On the eve of the September 2009 meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, spoke of the "new challenges of the 21st century" as "challenges that have no respect for borders." Foremost among these Mr. Barroso listed climate change. He prevailed upon the citizens of all prosperous countries to cease gambling over the reality of environmental change and confront this threat with resolve. As he put it: "The time for playing high-stakes poker is over."

From the city which welcomed the G20 summit, first heard Mr. Barroso's call for action, and will host the 2010 UN World Environment Day, we raise a call of our own. The Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia (GOSECA) at the University of Pittsburgh has committed its seventh annual conference to scholarship which seeks to better understand the complex bonds between human beings and their environments. How have societies imagined the “natural” world and their relationship to it? What role did the environment play in shaping identities and spaces – political, cultural, and social? How have images and conceptualizations of environment shifted and how did such changes affect societies, their economies, politics, cultures, and identities? As sites of dramatic cultural, social and political transformations, Europe and Central Asia offer a vast potential in addressing these questions

We strongly encourage submissions from the widest range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities (and particularly those which cross disciplines) that address the issues of environment, identities, and space, their interplay and the way in which they affect processes in the region. Topics include but are not limited to:

• representations and interpretations of in art, literature, geography/cartography and history
•  migration and demography
• policy and controversy
• “alternative voices”: environmentalism and dissident politics
• the shaping of social and cultural identities
• historical legacies of land and resource use
• energy security, resource management and cultures of consumption

Students currently enrolled in graduate programs are welcome to submit abstracts, which should be no more than 250 words long. Please submit abstracts, along with an academic CV (limited to two pages) to gosecaconference@yahoo.com no later than December 15, 2009. We will contact the authors of accepted abstracts by January 1, 2010.

ATTENTION: We are pleased to announce that this year we will be offering a limited number of videoconferencing opportunities to confirmed participants who, because of travel limitations, would otherwise be unable to present a paper. Selections will be made at the organizers’ discretion, but participants from Central Asia will receive preference.