophical projects which face new challenges and problems typical for the philosophy of the post-soviet space. It also aims to explore conditions of the existence of the original national intellectual tradition. The panel will give an appraisal of the status of philosophical studies, on the one hand, and clarify the origins, marking the lineage of continuity and rupture within the intellectual tradition of Belarus, on the other. How can we generally characterize this tradition? Who are its representatives? What do we know about the activities of various circles, groups and schools which left its trace in our cultural memory and still keep their relevance for today’s philosophical and social science research in Belarus? Finally, the panel will explore how the contemporary philosophical studies and other kinds of research actualize and problematize intellectual tradition as such.

The division is planning to examine the current stage of the developmental psychology in Belarus. The research questions may include theoretical and empirical analysis outcomes of the human developmental issues in normal and pathology development, child neuropsychological development, adult developmental issues, psychology, issues of standard and deviant crises overcoming, men psychological health, the research of the human developmental mechanisms, cognitive processes, creativity and person self-consciousness in ontogenesis.  

Numerous armed conflicts are happening under the flag of religion. Religion as a source of potential conflicts in the post-ideological world is well presented by the clash of the civilisations theories. Churches find themselves in the conflicts of different natures: wars with or without direct military actions, cultural wars or ideological wars between civilisations. Thus, they comprehend their place and role in these conflicts. By choosing strategies of action, they identify themselves with one of the conflict parties along different division lines such as “victim – aggressor”, “us – the others” or “war – peace”.

Rhetoric and images of war, fighting and warriors are involved in the theological thought and even become an identity basis. The choice, one which the churches have settled in the situation of war, could be later regarded as a significant point in their theology.

Military images are deeply implanted in the church tradition and Christian texts: in the Bible, ascetic and liturgical works.

The interdisciplinary section will gather theologians, historians, philosophers, literature scholars, political scientists, and jurists. It will touch upon a wide range of issues, connected to theological reflections on war and peace in general, the influence of war on the self-identification of churches, studies on the role of church and Christians in historical conflicts, and mythology of war.

The focus will address narratives of inter-denominational conflicts, church and state conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe, the involvement of churches in the World War II and the Cold War, religion and its instrumentalisation in the Ukrainian conflict, conceptualisation and policies of memories about wars; social teachings of churches on the subject of war and peace.

The section will be working with the current material of the Belarusian culture. Its purpose is to analyze the trends and artifacts that appear in the paradoxical space of the Belarusian “controlled culture” – the area of ​​administrative permissions and prohibitions, replication of decayed canons and creative “inner emigration”. Old-school schemes of ideological confrontation and the “war of cultures” are transforming now into the conflict of discourses and competition of different understandings of Belarusianness. Modern “Belcult” is the zone of stylistic and conceptual conflicts and mutations. This will be the focus of our joint reflection and examination.

Photography has become one of the instruments of national identity creation in the modern world. Belarusian creative photography which was a remarkable phenomenon in the late 1980s (“Minsk school of photography”, “new wave” in Belarusian photography) cannot be an exception too. After the silence of 2000s, there were some important events in photographic life of Belarus which positively estimated the achievements of young Belarusian creative photography of 1980-1990s and demonstrated some particular strategies of new generation of Belarusian photographers and photo artists. Do different generations of Belarusian photographers understand each other? Where is contemporary Belarusian photography heading to? What unites and separates such exhibition and publishing projects as “Minsk school of photography” (ROSFOTO, St. Petersburg and “BY NOW” (Belarus, Germany), Belarus Press Photo (Minsk) and The Month of Photography in Minsk (Minsk), “Creative Photography in Belarus. Experience of NOVA gallery of Visual Arts…” and “New Wave. Belarusian Photography of 1990s” (both published in Minsk)?

Disputes over the results of Jerzy Giedroyc Award arise every year. A heated discussion about the “discrimination” of Russian-language writers has broken out in the backstage of Belarusian PEN Center. A writer and a critic – what worries them today? Where is the focus of contemporary literature? What genres are in demand among readers? All these questions, as well as other issues, which are important for the current Belarusian literary process, will be discussed within the framework of this panel.

In modern Belarus one can find a large number of museums of urban culture, history, etc. But the question is what these museums represent in their activities? Do they study the traditional and, particularly, modern history of the city? Do they represent true urban studies centers? Do they actually present ethnography of the city instead of ‘classic’ rural studies of the late 19^th – early 20^th cc. during the presentation of the “ethnographic” components of their activities? What place in the modern Belarusian urban studies should museums receive; who, how and why is currently engaged in urban studies in Belarus, who presents and represents a contemporary urban culture; what are the features of the contemporary “applied” urbanism and what possibility does it have to be included into the museum space, and, most importantly, is it necessary?

Current studies in ethnology show clearly that the Belarusian traditional culture functions and represents itself only in local forms, which causes a high level of its variation. Research focus hence shifts to the study of areal forms of folk culture. But the particular interests of researchers only in “their own” regions produces a problem of theoretical understanding of general ethnic foundation of traditional culture in both diachronic and synchronic perspective.

For centuries bagpipe traditions were a notable part of the European cultural landscape. Different types of bagpipes were played at courts and taverns, attributed to devils and angels, accompanying sacred rites and everyday merriments, both forbidden and glorified as national instruments. This panel opens the floor to the historical and modern influences of bagpipes from around the world on the post-Soviet states’ cultural landscape (including Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus, and the Baltic states). We welcome talks and discussions exploring trade, cultural exchanges, development, declines and revivals between this region and the rest of Europe, from the Pyrenees to the Ural mountains, from Scandinavia to the Balkans and Caucasus.

The panel will generalise the results of 2014 research and continue to systematise the knowledge and practical experience, which Belarusian necropolis researchers accumulated over the last decade. Presentations will discuss the spheres of archeology, architecture, botany, geology, history, genealogy, art, sculpture, ethnography, jurisprudence. Panel participants are also planning to visit the historic cemetery of the Kaunas city during the Congress to assess the condition of the necropolis and possible risks, do emergency work (if necessary), and detect vandalism cases. The panel “Belarusian necropolis studies”  is open to dialogue with the Lithuanian researchers in this area and can take a format of a round table.

Panel “Problems of preservation and transmission of historical and cultural heritage of famous Belarusians” is a platform for dialogue to explore the experience, problems and prospects of revival, preservation, promotion of tangible and intangible historical and cultural heritage of famous figures of the Belarusian history and culture, who lived and worked in Belarus and abroad. The panel will analyze mechanisms and means of broadcasting heritage of outstanding dynasties and individual representatives, evaluate the experience and capabilities of the activity on the part of public authorities, NGOs, business associations, international organizations. The panel will also consider domestic and international practice of sponsorship and patronage, as well as methods of using the potential of intercultural dialogue in the context of promoting the heritage of prominent Belarusians.

The central question for the discussions within the panel is what gender ideology is hidden in the current state reforms, and what gender system exists in modern Belarus. It is well known that the relationships in a society are governed by certain rules – formal and / or informal – which are created and reproduced through certain prescriptions: what phenomena are considered as a socially desirable and acceptable norm and what are not. Studies of “normativity” provide an opportunity to find out the reasons and conditions of survivability of gender stereotypes in society and gender roles, cultural and traditional features, the concept of equality which in turn reveals the barriers to achieving gender equality. The purpose of this panel is to provide a discussion platform for the analysis of the political and rhetorical strategies, defining goals and objectives of the Belarusian modern (social, family, demographic) policy and the specific measures taken by the state toward different groups of citizens on the grounds of gender / sexual identity.

The panel will be organized in the form of round tables and panel discussions. Preliminary topics:

• Feminism and gender studies in Belarus and in the post-soviet region
• “The neo-conservative revolutions”: challenges and consequences
• Women’s political participation: myth or reality
• (Not) normative sexuality and problems of homophobia
• Transformations of modern family: the practices of everyday life and social institutions
• Reproductive rights as a space for political manipulations
• Domestic violence

We invite researchers and activists from Belarus and other countries for joint consideration of specific policies and practices of construction of gender norms and the “rules” in Belarus and abroad.

Objectives: 1. consolidation of the scientific community working in this field, 2. “revision” of the research field, 3. presentation of research projects, 4. Identification of opportunities for mechanisms of national and international human rights systems. Discussions: