2019-20 CRSCEES Honorary Lecture
Shredding the Map: Imagined Geographies of Revolutionary Russia, 1914-1922
Edith W. Clowes
Brown-Forman Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia
30 March 2020 (time and venue TBC)
What does “being Russian” mean? And does perceiving oneself as Russian involve belonging to a certain “Russian” place? “Shredding the Map” deals with Russians’ crisis of identity in the early 20th century over almost a decade of world war followed by civil war. It investigates how people in a time of national turmoil define the place they belong. Drawing from writings by a wide array of 75 revolutionary-era Russian poets and writers, some steeped in high culture and some newly literate, this talk asks how Russians imagined their country as the tsarist empire crumbled and the “Land of the Soviets” had not yet taken shape. Unexpected patterns of place-oriented identity emerge that anticipate challenges facing the Russian government even today.
Project splash page: http://mpgrr.iath.virginia.edu/
2018-19 CRSCEES Honorary Lecture
Believing in Russia:
Of Presidents, Prophets and Patriarchs
Professor John Anderson
School of International Relations, University of St Andrews
18 April, 5-6pm, School 5
The talk will be followed by a wine reception in the Hebdomadar’s Room, 6.30-7.45pm
This lecture explores different ways of approaching the question of ‘believing in Russia’, offering less an academic paper than a series of personal sketches that reflect on how we all create our own Russia, on how that may affect the way we research and think about the role of religion in Putin’s Russia, and who we look to for inspiration when looking for signs of hope in a sometimes depressing history.
