Call for Papers - Writing on the Border in the Post-Stalinist Era: Identities, Conflicts, Dialogues

Workshop, March 25, 2026

About the Workshop

The Soviet Union developed a unique and deeply contradictory system of internal, often invisible, borders: ethnic, linguistic, symbolic, and institutional. Fluid and contested, they fostered both hybrid cultural forms and lasting tensions, making the study of Soviet border-making essential for understanding the conflicts and cultural fractures that followed the collapse of the USSR.

This workshop explores how post-Stalinist literature engaged with the internal borders of the Soviet state. We understand literature as a space where borders are constructed, challenged, and reimagined. Authors writing between languages and cultural traditions often created hybrid narratives that resisted the homogenizing logic of Soviet universalism. We are particularly interested in how literary texts negotiated the contradictions of the “national question” and how border writing or writing on the border reflects and produces liminality, marginality, multiplicity, and shifting subject positions within the late Soviet cultural matrix.

We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following topics and questions:

• Theoretical approaches to borders in the analysis of late Soviet literature and culture

• Literary explorations of the “national question” and internal asymmetries

• Multilingual and cross-cultural writing in the USSR

• Representations of ethnic, linguistic, symbolic, or institutional borders

• Poetics of border narratives and constructions of space and identity

• Literary forms of cultural translation, hybridity, and in-betweenness

• Double and multi-coded literature

• Institutions, networks, and agents of border writing

• Transformations of travel writing and internal Soviet mobility

• Gendered, embodied, and affective dimensions of border narratives

Papers addressing related topics beyond the specified period are also welcome. PhD students and early-career researchers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Format and submission details

The workshop language is English. Presentations should be delivered in English and last no more than 20 minutes, followed by 15 minutes discussion.

Accommodation in Dresden (up to two nights) will be provided for accepted speakers. Travel expenses may be reimbursed (fully or partially) in cases where institutional funding is not available. If you wish to apply for travel support, please indicate this in your application and include your city of departure and estimated travel costs.

How to apply

Please send one PDF (1. title and abstract, max. 400 words; 2. short bio, max. 200 words) to alena.pantiukhina@mailbox.tu-dresden.de by 13 December 2025 (subject: Workshop Application – Writing on the Border).

For questions, please contact the organisers at the same email address.

Organised by

© Alena Pantiukhina

Philipp Schwartz Fellow, Institute of Slavic Studies, TU Dresden

Name

Dr. Alena Pantiukhina

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Kontaktinformationen

Organisationsname

Institut für Slavistik

Institut für Slavistik

© Prof. Dr. Klavdia Smola

Professorin

Name

Professor Dr. Klavdia Smola

Professur für Slavische Literaturwissenschaft

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Kontaktinformationen

Organisationsname

Institut für Slavistik

Institut für Slavistik

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Besuchsadresse:

Bürogebäude Wiener Straße, Raum 219 Wiener Straße 48

01219 Dresden

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work Tel.

Sprechzeiten:

Donnerstag:

13:00 - 14:00

In der lehrveranstaltungsfreien Zeit Sprechstunde nach Vereinbarung per E-Mail

Downloads

• The full Call for Papers as PDF