The International St. Petersburg colloquium in Russian history, organized by historians from Russia, the United States, and Western Europe, is held every three years. The goal of the 2010 conference is to engage with historical processes through the analytical lens of the self. It will examine presuppositions about human behavior and ideals of “personality” and humanity on the part of state and cultural authorities from the late Imperial period to the breakup of the Soviet Union; it will follow how these notions were set into motion over the course of a long century of war and revolution; and it will study their effects on the lives, personal horizons, and self-understandings of individuals. Program for download [.pdf].

Contributions are invited from scholars in various areas of humanities and social sciences whose work utilizes the oral historical method and directly speaks to the main focus of the proposed collection - Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Scholarship. The editors are seeking submissions that reflect on, deal with, and respond to this changing paradigm of scholarship from a variety of perspectives and standpoints.Deadline for submissions of abstracts: February 15, 2010.

In addition to the abstracts 1, 2 follows now Rossitsa Gradeva (Sofia): The Ottoman Rule in Bulgarian Historiography

The Ottoman (often equated with Turkish) rule which had lasted for more than five centuries and continued for some parts of the country until the beginning of the 20th century, is a major point of departure in constructing Bulgarian national identity. As such it has been usually subject to a very negative and emotional evaluation in popular writing, fiction, and even in academic publications, one of the most popular terms even today being the notorious 'Turkish yoke'. On the other hand, the Bulgarian ›school‹ in Ottoman studies has produced significant works which are an important reference in many of its fields. Thus the development of Bulgarian historiography of the Ottoman period can be seen as resultant of two major factors – political, inside Bulgaria, and academic, as a constituent of international scholarship, which too can be loaded with political considerations.