From: Sergey Glebov [mailto:sglebov@smith.edu]

Dear colleagues,

The editors of Ab Imperio invite submissions of manuscripts to the third and fourth issues of the journal in 2009. These issues continue to explore the annual program of the journal focused on individual experiences of imperial space.

Information on manuscript submission can be found at the journal website at http://abimperio.net <http://abimperio.net>

Sergey Glebov


CALL FOR PAPERS: Ab Imperio in 2009 : Homo Imperii: The Imperial Situation of Multiple Temporalities and Heterogeneous Space

When Marc Bloch coined his famous definition of history as a science about humans in time,[1] he anticipated by several decades the "anthropological turn" in historical studies. The humanistic message of Bloch's formulation is ambivalent: does it suggest that human beings change together with the circumstances of "total history," or that they remain essentially the same throughout different epochs and situations? Is it really possible to "translate" adequately the life experience of a representative of a certain epoch in terms of a different time period? How do "grand narratives" look through the prism of an individual's life experience? How does one's life perception depend on the different aspects of the imperial situation that may combine uneven social and cultural spaces, and elements of different epochs, both archaic and modern? Can the methods of biographical writing and prosopography be regarded as an alternative to grand, depersonalized historical narratives? Writing biography is inconceivable without taking into
consideration time and space as crucial factors, but how does the specificity of these features affect human life and its perception?

[1] In the 1950s, this formula ("Science des hommes... dans le temps") was translated into English in the both old-fashioned and misleading way: "The science of men... in time", even though in the next sentence Bloch clarified the meaning of the word: "L'historien ne pense pas
seulement 'humain'" - "think [only] of the human." Cf.: Marc Bloch. Apologie pour l'histoire ou Metier d'historien. 2e edition. Paris, 1952. Pp. 4-5; Marc Bloch. The Historian's Craft. New York, 1953. P. 27.

No. 3/2009 "Maison des sciences de l'Homme: Human Sciences in the Empire"

The history of enlightenment in Russia as a project of normalization and Europeanization * scientific classifications of the population * borrowings and adaptations of the scientific discourses and practices of nineteenth-century colonial empires as a condition of admittance into the club of European colonial powers * psychology, its subjects and its objects of study * social sciences in imperial context * the sciences of imperial diversity: anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, etc. * museums and exhibitions as imperial "Panopticons" * political human sciences in empire * the humanistic paradigm and the problem of representation of the modern personality * medicine as a language of studying the individual and society * the imperial concept of norm and deviation * scientific foundations of uprising against empire * projects of rational cognition and re-description of empire and its inhabitants * "caring for souls:" theology on personality and empire.

No. 4/2009 "From Homo Imperii to Civitas: Projects of Imagined Imperial Communities"

Is civic society possible in empire? * Projects of state reform of imperial population: social engineering from above in empire * great ideologies on "small men" and their communities * "underground Russia" as an alternative social network * the corporate structure of imperial
society: cooperative, professional, confessional, et al. self-organization * Utopian projects of imperial society * political parties and movements and programs of imperial social reform * the
empire of "obshchestvennost'" in Russia and USSR.