Decolonizing Baltic Memory

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reestablishment of Baltic state independence in 1991, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians have been united in their commitment to restore their silenced histories and to document their lived experiences. This interdisciplinary roundtable reflects on what has been called the "decolonization" of history and memory in the Baltic context. Contributors will both consider specific case studies and examine to what extent the concept of decolonization applies to the region.

Short Bio

Chair: Liisi Esse works as Curator for Estonian and Baltic Studies at Stanford University Libraries since 2013. She also serves as the Administrative Executive Director of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and as Reviews Editor for the Journal of Baltic Studies. She served as AABS’ Vice President for Conferences from 2016–2018 and organized the 2018 AABS Conference at Stanford University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tartu in 2016.
Dovilė Budrytė is Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College in Atlanta and a member of EUROPAST project at Vilnius university. She is currently President of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS). She has published on memory politics, gender and war and minorities in the Baltic states.
Mara Lazda is Professor of History at Bronx Community College, the City University of New York. With Janet Johnson, she is co-coordinator of the Gender and Transformation in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia Workshop. She has published on the relationship between gender, nationalism, and transnationalism in historical and contemporary contexts, as well as on memory and nationalism in Latvia. Her recent publications include The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, co-edited with Janet Johnson and Katalin Fabian.
Janis Chakars is associate professor and program director of communication and digital media at Neumann University. He is the co-editor with Indra Ekmanis of Information Wars in the Baltic States: Russia's Long Shadow (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Asta Zelenkauskaite is associate professor of communication at Drexel University. Her work is interested in societal challenges of information mistrust and post-truth and the way such inauthentic information can be uncovered. She is the author of Creating Chaos Online: Disinformation and Subverted Post-Publics, University of Michigan Press, 2022.
Olavi Arens is a professor of history at Georgia Southern University. He has published numerous articles on Estonian and Baltic history, in particular on the 1917 revolutionary period and the establishment of the Estonian state.
Aro Velmet is Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California. His book Pasteur's Empire (2020) examines French colonialism in West Africa, North Africa, and Indochina and their use of microbiology as a tool of governance. He is currently working on a history of digital statecraft in the Soviet Union, post-Soviet Estonia, and the global South.

Sub Unit

• History, Memory, and Identity

Chair

• Liisi Esse, Stanford University

Participants

• Olavi Arens, Georgia Southern University

• Aro Velmet, University of Southern California

• Asta Zelenkauskaitė, MRU (Lithuania); Vilnius Tech (Lithuania); Drexel University (USA)

• Dovilė Budrytė, Georgia Gwinnett College

• Janis Chakars, Neumann University