Lille/France, 22 to 23 May 2025
From the 1880s to the 1980s, student dissidence/resistance in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe often came into contact with protest movements in other parts of the world, combining social protest with political and civic struggles. The aim of this conference is to study the dissident/resistant student press produced both in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe and by students from these countries abroad.
Argument
The student press is a body of work that is generally little analysed by cultural history, and by the history of the press in particular. This observation, shared by Kaylene Dial Armstrong for the American field (see Student Journalism History, New York, Routledge, 2023) and Laurence Corroy for the French field (in her article « Une presse méconnue : la presse étudiante au XIXe siècle », Semen, n°. 25, 2008), also applies to the geo-historical context of Central-Eastern and Southeastenr Europe between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century. Throughout this period, from the eve of the First World War - a period that saw the (re)birth or recognition of several universities - to the end of the Cold War, students played a fundamental role in the expression and organisation of resistance and/or dissidence to the established political regimes. From mobilisations against the Austro-Hungarian or Russian imperial order, to protests against post-1945 authoritarian regimes, through resistance to the dictatorial regimes of the inter-war period and clandestine leaves under the Occupation, student reactions followed on from one another in the area we are interested in, stretching from the Baltic States in the north to Greece at its southernmost point, from Germany in the west to Russia in the East.
Apart from the many different ideological typologies of these political sequences, what these regimes had in common was the abolition of the democratic and liberal functioning of society, and the formation of groups of rebels and dissidents, in which students were often a driving force. Some of them went into exile, notably to France, in order to escape persecution and express themselves more freely..
The press has played an important role in the activities developed by dissidents and/or those resisting the regimes on the ground. It also happened that certain countries in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe became host countries for dissident students trying to escape dictatorial regimes in their own countries of origin. This was the case with Greek students going into exile in several Western European countries during the colonels' dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s. This latest protest action is part of a socio-political movement, a wider socio-historical sequence, that of the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, or the ‘68s’, to use the expression used by Ioanna Kasapi and Robi Morder in the issue of the journal Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps that they edited in 2018. If we look at the inter-war period, for example, we find students in dissident/resistance groups in Hungary and Greece, opposing the repressive practices of the authoritarian regimes of Admiral Horthy and General Metaxas respectively. And going back to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gives us an insight into a student press that was often associative, born out of the melting pot of former or newly-created universities and higher education establishments, a mouthpiece for the literary, cultural, intellectual and political trends of modernity - realism, decadence, socialism, anarchism... A good example of this is the progressive Czech student movement of the 1880s and 1890s, which created an impressive and dynamic complex of periodicals, publishing houses and editorial collections that enabled it to disseminate its ideas and values in opposition to both the national mainstream press and the Austrian authorities.
From the 1880s to the 1980s, student dissidence/resistance in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe often came into contact with protest movements in other parts of the world, combining social protest with political and civic struggles. With a view to decentring our gaze, overcoming if possible the historiographical fragmentation surrounding the phenomenon of student movements and placing their press in a wider context, we plan to invite historiographical approaches in terms of transnational history to our reflections at this colloquium. In this sense, we would like to take an interest in the interactions and identify the interdependencies between different societies around the editorial phenomenon of the dissident/resistant student press, and to trace and comment on the cultural transfers and circulations of actors, ideas and protest publishing practices that emerged during the period under study. The aim is to connect different historical experiences, which have sometimes remained isolated or approached in a monographic way rather than through the prism of a history written on a regional and/or international scale. The aim is therefore to try to go beyond national, civilisational and geolinguistic compartments, to show the modes of interaction between the local, the regional and the supranational, as Sanjay Subrahmanyam encourages us to do in his book Explorations in connected history, He proposes a methodological approach and an intellectual posture that Caroline Douki and Philippe Minard have already acclimatised in French historiography in their article « Histoire globale, histoires connectées, un changement d'échelles historiographiques » (Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2007).
The aim of this conference is to study the dissident/resistant student press produced both in Central-Eastern and Southeastern Europe and by students from these countries abroad. This publishing phenomenon constitutes an object of study in itself, as well as a privileged observatory for gaining a better understanding of the various forms of dissidence and resistance expressed in this way. While the ideological orientations of publishers vary according to the political situation in their countries of origin, linguistic practices also vary between documents published in the official language and/or foreign languages. Allophone publishing occupies a special place in this corpus, in other words, publications in languages other than those established/recognised as official and/or minority in the area in which they are published.
Among the areas of research proposed as part of this conference, papers may contribute to :
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map the editorial landscape of this student press
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outline the careers of its main players (publishers, authors, printers, etc.)
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study the different types of publications
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explore the networks that have supported them and the relationships established between the various publishing initiatives
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to examine the role of this press in the general movement of people and ideas, the cultural transfers to which they have given rise, the mixed identities that emerge, the strategies of those involved in promoting ideological and aesthetic prerogatives
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assess the influence of this press in the countries of origin of their publishers and readers (cultural, political influence, etc.
Submission guidelines
If you would like to take part in the work of this conference, please send your proposal in French or English, of 250-300 words maximum, followed by a brief biobibliographical presentation, to the following addresses: catherine.servant@inalco.fr, nicolas.pitsos@bulac.fr.
by 30 October 2024
The working languages of the meeting will be French and English.
Scientific Committee
- Boisserie Etienne (CREE/Inalco)
- Cooper-Richet Diana (CHCSC/Université Paris-Saclay)
- Corroy Laurence (Université de Lorraine)
- Hnilica Jiří (Centre tchèque de Paris)
- Kasapi Ioanna (Université d’Angers, Cité des mémoires étudiantes)
- Kolakovic Alexandra (Institut d’Études politiques, Belgrade)
- Madelain Anne (CREE/Inalco)
- Markovic Sacha (Sorbonne Université, Eur’Orbem/ISP Nanterre)
- Mayer Françoise (I.T.I.C, Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier III)
- Morder Robi (GERME, Laboratoire PRINTEMPS/Université Paris-Saclay)
- Pitsos Nicolas (CREE/Inalco, BULAC)
- Servant Catherine (CREE/Inalco)
- Toumarkine Alexandre (CREE/Inalco)