[ Konferenz | Conference ]

Galicia in the 20th Century. A Region in the Shadow of Empires

3-5 June 2010
Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv
Working languages: English, German, Ukrainian

Organisers: PhD-programm "Austrian Galicia and Its Multicultural
Heritage" (University of Vienna) & Center for Urban History of East
Central Europe (Lviv)
Over the last years and decades Habsburg Galicia increasingly became a scholarly paradigm that combined different research trends. Galicia during the long 19th century suits perfectly as a case study for analyzing questions of multiculturalism. Different approaches from different academic disciplines like history, cultural studies, literature, linguistics, Jewish studies, Slavonic studies or German studies can be chosen. Until recently research on issues of multiculturalism focused on hybrid and multiple identities, belated modernisation
processes, as well as on mutually crossed and competed claims and forms of domination
over this region.

The term "Galicia" was and is interpreted in many different ways:It can be associated with the backward crownland of the Habsburg Empire, a specific literary landscape, a multicultural Arcadia, as well as a national Piedmont. The perspectives und constructions of this space
are at least as multilayered as the province's cultures and the different spellings of this region: Galizien, (Galitsye) Galicja.

We thus better should talk of several "Galicias", formed by various traditions and narratives, which even today are often elaborated separately. In retrospect this separation is one of the consequences of research traditions based mainly on the national paradigm. The
multicultural structure of the region was a leitmotiv for various nostalgic discourses, which considered the entangled tensions and relations mostly in general terms. In fact the various realities of Galicia interacted with each other, had an impact on one another and
were interlinked, both in cooperation and confrontation.

The aim of this conference is to encourage a discussion that goes beyond the national and interdisciplinary borders and to remap Galician-studies. The focus lies on different interactions in this historical region. Galicia with its overlapping nationalities, confessions and languages was a space of mixing, hybridisation and cultural transfer. Until very recently these phenomena have posed a rather neglected aspect in comparison with the nation building projects in Galicia. This historical region was invented by the Austrian bureaucracy during
the First division of Poland-Lithuania in 1772 and disappeared from the European map in 1918; however, it has experienced a noteworthy revival in Ukraine and Poland since 1989. This revitalization serves as the starting point of this conference, which aims to discuss the continuities of Habsburg Galicia in the 20th century.

A major question thus will be in what way the conditions established under Habsburg rule influenced the following forms of authority, interactions and conflicts, as well as how they were transformed under the rule ofnew states or empires (Poland, Soviet Union). The Nazi occupation of Galicia and the Holocaust should in this context as well be discussed as the
most important of several violent factors that dramatically changed the region during the 1940s. Another main issue of the conference should be discussing the consequences of inter-cultural interactions still relevant today and in the future. At the same time we want to encourage the communication between various academic, literary, economic and political (re)constructions of Galicia.

The following questions are going to be addressed at the conference:

• How did the protagonists of multicultural Galicia interact and mutually influence one another?
• What kind of experiences could we get from historical Galicia? In what way do they influence the present and the future?
• How to handle Galicia's heritage in the age of globalization and what experiences/obligations will this comprise?
• How was Galicia shaped by Empires, the World Wars, the Holocaust and the expulsions?
• How is Galicia nowadays represented and discussed?

Program:
Thursday, June 3rd
07.00-09.00 Round table discussion 1: Galicia. Discursive Constructions
 Reception (Open end)

Friday, June 4th
09.00-12.15 Panel I: Violence, War and Gender
01.30-04.30 Panel II: Pogroms and Expulsions
05.00-07.00 Panel III: The Long Shadow of Empires " Galicia postcolonial?

Saturday, June 5th
09.30-12.30 Panel IV: Cultural Memory
02.00-03.30 Round table discussion II: Galicia as a virtual space
04.00-05.00 Round Table discussion III: Quo vadis, Galicia? Research paradigms on the crossroads

Program details: http://dk-galizien.univie.ac.at

Location: Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Vul. Akad.
Bohomoltsia 6, Lviv
Tel.    +38/0322-751734
Mail    institute@lvivcenter.org
Web   http://www.lvivcenter.org

For further information and registrations for attendees of the
conference, please contact:

Mag. Dr. Ljiljana Radonic
Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 3
1090 Wien
Tel. +43(1)4277-41120
Mail ljiljana.radonic@univie.ac.at

Funded by: FWF - Der Wissenschaftsfond & Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung