What Did the Socialist Sweater Look Like, and Why Does it Matter?: New Perspectives on Socialist Materialities

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel presents a series of new case studies that provide a fresh perspective on Eastern European materialities. Expanding on the existing scholarship in socialist production and consumption, the panel returns to the old question of whether things do have politics to demonstrate how studying the political underpinnings of the material world can be a productive way to examine histories of state socialism. Each paper focuses on the non-material aspects of socialist materiality, that is, the ideas, infrastructures, actors, and ecologies that made it.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Gyorgy G. Peteri, Norwegian U of Science & Technology (Norway)

Papers

• The Right Stuff, Wrapped and Ready: The Effect of International Packaging Styles and Trends in Communist Eastern Europe - Patrick H. Patterson, UC San Diego

• Socialist Design Front?: The East European Design Networks in the 1960s - Katarzyna Jezowska, U of New South Wales (Australia)

• Ancient State, Modern Instruments: Interkosmos-22 and Image-Making in Socialist Bulgaria - Victor Petrov, U of Tennessee

• The Bones of Socialist Buildings: The IMS System as an Archive of Worldmaking - Vladimir Kulic, Iowa State U

Discussant

• Christina Elizabeth Crawford, Emory U