CfP: Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonizing World

The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal invites submissions for a workshop and an ensuing special thematic issue on the Internationalism of the Decolonizing World in the Cold War.

In recent decades, Cold War historiography has paid growing attention to the autonomy and agency of the players beyond the US-Soviet dichotomy. In the wake of Westad’s seminal The Global Cold War (2005), scholars have increasingly explored the episodes, events, and institutions that demonstrate the agency of the Global South. From the Bandung Conference to Pan-African networks, the so-called Third World assumes a pivotal role in the latest historiographies. Newly independent states, among others, are recast as actors in their own right and not mere pawns in a game played by two superpowers.

Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonizing World advances this recentering of the narrative by focusing on decolonizing or newly independent states, along with related actors, as the makers and breakers of the Cold War world order. This special issue thus seeks to reframe the Cold War from the standpoint of Latin American, Middle Eastern, African, or Asian actors – where the US and Soviet Union appear not as the protagonists but as the dependent variables of decolonial world-making.

In addition, we seek contributions to highlight the decolonizing world’s agency in defining and/or shaping various ideologies – including, but not limited to, Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Nationalism, or Liberalism. We want to explore how actors from the postcolonial sphere assigned new meanings to the political vocabulary of the Cold War and created their own vocabularies.

Submissions including, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome:
- Anti-imperialist networks
- South-south diplomacies
- Biographical or multi-biographical studies
- Revolutionary organizations linked to post-colonial powers
- Women’s organizations, labor, intellectual, cultural, medical, educational, and
humanitarian groups
- Politics of anti-colonial nationalism
- Non-Soviet communisms
- International repercussions and transnational afterlives of novel variations of ideologies or stand-alone ideologies emerging from the decolonizing world (Maoism, Nasserism, Juche, Jamahiriyya, Latin American Developmentalism, Nkruhmaism, Nehruvianism, etc.)

Contributions from all levels, including graduate students and independent scholars, are greatly encouraged.

To Apply:
Prospective authors should send a short abstract (300 words) and a short bio (one paragraph) directly to Burak Sayim (burak.sayim@nyu.edu) and Severyan Dyakonov (sd3196@nyu.edu) by March 30, 2024. We will be in touch about the results by April 15.

The workshop will take place on June 5-6, 2024 at Geneva Graduate Institute. Financial support for travel and accommodation is limited.

If you are invited to submit a paper for the envisioned publication afterwards, the submission deadline for a completed manuscript is October 30, 2024.

The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the only academic, peer-reviewed journal to focus solely on this transformative impact and legacies of this decade in our history. Originally launched in 2008 as The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, it was renamed in 2022 to account for the broader and more globally inclusive trajectory of scholarship in this area.

Generally focusing on the concept of “the long Sixties” and welcoming approaches from all disciplines, the journal addresses how this period continues to be examined and redefined across the world, encouraging global, regional, and local perspectives, as well as transnational and comparative analyses.

For more details, please visit:
https://www.globalsixtiesjournal.com/workshop-special-issue-internationalism-of-the-
decolonizing-world