Conference Agenda

Russia’s war in Ukraine has radically reordered European senses of agency and belonging. Across the continent, and especially in its east, individuals and communities are reconsidering their relations to each other, their languages, their faiths, and their histories. These reassessments are rapidly generating new perspectives on how expressions of culture can both nurture and contest relations with others, splintering senses of belonging formerly taken for granted and fostering new collectivities.

This roundtable captures this moment of reimagining as it is presently reshaping understandings of music histories and the practice of music scholarship. Inspired by recent calls to decenter musicological discourse on post-socialist Europe, it seeks to foster new communities of scholars that bridge geographies, research cultures, and academic worlds. Each of five 10-minute papers will be given by a team of musicologists presently engaged in collaborative research on and in the region. Each will share their research findings and reflect on the process and challenges of their endeavors. Afterwards, presenters and audience members will reflect together on the promise of such collaborative work to help us fathom a reconfigured European world, and on how we might work together to navigate the challenges it can pose. The aim is not only to exchange information about ongoing projects, but to inspire and nurture new collaborations and scholarly communities.

Peter J. Schmelz (US) will chair the discussion, to feature 10-minute presentations by the following research teams:

Laura Emmery (US) and Ivana Prica (Serbia): Festivals of new music as sites of exchange between West and East in Cold-War Yugoslavia.

Iriyna Tukova (Ukraine) and Leah Batstone (US): Politics and policy in the work of the Kyiv-based composer Borys Liatoshynsky during the period of 1920s Ukrainization.

Antoni Michnik (Poland) and Gabrielle Cornish (US): Critiques of neoliberalism and post-socialist consumption in recent Polish popular music.

Kevin C. Karnes (US) and Jānis Daugavietis (Latvia): Activities of networks of underground musicians in Riga before the time of perestroika.

Nana Sharikadze (Georgia), Maia Sigua (Georgia), and Peter J. Schmelz (US): Constructing a decolonial history of Soviet music from the vantage of Georgia and Ukraine.