In a 2001 issue of the journal PMLA, David Chioni Moore asked: “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?”Answers to this important question have come in many forms during the last fifteen years, and the tentative equation between the two has also been significantly extended: post-Soviet and postcolonial are routinely lumped together with postmodernist, and post-totalitarian; just as the “soviet” has with the “colonial.” Yet these “posts” did not sit comfortably together; their apparent family resemblance has not yet merged into a productive and convincing framework either for analyzing socialism as a form of colonial practice or for understanding post-soviet as post-colonial.

We welcome historically grounded and ethnographically engaged submissions from scholars interested in analyzing the postcolonial transfiguration of the communist past. Please send your abstract (300 words) and a short CV (up to 2 pages) to Serguei Oushakine, the Chair of the Program Committee at princeton.conjunction2016@gmail.com by January 20, 2016.

Those selected to give presentations at the conference will be contacted in early February 2016. Final papers will be due no later than April 15, and they will be posted on the conference website. Pending funding, subsidies for graduate students and participants from the overseas may be available.