Cultures of Trauma in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Workshop
An International Workshop to take place at the University of Warwick (UK), 8-9 May 2025
When: Thu, 8 - Fri, 9 May 2025
Where: Oculus, OC1.02
This workshop seeks to bring together established and early-career scholars to examine scientific, medical and cultural approaches to psychological trauma in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It has often been assumed that forced conformity to Pavlov’s teaching across the region led to the neglect of the mental realm and a profound suspicion towards questions of traumatised consciousness. While recognising the ideological constraints placed on scientists and cultural producers, this workshop seeks to shed light on the broad range of engagements with psychological trauma that persisted throughout this period. We invite proposals for papers that reveal the unique tradition of understanding trauma that emerged in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.
The workshop will be the inaugural event of the 5-year research project: ‘Traumatised Minds: Neurosis and Hysteria in Soviet Medicine and Culture, 1917-1953’.
The workshop will address the following questions:
- How were the psychological repercussions of revolution, war, displacement, famine and state repression understood by Soviet and Eastern European medical and scientific experts?
- How did scientific and medical enquiries into psychological traumatisation conceptualise the relationship between the somatic and the psychical?
- How did specific local contexts impact research, diagnosis and strategies of care?
- How did writers, artists and filmmakers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe engage with the topic of trauma? What overlaps and/or tensions existed between cultural and medical understandings of trauma?
- What meanings did mental distress acquire in popular culture and in first person accounts?
Keynote Speaker: Professor Polly Jones (Oxford)
Organiser: Anna Toropova (Warwick)
Please send a paper title, an abstract of 300 words and a brief academic biography (200 words) to by the 1st of March 2025.
Limited funding is available to assist presenters with travel and accommodation costs (priority will be given to PhD students, early career scholars and those from institutions without research funds).