Baltic States identity through banal nationalism: postage stamp iconography analysis

This paper researches the reflection of nation-based discourses and national symbolism in the postage iconography of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the perspective of banal nationalism practices. There are two main research questions this paper seeks to answer. The first one is: What are the main postage stamp iconography themes used to construct and popularize the national discourses of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania? For that, a database consisting of 3069 stamps issued by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania between 1918-1940 and 1991-2018 was analyzed, applying Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to postage imagery and the official catalog inscription. The dominant patterns revealed common practices of banal nationalism in the selected states. The results revealed that national coats of arms remained a continuous trend in national symbolism manifestation in all states, also covering the subnational level of municipalities and cities. In addition, authoritarian regimes affected the iconography patterns, elevating the leader's role in collective memory. In contemporary practices, discourses became more inclusive at the subnational level by introducing new patterns of commemoration of people, heritage, and anniversaries. The second question is: how political developments within the state and participation in supranational organizations affected the postage stamps iconography of the Baltics States concerning national, regional, and European scales? The finding shows that authoritarian regimes emphasized the role of the leader and boasted the nation's pride via celebrations of independence accompanied by constant reminders of the collective trauma the Independence wars left. The new developments emphasized the inclusion of subnational symbolism in postage iconography alongside the promotion of European integrity and shared regional heritage

Будућност историје музике; Међународни научни скуп Српска академија наука и уметности Београд, 28–30. септембар 2017; Књижица апстраката

The conference The Future of Music History is organised within the project Serbian musical identities between local and global frameworks: Traditions, changes, challenges (No. 177004) financed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbi

Storytelling: global perspectives on narrative

This book is a collection of papers from an international inter-disciplinary conference focusing on storytelling and human life. The chapters in this volume provide unique accounts of how stories shape the narratives and discourses of people’s lives and work; and those of their families and broader social networks. From making sense of history; to documenting biographies and current pedagogical approaches; to exploring current and emerging spatial and media trends; this book explores the possibilities of narrative approaches as a theoretical scaffold across numerous disciplines and in diverse contexts. Central to all the chapters is the idea of stories being a creative and reflexive means to make sense of people’s past, current realities and future possibilities

Multimetal smithing : An urban craft in rural settings?

Multimetal smithing should be defined as the use of more than one metal and/or different metalworking techniques within thesame crafts-milieu. This complex metalworking has long been linked to centrality, central places and urbanity in Scandinavia.It has been extensively argued that fine casting and smithing, as well as manufacture utilizing precious metals was exclusivelyundertaken within early urban settings or the “central places” pre-dating these. Furthermore, the presence of complex metalcraftsmanship has been used as a driving indicator of the political, social and economic superiority of certain sites, therebyenhancing their identity as “centralities”.Recent research has come to challenge the universality of this link between urbanity, centrality and complex metalworkingas sites in rural settings with evidence of multimetal smithing are being identified. This shows that the relationship between thecraft and centrality (urbanity) must be nuanced and that perhaps multimetal craftsmanship should be reconsidered as an urbanindicator.The thesis project “From Crucible and onto Anvil” started in 2015 and focuses on sites housing remains of multimetalcraftsmanship dating primarily from 500-1000 AD. Within the project a comprehensive survey of sites will be used to evaluate thepresence of multimetal craftsmanship in the landscape. Sites in selected target areas will also be subject to intra-site analysisfocusing on workshop organisation, production output, metalworking techniques and chronological variances.A key aim in the project is to elucidate the conceptual aspects of complex metalworking. The term multimetality is used toanalytically frame all the societal and economic aspects of multimetal craftsmanship. Through this inclusive perspective both thecraftsmanship and the metalworkers behind it are positioned within the overall socioeconomic framework. The metalworkers,their skills and competences as well as the products of their labour are viewed as dynamic actors in the landscape and on thearenas of political economy of the Late Iron Age.The survey has already revealed interesting aspects concerning multimetal smithing and urbanity. Although the multimetalsites do cluster against areas of early urban development there are also other patterns emerging. Multimetal craftsmanship – both as practice and concept – was well represented in both rural peripheral settings and urban crafts-milieus. This means that therole of multimetality as part of an “urban conceptual package” is crucial to investigate. Such an approach will have the dual endsof properly understanding the craft and its societal implications, but also further the knowledge of the phenomenon of urbanityas a whole. Was multimetal smithing part of an “urban package” that spread into the rural landscape? Did the multimetality differbetween urban and rural crafts-milieus? How does early urbanity relate to the chronology of multimetal craftsmanship?This paper aims to counter these questions using examples from the survey of multimetal sites conducted within the thesisproject. A comparison between selected sites will be presented. The purpose of this is to evaluate the role of multimetality withinthe “urban package” and discuss the role of complex metalworking in the establishment of urban arenas of interaction in LateIron Age Scandinavia

Nations on the drawing board : ethnographic map-making in the Russian Empire's Baltic provinces, 1840-1920

Defence date: 31 May 2019Examining Board: Pieter Judson, European University Institute; Pavel Kolář, European University Institute; Tomasz Kamusella, University of St. Andrews; Steven Seegel, University of Northern ColoradoCo-winner of the 2020 James Kaye Memorial Prize for the Best Thesis in History and Visuality.The nineteenth century witnessed an exponential growth in the amount of statistical data collected to define populations, necessitating new ways to process and manage information. Ethnographic cartography offered a visual method to synthesise unwieldy ethnolinguistic data and communicate it in a clear and accessible way. However, in doing so, maps profoundly impacted the very meanings of concepts like language, ethnicity, and nationhood. This dissertation examines how nineteenth-century map-makers in the Russian Empire experimented with geographical methods and graphical techniques to map the inhabitants of the Baltic provinces, constructing ethnic groups based on contemporary notions of similarity and difference. Drawing on primary source materials from archives across East Central Europe, I trace both the political and scientific debates among map-makers about how to translate statistics into cartographical form. I depart from the existing literature by deliberately emphasising the technological, socio-economic, and commercial aspects that shaped the processes of collecting data, printing, publishing, and selling maps. By drawing attention to the wide range of actors who engaged in ethnographic map-making, such as women and members of the lower classes, I challenge the prevailing historiographical tendency to view maps solely as instruments of state governance and part of the material and visual culture of intellectual elites. I reveal how ethnographic maps had a strong subversive tendency and the spread of cartographical literacy through school textbooks and popular print culture in the second half of the nineteenth century enabled local populations to use maps to assert agency and challenge the imperial state. Situating the Baltic provinces within the wider transnational information space of East Central Europe, the project enriches our understanding of how ethnographic mapping permeated multiple social and political spheres and came to hold such a powerful sway over popular imagined geographies of nationality

Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises

This is an open access book. Histories we tell never emerge in a vacuum, and history as an academic discipline that studies the past is highly sensitive to the concerns of the present and the heated debates that can divide entire societies. But does the study of the past also have something to teach us about the future? Can history help us in coping with the planetary crisis we are now facing? By analyzing historical societies as complex adaptive systems, we contribute to contemporary thinking about societal-environmental interactions in policy and planning and consider how environmental and climatic changes, whether sudden high impact events or more subtle gradual changes, impacted human responses in the past. We ask how societal perceptions of such changes affect behavioral patterns and explanatory rationalities in premodernity, and whether a better historical understanding of these relationships can inform our response to contemporary problems of similar nature and magnitude, such as adapting to climate change

National Stereotyping, Identity Politics, European Crises (Volume 27)

The articulation of collective identity by means of a stereotyped repertoire of exclusionary characterizations of Self and Other is one of the longest-standing literary traditions in Europe and as such has become part of a global modernity. Recently, this discourse of Othering and national stereotyping has gained fresh political virulence as a result of the rise of “Identity Politics”. What is more, this newly politicized self/other discourse has affected Europe itself as that continent has been weathering a series of economic and political crises in recent years. The present volume traces the conjunction between cultural and literary traditions and contemporary ideologies during the crisis of European multilateralism. Contributors: Aelita Ambrulevičiūtė, Jürgen Barkhoff, Stefan Berger, Zrinka Blažević, Daniel Carey, Ana María Fraile, Wulf Kansteiner, Joep Leerssen, Hercules Millas, Zenonas Norkus, Aidan O’Malley, Raúl Sánchez Prieto, Karel Šima, Luc Van Doorslaer,Ruth Woda

The metamorphosis of the Lithuanian wayside shrine, 1850–1990

This dissertation examines the wooden wayside shrines of Lithuania and the unique role they played in the religious, social and political history of Lithuania from the end of World War II to the 1990s. Two manifestations of performance are discussed: (1) the development of the wayside shrine tradition in the territory of Lithuania itself, and (2) the radicalization of the tradition among émigré artists rebuilding a sense of community in the West. With the annexation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union following World War II, the Communist government aggressively repressed but never completely eradicated the religiously-based wayside shrine tradition. Beginning in the 1970s, the Folk Art Society in Lithuania vigorously generated a renaissance in the folk heritage. Society members turned to the arts and crafts tradition and created over thirty, large-scale ensembles of woodcarvings throughout the countryside. As part of a struggle to assert Lithuanian cultural identity, the ubiquitous wayside shrines composed of roofed poles with chapels containing free-standing religious figures evolved into totemic carvings, which combine religious and secular figures fully engaged on the trunk of the totem pole. In North America, the Lithuanian diaspora recreated the shrines predominantly in miniature form, often using a greater variety of materials and tools. In this radicalized form they became the symbol of the Lithuanian community's identity in all aspects of its visual culture. The dissertation is organized into three sections: (1) an examination of the historical tradition, 1850–1940; (2) an analysis of the metamorphosis of the tradition in Lithuania, 1940–1990; (3) a comparative analysis of production in North America. Extensive fieldwork and interviews in Lithuania and North America, and research in previously unexplored archives inform the dissertation. Prior scholarship on the wayside shrine tradition has remained largely descriptive. This study seeks a broader cultural analysis, including the North American production which has not been documented until now. The contribution of this dissertation is to synthesize the significance of this art form by applying a variety of scholarly disciplines: art history, religion, anthropology, history, material culture, and immigration studies