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This conference volume, tentatively titled “Industrial Regions in Transition: Upper Silesia, the Donbas, and Beyond” aims at conceptualizing the changing identities within Europe’s industrial spaces, especially those shaped by historical border-straddling experiences. To achieve this, we follow two main research premises: First, we move beyond the modernist narrative of glorified industrialization and extraction. Second, we transcend (neo-)imperial and national particularisms. Therefore, we explore the paradigms of collective identities shaped under the pressures of global developments and multiple transitions, including shifting gender roles, evolving heritage trajectories, migration patterns, borderland identities, environmental humanities, transitioning workers’ life-worlds, urban memoryscapes, and, finally, public myths.
While the primary focus is on cultural and literary studies related to two old industrial borderlands in Eastern Europe—the Donbas and Upper Silesia—an additional goal is to create an interdisciplinary environment encompassing other industrial spaces across Europe. To this end, in addition to cultural and literary scholars, we bring together scholars from such disciplines as political economy, cultural anthropology, gender and queer studies, art history, history, and sociology.
Alina Strzempa is a literary and cultural scholar currently based at the University of Regensburg, Germany. She is working on a monograph about two historic industrial borderlands in Eastern and East-Central Europe—the Donbas and Upper Silesia.
Oleksandr Zabirko teaches and conducts research at the University of Regensburg, Germany, with a focus on Slavic literary and cultural studies. His current habilitation project explores literary representations of the industrial regions of the Donbas and Upper Silesia.