‘The history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus across the age’
The Belarusian-Jewish Cultural Heritage Center and The Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton are delighted to announce that the international conference on ‘The history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus across the age’ will take place on 28-30 June 2021.
The aim of the conference is to discuss the latest findings on all aspects of the history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus, including the emergence of a distinctive Belarusian-Jewish identity.
The conference will be ‘hybrid’, allowing participants and audience to attend either on site if they can go to Minsk, or remotely, through the conference platform.
Each participant will be asked to provide a short version of their paper by the 1st June (maximum 1500 words). During the conference, presentations will be limited to 10-15 minutes.
Everybody will be welcome to attend the conference.
We received over 90 proposals from specialists from different countries, including from post-graduate students. There will be panels on art, pre-revolutionary history, ethnography, heritage, Holocaust, interwar period, language and literature. The keynote speakers are Professor Mikhail Krutikov and Dr Inna Gerasimova. There will also be round-tables about heritage and national identities in contemporary Belarus.
The recent political events in Belarus have modified how the Belarusian society looks at its national identity, past and memory. References to the history of Jews in Belarus have become common in the public sphere. Therefore we have decided to add political science to the conference’s list of disciplines and we are inviting new proposals related to the contemporary situation and identity of Jews in Belarus, and their relation to the Belarusian identity. We will accept new proposals only on topics related to Jewish heritage and identity (including the Holocaust) in contemporary Belarus.
Paper proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a speaker biography of maximum 100 words.
Deadline to submit proposals: 15 January 2021. We will send notifications of acceptance/rejection by early February 2021.
Working languages: English, Russian and Belarusian. Synchronous translation in Russian and English will be available.
Email: jewsbelarus2020@gmail.com
Organized by: Dr Claire Le Foll (University of Southampton) and Maya Katznelson (Belarusian-Jewish Cultural Heritage Center).
Scientific committee: Mikhail Krutikov, Claire Le Foll, Elissa Bemporad, Shaul Stampfer, Maria Kaspina, Aleksandr Ivanov, Magdalena Waligórska.
Supported by: the Goethe Institute in Minsk and the German Minister of Foreign Affairs (Eastern partnership programme); the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton.