Agenda

25 Jun 2026 09:30

Transnational Book Diplomacy in the Cultural Cold War: Soft Power, Networks and Tamizdat

Sala B - Ca' Bernardo

During the Cold War, the 'battle for hearts and minds' was one of the most intense. The ideological struggle between the two blocs was primarily fought on the battlefield of cultural production, and the weapons massively employed in the fight were books.
With the aim to map the 'topography of Cold War culture' through the analysis of the production, circulation and reception across and beyond the Iron Curtain of non-official Soviet, Central and Eastern European manuscripts (samizdat) and books (tamizdat), this conference will explore the use of cultural objects – and in particular texts – as tools of soft power, as well as the relational networks among state and non-state socio-cultural actors (writers, translators, editors, literary agents, diplomats, human rights activists, dissidents, organizations, associations, NGO, etc.), who/which contributed to their transnational production, circulation and distribution.

Registration for online participation:
https://unive.zoom.us/meeting/register/8g8Uiqb7QiiOythGF0ToWQ#/registration

The conference is part of the two-day programme "Not Rifles but Books: the Tamizdat in the Cultural Cold War and Beyond" (24-25 June), the organization of which is part of the activities planned in the framework of the research project "Transnational Book Diplomacy Beyond the Cultural Cold War: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the Tamizdat" funded by the EU with a Marie Skłodowska Curie post-doc fellowship (HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF, TAMIZDAT – 101109157).

Keynote speaker:
Simo Mikkonen (University of Eastern Finland), "Circumventing Moscow: How Artists and Professionals Learned to Play the Game of Cultural Exchange".
Participants:
Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam (Independent scholar), Bent Boel (Aalborg University), Birgitte Beck Pristed (Aarhus University), Brian Goodman (Arizona State University, Central European University), Cristina Petrescu (University of Bucharest), Krystyna Wieszczek (University of Verona), Andrea Gullotta (University of Palermo), Ann Komaromi (University of Toronto) and Stanislav Savitskii (University of Tübingen).

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

DSLCC; VeDPH; EU MSCA (TAMIZDAT–101109157)

Downloads

Programma 668 KB
Locandina/Poster 406 KB

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