The Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge is pleased to
announce a series of public lectures for 2004-5:
Russia Hangs Out: Consumer Culture from the Tsars to Putin
'Russia Hangs Out: Consumer Culture from the Tsars to Putin' will introduce
a side of Russian culture that may be unfamiliar to many: how ordinary men
and women have ‘hung out’ - how they have spent their leisure time, what
they have consumed and how they have amused themselves – from Imperial
times to the present day. From nineteenth-century nightclubs to Soviet-era
caviar and contemporary online chat rooms, our speakers will present a wide
spectrum of consumer practices, and reveal an important continuity between
past and present. Among the pervasive myths about post-Soviet Russia is
that of a vacuum that was left when Communism collapsed; almost as often we
hear of the vacuum being rapidly filled by a version of late twentieth-
century consumerism that mirrored that of the West. The post-Soviet desire
to play and shop, to be entertained and indulged – parodied in the
undiscerning, over-consuming ‘new Russian’ – is presented as being
excessive because it is newly-awakened. By fleshing out the Russian
consumer from Imperial Russia to the present day, this series of lectures
aims to challenge this notion of newness and naivety, and to reveal a
longer history of Russian and Soviet consumer culture. What constitutes the
popular, and to what extent can it be seen as distinct from official
culture? What are the practices at work as Russians enjoy themselves, as
the consumers of the products of official culture or as individuals hanging
out and creating their own amusement?
The lectures will take place on alternate Thursdays throughout the year in
the Umney Lecture Theatre, Robinson College, Cambridge at 5.30pm.
7 October ‘Popular Culture: Russian Paradoxes’
(Nancy Condee, Pittsburgh)
21 October ‘Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury in Stalin's Russia.’
(Jukka Gronow, Uppsala)
4 November ‘Nightscape: The Commercial Night in Late Imperial Russia’
(Louise McReynolds, Hawaii)
18 Nov ‘Leisure and Consumption Strategies at the Late-Imperial Resort’
(Tim Phillips, Oxford)
27 January ‘Reading Russian TV adverts’
(Hilary Pilkington, Birmingham)
10 Feb ‘Russian Chat Rooms - Spaces, Distance and Exclusivity’
(Caroline Humphrey, Cambridge)
24 Feb ‘Avtorskaia Pesnia: Amateur Song as Communicative Code’
(Rachel Platonov, Manchester)
10 March ‘Soviet Rock: Tape Recorders and the Listening
Experience’(Polly McMichael, Oxford)
5 May ‘From Necro-realism to Neo-academism: Aesthetics and the Body of
the Absurd’ (Alexei Yurchak, Berkeley)
12 May ‘The Other Freedom’ (Svetlana Boym, Harvard)
For further information see the Slavonic Department website:
www.mml.cam.ac.uk/slavonic/news, or email [log in to unmask]
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