Conspiratorial Memory team to present at Eastsplainers #6: Media & Memory
Public lecture series by the Department of Slavic Languages & Cultures (University of Amsterdam), in cooperation with the University of New Europe, with artists and intellectuals who recently migrated or fled from Central & Eastern Europe to the Netherlands.
Date: June 28, 2023
Time: 17.oo-18.30
Location: VOX-POP
Registration: here
As the Russian war in Ukraine and imperialist Kremlin rhetoric continue to disturb world media, Eastsplainers offers a counterweight to westsplaining – the habit of looking at developments in Central & Eastern Europe through Western lenses. In this public program series, we listen to scholars, journalists, artists, musicians, and other cultural and academic professionals who migrated or fled from Kyiv, Łódź, Minsk, and Moscow, among other places, to the Netherlands. Rather than amplifying views on various Central & Eastern European locations as a monolithic European ‘East,’ our programs show that these locations merit independent study and careful attention to local dynamics.
On June 28, cultural anthropologist Anna Greszta and cultural and media theorist Maria Plichta will discuss how conspiracy theories tap into stories about the past. Focusing on different East European contexts, all of which are heavily impacted by the Russian war in Ukraine, they discuss the role of culture (online and offline, fiction and non-fiction) in imagining past and present plots against “our” community. Cultural and literary theorist – and leader of the Conspiratorial Memory research team – Boris Noordenbos moderates the session. Professor of Slavic literatures Ellen Rutten opens the meeting with a short introduction into the Eastsplainers series as a whole.
NB. This event will be accompanied by a fundraising market organized by Collect4Ukraine, Amsterdam-based grassroots initiative that aims to support people and animals who suffer due to Russian aggression.
For information about the other sessions, please visit the Eastsplainers webpage. The series is set up with support from the University of New Europe, Middle- and Eastern-European studies publisher Pegasus, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and the diversity & inclusion team of the UvA's Faculty of Humanities.