Ab Imperio 1/2023

Aleksandr Turbin Discussion

Dear Colleagues,

The latest issue of Ab Imperio (1/2023) is now available at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/50368

Issue “Dynamics of Imperialism and Nationalism in Eurasia” inaugurates Ab Imperio’s 2023 annual thematic program, “Toward a Postnational History of Eurasia: Deconstructing Empires, Denationalizing Groupness.” The program focuses on themes such as the social mechanisms that enable and sustain universalism, diversity, and plural agencies; the nature of groupness and the epistemological ambiguity of posthumanism; and the constraints of temporal and spatial imaginations that continue to reproduce the binary oppositions of empire and nations.

Issue 1/2023 features discussion forum “Conceptualizing Society after the Modern Territorial State and Nation.” Taking a cue from Arjun Appadurai’s call thirty years ago to find “a language … to capture complex, nonterritorial, postnational forms of allegiance,” the editors have solicited contributions from scholars who have experimented with finding such a language in their studies or have at least given thought to this problem. Forum participants tackle a broad range of topics and conceptual approaches, from the early modern period to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and from transimperial history to queer theory.

In the “ABC” section, Oksana Dudko and Vladyslava Moskalets share their experience of teaching Ukrainian history in North American universities during Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

 

Contents:

“Methodology and Theory” section:

Toward a Postnational History of Eurasia: Deconstructing Empires, Denationalizing Groupness” by the Editors.

Forum AI: “Conceptualizing Society after the Modern Territorial State and Nation”:

Invitation to the Forum.

The Tensions of Positionality Reflection” by Marlene Laruelle.

Hybridity and Solidarity: Critical Reflections on the Postnational and the Post-Sovereign” by Satoshi Mizutani.

Toward a Queer Postnational Politics: Imagining the Nation Not Surviving” by Tamar Shirinian.

Russophonia as an Epistemic Challenge” by Marco Puleri.

Wandering Thoughts on Wandering Histories” by Bogdan Pavlish.

Imagining Bosnia: Constructions of Bosnian and Bosniak Identity after the War” by Riccardo Nicolosi.

After the Empire, before the Nation-State: The Case of Bessarabia in Transition (1917–1922)” by Svetlana Suveica.

Dnipro: Some Reflections on Attempting to Write a City’s Biography” by Andrii Portnov.

A History of One Defaulted Nation” by Ilya Gerasimov.

“Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science” section:

Intelligentsia as an Event: The Valaam Heritage and Its Preservationists in the Late USSR” by Ekaterina Melnikova.

“ABC: Empire & Nationalism Studies” section:

Teaching Ukrainian History in Canada” by Oksana Dudko.

How to Teach about Ukraine during the War: Notes in the Syllabus Margins” by Vladyslava Moskalets.

“Historiography” section:

The Entangled History of a City in a Country with an Entangled History” by Mikhail Gaukhman.

The issue also contains an extended section of book reviews.

Ab Imperio 2023 Annual Program “Toward a Postnational History of Eurasia: Deconstructing Empires, Denationalizing Groupness” is available at https://sites.google.com/view/openabimperio/2023-annual-program

Ab Imperio Syllabus module – reading library for your syllabi – is available at: https://sites.google.com/view/ai-syllabus

Submission guidelines: https://abimperio.net/