Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Region

Call for Papers

For its upcoming issue, Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Region is currently seeking submissions of articles on the topic of:

In traditional western urban theory, the city has had a rich history of being conceptualized through the prisms of culture, history, politics, psychology, economics and sociology.  The next issue of Identity Studies will be dedicated to the question of the city in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region after the advent of modernity.

How can modern scholars of all disciplines theorize and engage critically with the urban spaces of the South Caucasus and the Black Sea region through the lense of traditional urban theory, while offering an alternative or supplementary vision of the city authentic to this region? How can the cities of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region be understood? Are they colonial or national? How can the city be understood in relation to nation-states and empires?  Do the landlocked cities of the Caucasus differ from the maritime cities of the Black Sea region? Can  the port city be theorized as a separate entity, a portal between the international and the national? How did the particularities of the Caucasus and the Black Sea city shape the creativity of its artists and cultural figures and affect the various modes of public, political and cultural expression? How can the Caucasian or the coastal city of the Black Sea be interpreted as an economic phenomenon considering that it does not conform neatly to the Western model of urban capitalism?  Are these regional cities ‘gray zones’ or ‘dual cities,’ in the manner of far eastern colonial urban spaces, where the supposedly civilizing, modern and ordered urban structures of the colonizers were superimposed onto the existing chaos of the native urban tradition?  And what can be said about the post-Soviet, post-imperial, nature and development of the city in this region?  Does the modern Caucasian and the Black Sea city oscillate between heterogeneity and homogeneity, and what are the specific contemporary forces that shape it?

We welcome papers from scholars in all disciplines (particularly from sociology, political science, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology and anthropology) that tackle these and other questions, which will lead to a more rigorous conceptualization of the city, urban identity, and its byproducts in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region.

Submission Guidelines:

• Papers should be submitted in an e-mail attachment, in doc-file format, named after the author's surname (ex.: Kekelia.doc) to identitystudies@iliauni.edu.ge and questions directed to elene.kekelia@iliauni.edu.ge
• Deadline is 15 May 2015. The word count for the submissions should be between 5000 to 8000 (including notes and references).
• All manuscripts must be written in English and carefully proofread.