The Center for the Study of Post-communist Societies (GVPT-UMD) and the Romanian Cultural Institute will organize the conference "The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History" (November, 9-10, Washington D.C.) in collaboration with History and Public Policy Program (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars), the Embassy of Romania to United States of America, and Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service (Georgetown University). The conference is part of a multi-year project (started in 2007), envisaged by Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu to provide, by means of reflecting on watershed moments of post-1945 history, an overview of the global dynamics characteristic for the 20th century and its lessons and impact upon the 21st. The prior two events were: "Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc" (November, 29-30, 2007) and "Promises of 1968: Crisis, Illusions and Utopia" (November 6-7, 2008).
The first day of the conference proceedings (Nov. 9) will take place on the University of Maryland – College Park campus at Margret Brent Room (Stamp Union Building), from 8.30 am until 4 pm. The second day of the conference proceedings (Nov. 10) will be organized at the Auditorium of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Ave.) from 8.45 am until 5.30 pm.
The organizers of the event aim to create a discussion framework that situates the 1989 phenomena both regionally and globally. Rather than pursuing a case study approach, they wish to achieve an interdisciplinary, multi-angled big-picture of this turning point in contemporary history. The disappearance of the communist regimes in this region and the political experiments ingrained to those years reopened the conversation on the meaning of democracy, liberalism, civil society, egalitarianism, nationalism, and indeed revolution.
Please find attached the synopsis, the conference program and the brochure (conference participants, titles, abstracts and bios).
RSVP:
www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_rsvp&event_id=550941 (9 nov)
www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_rsvp&event_id=550942 (10 nov)
synopsis program detalii participanti / brochure
