CfP: The Great Transformation? Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Great Transformation?
Reassessing the Causes and Consequences of the End of the Cold War

The Department of International History of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, with the support from the Fondation Pierre du Bois pour l’Histoire du Temps Présent, will host an international conference on the end of the Cold War in Geneva on September 24-26, 2015.

The conference seeks to bring together different perspectives on the end of the Cold War. The main aim of the conference is to move beyond identifying individual protagonists, while focusing on processes and interactions. At the moment, the state of research on the causes and consequences of the end of the Cold War – necessarily still at its initial phase – seems to have focused on isolated themes, largely independent and detached from each other. The conference seeks to act as a forum for bringing many of these strands together. We expect the main focus of the conference to be on the events, transformations and processes that took place in the 1980s. However, we also welcome proposals that interpret the end of the Cold War in a broader temporal context. Moreover, the conference will seek to open a window on the post-Cold War era, by searching for the roots of some of the issues that have dominated the international scene since the 1990s.

While not excluding proposals on any aspect related to the end of the Cold War, we particularly welcome proposals on the following broad themes and issues: 

• United States foreign policy (e.g. towards the USSR, the Third World, Europe, arms control, human rights);
• Soviet foreign policy (e.g. towards the USA, the Third World, Europe, arms control, links with domestic challenges);
• The developments in and between Western and Eastern Europe;
• The impact of regional conflicts (e.g. Southwest Asia, Latin America, Africa);
• The role of high-level diplomacy and personalities;
• The influence of technology and information exchanges;
• The relationship between the Cold War and international, non-state and transnational actors and movements (e.g. terrorism, peace movements).

The deadline for submission of proposals (one-page abstract and one-page biography) is October 31st, 2014.

Proposals should be emailed to CW-Conference2015@graduateinstitute.ch

Selected participants will be notified by February 1st, 2015

Final papers should be submitted no later than August 31st, 2015