Senior seminar by Prof. James Mark (University of Exeter), visiting professor at MemoryLab.
Central-Eastern Europe has long been removed from global histories of race. Here we address an alternative history that challenges long-held claims about the region’s racial innocence. We will explore the centrality of whiteness for understanding the region’s nation-building, social hierarchies, ethnic homogenisation, and global interconnections. Seminar 1 will consider the utility of drawing on the concept of whiteness in studying nationalisms in history and memory; Seminar 2 its application to Central-Eastern Europe; Seminar 3 its uses for the study of Communism; and Seminar 4 the significance of whiteness for the growth of contemporary populism and authoritarianism.
Dates and seminar titles
I. Whiteness, History and Memory
April 7th • 3.00 - 4:45 p.m. – Aula Specola, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
II. Whiteness and Central-Eastern Europe
April 7th • 5.00 - 6.45 p.m. – Aula Specola, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
III. Central-Eastern European Communism: Whiteness in History and Memory
April 8th • 5.00 - 6.45 p.m. – Aula Specola, Department of History and Cultures, Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2
IV. Whiteness and Contemporary Central-Eastern Europe
April 9th • 3.00 - 5.00 p.m. – Aula I, Department of History and Cultures, Via Guerrazzi 20