The Association internationale d’études du sud-est européen is happy to invite you to the 12th Congress of South-East European Studies, taking place in Bucharest, from the 2nd to the 7th of September 2019. One of the conference panels, organized by Robert Born (Leipzig) and Marian Coman (Bucharest), is dedicated to the cartographic history of South-Eastern Europe.
Cartography was an instrumental tool in devising and disseminating the concept of South-Eastern Europe, both amongst the “Westerners” and “Easterners”. Turkey in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the EU’s newcomers were constructs of cultural geography that successively reinforced and reshaped the idea of a different, “Second Class Europe”, as the “Other” to the West. The colonial view modelled the local gaze, as the 19th and the 20th century national cartographies emerged as an alternative to the imperial discourses. Nevertheless, the Western cartography remained the yardstick against which maps were judged, for both those who advocated modernization and for those who promoted autochthonism.
Proposals for individual papers are welcome on various aspects of the history of south-eastern Europe cartography, from the Ottoman period to the post-communist era. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Renaissance and Early Modern maps of the Ottoman Empire, Enlightenment cartographies of Eastern Europe, the birth of national cartography, war and peace cartographies, historical and propaganda maps, national and local surveys, Cold War cartographies.
Please submit 200-500 word abstracts of paper proposals to robert.born@leibniz-gwzo.de or marian.coman@istorie.unibuc.ro by the 20th of September 2018. The conference accepts papers in English and French. Further details, including the registration fee, are available on the Congress website: http://www.congresaiesee2019.acadsudest.ro/