The fall of communism was a series of liberal democracy movements in the late 1980s and early 1990s that led to the collapse of communist governments in the Eastern Bloc, symbolized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The dismantling of the Iron Curtain has radically altered the global balance of powers, shifted geopolitical reordering, and transfigured the European sense of agency and belonging. Other such events to follow the collapse of the Soviet Union and European Communism were the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, leading to the disintegration of the political state, and more recent chains of conflicts challenging collective identities stretching back to the Second World War. Such reordering across the continent has led individuals and communities to reconsider their relations to each other and to their histories in ways that are quickly generating new perspectives on the past and the present, and on how expressions of culture can both nurture and contest relations with others and the broader world.
The three-day conference examines the impact of the fall of communism—the geopolitical reorderings and the redefined senses of identities, borders, and belonging—in music and the arts. This conference aims to capture this moment of reimagining as it reshapes the study and making of music and art by creating a forum for humanistic and artistic inquiry.
We welcome a wide range of topics and discourses in the fields of music, arts, architecture, and closely related humanities. We especially welcome themes about:
• music, art, and nationalism
• music, art, and national identity
• postcolonialism in Eastern and Central European culture
• decolonization of Eastern and Central European music and art
• the impact of the disintegration of Yugoslavia on music and the arts
• the impact of political and economic isolation on music and the arts in Serbia after Yugoslavia
• legacy of conflict in the artistic sphere
• post-communist challenges and their impact on the cultural sphere
Formats: individual papers (20 minutes); themed sessions (3–4 papers, 20 minutes each); lecture-recitals (30–60 minutes).
The official conference language is English.
Please send abstracts (250–300 words) to Laura Emmery (laura.emmery@gmail.com) by January 15, 2026. In your submission, please include your name, any institutional affiliation, and any audiovisual requirements. For themed sessions, please submit all abstracts together with an additional proposal describing your session theme (100 words). The conference committee will review all submissions and inform the participants by February 15, 2026.
Conference fee: €80 for affiliated scholars, €50 for independent researchers, €40 for students. The conference fee includes free entry to all concerts organized during the conference.
Programming Committee Chair, Laura Emmery, Chair (Emory University, USA)
Keynote Speakers:
Peter Schmelz (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
Martha Sprigge (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Melita Milin (Institute of Musicology at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia)
Miško Šuvaković (The Faculty of Media and Communications, Serbia)
Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman (Faculty of Music at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia)