Book Discussion: Anti-Atlas: Critical Area Studies from the East of the West, by eds. Tim Beasley-Murray, Wendy Bracewell and Michał Murawski

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

The invasion of Ukraine is the latest in a series of upheavals that have made eastern Europe a telling point from which to consider the place of area studies in the construction of knowledge about the world. The politics of academic knowledge about ‘areas’ now feels more urgent than ever.

Anti-Atlas is is an eclectic, programmatically “undisciplined” collection of over 40 contributions imagining the world as seen from some kind of “east” of some kind of "west" (whatever that means). An imperfect, honest, collective contribution to how we might conceive of area studies as a substantively “critical” project. The book reflects on many different understandings of critique and positionality, conceived and penned at different points in time. The final drafts of most of the essays were completed in 2021; the long introductory essay reflects, among other things, on the epistemological violences and conjuctures that we only became wise to following russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (and on what we might have done differently had we become wiser sooner).

Please join the book's editors, authors and fellow-travelers to discuss what a critical area studies from the east of the west can (and can't) do: for so-called "slavic" studies, for our academic disciplines - perhaps even for our teaching syllabi.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Peter A. Zusi, U College London (UK)

Roundtable Speakers

• Wendy Bracewell, U College London (UK)

• Zayra M Badillo Castro, Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean

• Sofia Dyak, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Ukraine)

• Abigail Frances Scripka, ZZF Potsdam (Germany) / Central European U Vienna (Austria)

• Peter A. Zusi, U College London (UK)