Gender and Post-Imperial Legacy in Early 20th Century East and Southeast Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel consists of four cross-disciplinary case-studies of post-imperial legacy in early 20th century East and Southeast European cultural contexts. Taking cue from Ann Laura Stoler’s (2016) call for a sharpened theoretical focus on poetics as an indispensable means for understanding the lasting influence of imperial histories, the panel will pay special attention to the ways in which gender intersects with and informs representations of bygone empires.
How did historical narratives about Croatian nobility become a multifaceted post-imperial national myth? What are the ways in which gender and post-imperial tropology jointly inform August Cesarec’s travel writing from 1930s Soviet Russia? What lessons about gender and the formation of post-imperial subjectivity can be drawn from the unanswered letters sent to Nikola Tesla by his long-forgotten sister? How did gender contribute to the consolidation of the Soviet Union in Azerbaijan, as exemplified by the opera Sevil by composer Fikrət Əmirov?
Through a dialogue with contemporary theoretical approaches to post-imperiality, the panel will offer close readings of post-imperial historiography, letter-writing, travelogue and opera, and scrutinize the fraught relationship between gender, poetic strategies and memory of imperial history.

Sub Unit

• Gender/LGBTQ Studies

Chair

• Tamara Cvetković, Central European U (Austria)

Papers

• 'In the Home of the Last Emperor': Gender and Post-Imperiality in August Cesarec’s 'Today’s Russia' - Slaven Crnic, U of Rijeka (Croatia)

• Fikrət Əmirov’s Opera 'Sevil' (1953): An Imperial Melodrama at the Dusk of the Stalin Era - Magdalena Marija Meašić, U of Rijeka (Croatia)

• Women's Place in Nation-Building: Ana Katarina Zrinski in Croatian Literature - Matea Magdić, U of Zagreb (Croatia)

• 'My beloved, only brother! With tearful eyes I write this letter': The Epistolary Character of Nikola Tesla in Marica Kosanović’s Letter Writing - Ivan Flis, U of Rijeka (Croatia)

Discussant

• Tamara Cvetković, Central European U (Austria)