Background: the 1999 Mosaics Conference
Background: In 1999, a group of international scholars gathered in the city of Kraków, Poland’s cultural capital, to present their latest research on the dynamics of cultural change over the ten years that had commenced since the collapse of state-communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The conference resulted in an edited anthology of the presented papers, Mosaics of Change: The First Decade of Life in the New Eastern Europe.
Co-organizers Susan Pearce and Eugenia Sojka have been planning to repeat this conference.
Fifteen years have now passed, and those changes have deepened and new developments ensued. It is a rich time to reflect on the cultural present and project the region’s new futures. In June of 2015, we invite scholars and non-scholars to revisit this theme, again in the city of Kraków. The year 2015 is situated between two anniversary years: the 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of state communism in the former Eastern Bloc (2014), and the collapse of the USSR and initial breakup of Yugoslavia into independent republics (both 2016). The year 2015 also corresponds to another regional anniversary: the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide (2015).
Background: In 1999, a group of international scholars gathered in the city of Kraków, Poland’s cultural capital, to present their latest research on the dynamics of cultural change over the ten years that had commenced since the collapse of state-communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The conference resulted in an edited anthology of the presented papers, Mosaics of Change: The First Decade of Life in the New Eastern Europe.
Co-organizers Susan Pearce and Eugenia Sojka have been planning to repeat this conference.
Fifteen years have now passed, and those changes have deepened and new developments ensued. It is a rich time to reflect on the cultural present and project the region’s new futures. In June of 2015, we invite scholars and non-scholars to revisit this theme, again in the city of Kraków. The year 2015 is situated between two anniversary years: the 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of state communism in the former Eastern Bloc (2014), and the collapse of the USSR and initial breakup of Yugoslavia into independent republics (both 2016). The year 2015 also corresponds to another regional anniversary: the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide (2015).