http://www.usc.edu/dept/las/sll/stalinism.html
USC 125th Anniversary Project; USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences; Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Institute of Modern Russian Culture;
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative; and Division of Critical Studies (Cinema-Television) present
ILLICIT RELICS: ICONS OF STALINISM
A symposium celebrating USC’s 125th anniversary and the acquisition of the Ferris Collection of Russian and Soviet Culture
Friday, Feburary 17, 2006
Taper Hall 202
4 – 6:30 pm: Screening and Discussion of a Major Stalinist Film The Oath (‘Kliatva’ / ‘Pitsi,’ 1946, dir. Mikheil Chiaureli)
Film introduced and discussion led by Olga Matich (Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley)
Dialogue translated and read by Oleg Minin and Elena Vassileva (graduate students,
Slavic Languages and Literatures, USC)
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Doheny Memorial Library - Intellectual Commons (second floor)
10 am – noon: Interdisciplinary Forum
Scholars from the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, and the social sciences will examine the problems of studying Stalinist culture and contemporary reverberations of Stalinism. Taken together, the papers will allow symposium participants to take stock of the state, direction, and variety of current scholarly approaches to Stalinist society and culture. The goal of the forum is to consider many different elements of Stalinism's controversial legacy, and to offer a broader cultural context for the exploration of Stalinism's "illicit relics" and "icons" that will take place in the afternoon workshop. How does contemporary scholarship
interpret the variety of artifacts and documents that have survived from the
Stalinist period? What kinds of “relics” have guided people’s understanding of
Stalinism, both before the leader’s death and after, by those who lived through it and those who inherited them? How did these relics allow crucial aspects of the Stalinist worldview to come to be internalized, appropriated and re-imagined – and why did they become “illicit”? In what ways does “the unquiet ghost” of the Stalinist way of life, with its particular vision of the relationship among the state, the self, and the community, continue to inform the social, political and even international aspects of Russia’s recent past and present?
Speakers:
Irina Paperno (Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley) “Dreams of Terror”
Jochen Hellbeck (History, Rutgers)“Love, Actually: Stalinism’s Intimate Record”
Robert English (International Relations, USC)“Stalin’s Ghost in Putin’s Russia”
Lunch Break
1:30 – 3:30 pm: Workshop on Visual and Material Culture
Each of the workshop’s participants – all scholars of different aspects of Russian art and Soviet visual culture – will examine, in a roundtable format, the workings of specific “icons” and “relics” of the Stalinist period through brief close readings. These will posters, photographs, sculpture, a short scene from a film, and objects of everyday life. Each of these objects will be analyzed for what it can tell us about the culture from which it comes and aboutthe various ways in which the visual and material culture of Stalinism can be “read” today. At the same time,
the relics chosen for analysis are emblematic of broader cultural tendencies of
the Stalinist period, so that when these “close readings” are put together a
larger, complex picture can emerge.
Roundtable participants:
Ekaterina Degot’ (Art History, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Vladimir Paperny (Independent Scholar, Los Angeles)
Syrago Tsiara (Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece)
John E. Bowlt (Slavic, USC / IMRC)
[sursa e-nass]
