Events
Cosponsors
- East Central European Center, Columbia University
- Balassi Institute: Hungarian Cultural Center, New York
Notes
- Image Credit/Caption: London School of Economics Library, reference MALINOWKSI/3/B/18/1
Workshop with pre-circulated papers.
Registration required by Monday, May 12, email [email protected].
This one-day workshop positions Eastern and Central Europe as a critical field for global modern knowledge by looking at the “betweenness” of East Central European intellectuals and their contributions to the history of social science in the twentieth century. Betweenness is here understood in both regional terms—that is, East Central Europe’s historic position as a culturally and developmentally ambiguous periphery of the West—and biographical ones, including experiences of exile, dislocation, and/or statelessness. As an analytic category, betweenness forges transnational histories among regions and countries (such as Israel or India) that based their global position and intellectual production on their liminality.
Such an approach re-illuminates the history of twentieth-century social science in important ways, reflecting James Clifford’s reminder that these disciplines were always part of the very “processes of innovation and structuration” they hoped to investigate. On the one hand, it highlights the seminal role of colonial subjects and stateless exiles like Malinowski and Znaniecki in generating early and influential—albeit highly contested—disciplinary models, suggesting that key narratives of social science history may be best understood from the margins. On the other, it illuminates how East Central and South Eastern Europeans have used their position between “West” and “East,” “civilized” and “savage,” and “first” and “third world” to mediate global regimes of knowledge.
Program
time12:45pm - 1:00pm EDT
Welcome and Introductions
time1:00pm - 2:45pm EDT
Panel I: Between Civilizations
Chair
István Deák
Seth Low Professor Emeritus of History
Columbia University
"There’s No Place Like Crime: Hanns Gross and the Location of Criminal Science"
Scott Spector
Professor of German, History, and Judaic Studies
University of Michigan
“'The Closest Living Language to Sanskrit'? Lithuanian Between German Linguistics and the Nationalist Press"
Jeremy Lin
PhD Candidate in History
New York University
"The Polish Peasant on the Sugar Plantation: Translation and Displacement in Polish Ethnography from Malinowski to Obrębski"
Katherine Lebow
Research Fellow, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
Commentary
Angela Zimmerman
Professor of History and International Affairs
George Washington University
time2:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Break I
time3:00pm - 4:45pm EDT
Panel II: Between Worlds
Chair
Deborah Coen
Professor of History and Chair of History of Science and Medicine
Yale University
"Eastern Europe as an Economic World Region: Landau, Kalecki and International Statistics in the Twentieth Century"
Małgorzata Mazurek
Associate Professor of Polish Studies
Columbia University
"The Coming of Communist Post-Industrial Society: Radovan Richta, 'Scientific and Technological Revolution” and Global Futures'"
Vítězslav Sommer
Research Officer
Centre d'études européennes, Sciences Po
"Sociocultural Anthropology and Native Ethnographies from a Hungarian Perspective"
Mihály Sárkány
Senior Honoris Causa of Institute of Ethnology
Research Center for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Commentary
David Engerman
Professor of History
Brandeis University
time4:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
Break II
time5:00pm - 6:15pm EDT
Roundtable: Betweenness and Social Science
Tal Arbel
Ph.D. Candidate in History of Science
Harvard University
Manu Goswami
Associate Professor of History
New York University
Jan Kubik
Department Chair of Political Science
Rutgers University
Participants
- Tal Arbel Ph.D. Candidate in History of Science Harvard University
- Deborah Coen Professor of History and Chair of History of Science and Medicine Yale University
- István Deák Seth Low Professor Emeritus of History Columbia University
- David Engerman Professor of History Brandeis University
- Manu Goswami Associate Professor of History New York University
- Jan Kubik Department Chair of Political Science Rutgers University
- Katherine Lebow Research Fellow, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
- Jeremy Lin PhD Candidate in History New York University
- Małgorzata Mazurek Associate Professor of Polish Studies Columbia University
- Mihály Sárkány Senior Honoris Causa of Institute of Ethnology Research Center for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- Vítězslav Sommer Research Officer Centre d'études européennes, Sciences Po
- Scott Spector Professor of German, History, and Judaic Studies University of Michigan
- Andrew Zimmerman Professor of History and International Affairs George Washington University