Shifting Borders, Fluid Landscapes: Exploring Industrial Regions in Transition
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 2, 2024
September 30, 2024
FOYER OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
5 PM - 5.45 PM
Welcoming address by
Prof.in Dr. Ursula Regener
Vice President for Internalization and Diversity
Dr. André Schüller-Zwierlein
Head of the University Library
Opening of the exhibition
“Shifting Borders, Fluid Landscapes”
with photographs by Viktor Marushchenko, Karolina Jonderko, Alexander Chekmenev, Michał Cała
5.45 pm – 7.45 pm
Podium discussion with Lyuba Yakimchuk and Zbigniew Rokita
October 1, 2024
9 AM – 10.45 AM
Andrii Portnov (Frankfurt/O.)
Chair: Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg)
THE DONBAS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON POSSIBLE RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES
11 AM – 12.30 PM
Panel 1
Across the Disciplines: Donbas and Upper Silesia in Comparative Perspective
Chair: Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg)
Peter Oliver Loew (Darmstadt): Upper Silesia and Donbas: Century-Spanning Conflicts over Two Industrial Regions
Vlad Mykhnenko (Oxford): Geopolitics versus the Regions: Reframing the Old Industrial Regions Research
Alina Strzempa (Regensburg): Region, Globalization, Industry, Borderland, Comparison: Donbas and Upper Silesia in Literary and Cultural Studies
1.30 PM – 3 PM
Panel 2
Traditions and Transitions: Questioning Social Formations in the Post-industrial Regions
Chair: Alina Strzempa (Regensburg)
Wiktoria Tombarkiewicz-Gorzelik (Kraków): Folk Costume and Miner’s Uniform as a Representation of Upper Silesianness – Roots, Transformations, Meanings of the Practice
Monika Glosowitz (Katowice): Memoirs of Women from Upper-Silesian Families as Counter-Archive of De/Industrialisation
Olena Syaivo Dmytryk (Cambridge): ‘A Multi-Layered Pie of Contradictions’: Luhans’k ‘Orchid’ Theatre of Provocative Fashion VIA ZOOM
1.30 PM – 3 PM
Panel 3
Identity Crises in Upper Silesia and the Donbas: From Industrial Heritage to Separatism and Beyond
Chair: Andrzej Czyżewski (Warsaw):
Alexandr Osipian (Leipzig): Identity Crisis in Old Industrial Region: Historical Legacy of Donbas in Ukraine and Russia, 1991-2024
Jerzy Gorzelik (Katowice): The Industrial Heritage of Upper Silesia after 1989 as a Factor of Cohesion and Subversion
Kyrylo Tkachenko (München): Separatism, Irredentism, or Something Else? The Shifting Image of the “Exploiting Center” in the Political Debates in the Donbas, 1989-1993
3.30 PM – 5 PM
Panel 4
Belonging, Displacement, and Propaganda in the Donbas
Chair: Vlad Mykhnenko (Cambridge)
Qianrui Hu (London): Evolving Narrative of Self and Belonging among Displaced Ukrainians from ‘Donbas’
Jon Roozenbeek (London): The Long-Term Failure of Russian Propaganda VIA ZOOM
3.30 PM – 5 PM
Panel 5
Upper Silesian Borderland Narratives
Chair: TBA
Jess Jensen Mitchell (Harvard/Katowice): ‘Still nothing about Silesia’: Regional Family Sagas in Contemporary Polish Writing
Leszek Drong (Katowice): Ghost of Borders Past: Haunted Borderscapes in Contemporary Narratives from Upper Silesia
Adam Kubik (Heidelberg): Industry as a Mirror of the Self and the Other in Contemporary Literature of Borderlands: Upper Silesia and South Tyrol
October 2, 2024
9 AM – 10.30 AM
Panel 6
Environmental Footprints: Water, Nuclear, and Coal Legacies Across Europe
Chair: Olga Plakhotnik (Greifswald)
Anna Barcz (Warsaw): Major River Floods in 19th Century Europe: Literary Sources and a Non-Anthropocentric History of Hydro-Infrastructure
Juliane Tomann (Regensburg): Nuclear Heritage in the Making. Negotiating the GDR Uranium Mining Past in the “New Landscape” Park in Ronneburg (Thuringia)
Marta Tomczok, Paweł Tomczok (Katowice): Coal Humanities: Assumptions, Perspectives, and Possibilities
9 AM – 10.30 AM
Panel 7
Community Dynamics in Industrial Landscapes
Chair: Maria Mayerchyk (Kleve)
Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg): The Owner and the Debt: The Symbolic Economy of Miners’ Cult in the Soviet Donbas
Karolina Pospiszil-Hofmańska (Katowice): Human Waste: Exploring Narratives of Spoil Tip Inhabitants in Upper Silesian Literature
Anna Seidel (Berlin): Scooping Oil and Digging Coal. Literary Representations of Workers’ Lives in Teschen Silesia and Eastern Galicia
11 AM – 12.30 PM
Panel 8
Art and Identity in Post-Industrial Urban Settings
Chair: Juliane Tomann (Regensburg)
Clemens Günther (Berlin): Colours of Ostrava – Examining the Colour Schemes of the Historical Past and Present
Carlos Navarro González (Paris): Cinema and Audiovisual Art in the Post-Industrial Landscape of
Lisbon: Migrant, Working, and Racialized Communities
Andrzej Czyżewski (Warsaw): Promised Land – in Search of the City’s Identity (Łódź)
11 AM – 12.30 PM
Panel 9
Myths of the Donbas: Creation, Persistence, and Destruction
Chair: Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg)
Mykola Riabchuk (Kyiv): Donbas versus Galicia: Different Modes of Othering and Mythologizing
Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald): King of Petroleum Station: The Birth of a New Ukrainian Man out of the Spirit of Soviet Nostalgia in Serhii Zhadan’s “Voroshylovhrad”
Oleksandr Chertenko (Giessen): “Fortress Donbas”: Going Back to a Wild Field? Cultural Accounts of a (Former) Industrial Region after 24.2.2022
12.30 PM – 1 PM
CONCLUDING REMARKS