(Whole-day seminar, Friday November 9)
The seminar will be held in room E24a at the Institute, from 10-15 - 14.30
Please prepare a 5-10 minute presentation on the basis of ONE of the three themes below:
Theme 1:
You will find appended two texts from 1985 (text 1 and text 2), which represent two different viewpoints on the processes taking place in the Soviet Union at that time. However, the texts may also be read as two narratives, situated in a specific time (1985) and a specific space (Western Europe). In 1985, the first signs that Gorbachev might indeed in some way change the Soviet Union fundamentally were starting to appear. The master narratives of East and West was starting to shift, and would soon have changed fundamentally. But these texts were written at a point in time when it was not at all clear what the future would bring.
(I'm sorry, but the two texts are in Danish! I have, however, for the benefit of non-Danish speakers, included two other texts, which you may treat as indicated above. These texts (text 3 and 4) are also "transitional"), but belong to a somewhat later period (1990) and represent US, rather than European master narratives - which are perhaps slightly different?)
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Texts to read: |
Appendix to Text Two: About Agnes Heller |
Theme 2:
In this course, we have read and discussed a number of texts, which together give us an image of what we might call an "everyday socialist life-world" and its history. In Skultans' monograph, we encounter stories of extraordinary suffering and displacement during the Stalin epoch in Soviet history.
Theme 3:
Give a scathing critique of Skultans’ monograph. But be very polite and very rational about it. Simply give us irrefutable proof that Skultans is making a bad analytical and / methodological mistake.
or:
Arrange a discussion, where one of you attacks Skultans, while the other defends her.