The journal Identity Studies is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, which was founded in 2009 with the support of a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Its aim is to advance interdisciplinary knowledge about the formation and dissolution of political, cultural and societal identities in the contemporary world, particularly in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region.  Major disciplines represented in the journal are sociology, political science, cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology and psychology.  The journal is published by the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, at Ilia State University, in Georgia. The journal primarily publishes research/empirical papers, review papers, case studies, theoretical articles and book reviews, both in print and online.

The City in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Region

In traditional western urban theory, the city has had a rich history of being conceptualized through the prisms of culture, history, politics, psychology, economics and sociology.  The next issue of Identity Studies will be dedicated to the question of the city in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region after the advent of modernity.

How can modern scholars of all disciplines theorize and engage critically with the urban spaces of the South Caucasus and the Black Sea region through the lense of traditional urban theory, while offering an alternative or supplementary vision of the city authentic to this region? How can the cities of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region be understood? Are they colonial or national? How can the city be understood in relation to nation-states and empires?  Do the landlocked cities of the Caucasus differ from the maritime cities of the Black Sea region? Can  the port city be theorized as a separate entity, a portal between the international and the national? How did the particularities of the Caucasus and the Black Sea city shape the creativity of its artists and cultural figures and affect the various modes of public, political and cultural expression? How can the Caucasian or the coastal city of the Black Sea be interpreted as an economic phenomenon considering that it does not conform neatly to the Western model of urban capitalism?  Are these regional cities ‘gray zones’ or ‘dual cities,’ in the manner of far eastern colonial urban spaces, where the supposedly civilizing, modern and ordered urban structures of the colonizers were superimposed onto the existing chaos of the native urban tradition?  And what can be said about the post-Soviet, post-imperial, nature and development of the city in this region?  Does the modern Caucasian and the Black Sea city oscillate between heterogeneity and homogeneity, and what are the specific contemporary forces that shape it?

We welcome papers from scholars in all disciplines (particularly from sociology, political science, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology and anthropology) that tackle these and other questions, which will lead to a more rigorous conceptualization of the city, urban identity, and its byproducts in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region.

Submission Guidelines:

  • Papers should be submitted in an e-mail attachment, in doc-file format, named after the author's surname (ex.: Kekelia.doc) to identitystudies[at]iliauni.edu.ge and questions directed to elene.kekelia[at]iliauni.edu.ge
  • The word count for the submissions should be between 5000 to 8000 (including notes and references).
  • All manuscripts must be written in English and carefully proofread.
  • Guidelines for the authors: http://ojs.iliauni.edu.ge/index.php/identitystudies/about/submissions#authorGuidelines