This conference seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in making queer and feminist interventions in digitally mediated cultures of the Caucasus. In this rich linguistic, cultural, and politically diverse space stretching from Dagestan to northwestern Iran and Türkiye, the digital dimension has been an active arena of negotiating agency in the twenty-first century. Multiple diasporas around the world further enrich the complexity of digital imaginaries, participation, and belonging in the Caucasus. We invite contributions from across Cultural Studies, Media and Communication Studies, Literary Studies, Performance Studies, Visual Studies, History, Art History, Gender Studies, and adjacent fields, as well as from outside academia, that critically engage with digital culture, politics, and society in the Caucasus. How do, for instance, regimes of visibility and opacity shape digital cultures across the Caucasus and in the diaspora? How could practices of surveillance, policing, and their contestations inform our analytical approaches to regional digital ecosystems? And how might we conceptualize the “gaze” across geopolitical and cultural terrains? The conference will be held at University of Regensburg, March 3–5, 2027.
Conference organizers: Tatiana Klepikova (University of Regensburg | Research group on Queer Literatures and Cultures under Socialism); Christian Pentzold (Leipzig University); Ilgar Seyidov (Atılım University | Department of Public Relations and Advertising).