Global Socialisms and Postsocialisms: An International Symposium
April 24-25, 2009
Department of Anthropology
10 Sachem St.
Yale University

All symposium events will take place at the Department of Anthropology, 
Yale University, 10 Sachem St., New Haven, Connecticut. Please address 
inquiries to Doug Rogers at [log in to unmask]

Friday, April 24, 2009

9:00-9:15 Opening remarks
Douglas Rogers (Yale University)
Helen Siu (Yale University)

9:15-10:45 Panel 1: Crossing Socialist and Postsocialist Borders

Chair: J. Dickinson (University of Vermont)

Maryna Y. Bazylevych (State University of New York, Albany) Socialist 
and Post-Socialist Dynamics of Physicians' Work in Africa: Same 
Geographies, Different Meanings

Ekaterina Melnikova (European University of St. Petersburg) The 
Cross-Border Communication at the "Closed" Territory: Between the Myth 
and the Myth

Maxim Matusevich (Seton Hall University) Probing the Limits of 
Internationalism: African Students Confront Soviet Ritual

Elana Resnik (University of Michigan) Transnational Affiliations, Local 
Articulations: Romani Movements in Bulgaria

Discussant: Kelly Askew (University of Michigan)

Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Panel 2: Building Socialist and Postsocialist Cities

Chair: Ljiljana Blagojevic (Yale University)

Emanuela Grama (University of Michigan) Impenetrable Plans and Porous 
Expertise: Building Socialist Bucharest in the 1950s

Samu Szemerey (New Jersey Institute of Technology) Socialism, 
Architecture and Postcolonial Exchange

Christina Schwenkel (University of California-Riverside) Layered 
Post/Socialist Memories: East German Architectural Legacies in 
Contemporary Vietnam

Alima Bissenova (Cornell University) Housing Dreamworlds and Realities 
in Kazakhstan's New Capital

Discussant: (Erik Harms) Yale University

Lunch Break

During the Friday lunch hour, there will be a screening of Fedor's 
Helpers, a film by Evgenyi V. Aleksandrov, Head of the Laboratory of 
Visual Anthropology, Moscow State University

2-3:30 Panel 3: Ideas and Practices in Circulation, I

Chair: Julie Hemment (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Olena Fedyuk (Central European University, Budapest) Circular Migration 
Between Two Generations: Ukrainian female labor migration to Italy

Priscilla Song (New School for Social Research) Transnational 
Experiments in (Post)socialist Chinese Health Care

Anna Geltzer (Cornell University) When the Standards Aren't Standard: 
Evidence-based Medicine in the Russian Context

Mary Taylor (Hunter College, City University of New York) Lenin at 
UNESCO? Tracing the Influence of Socialist and Postsocialist Delegations 
on the Development of UNESCO Intangible Heritage Policy

Discussant: P. Sean Brotherton (Yale University)

Break

4:00 Keynote Address
Iván Szelényi (Yale University) The Global Financial Crisis and the 
Post-communist World

A reception will follow the keynote address.





Saturday, April 25, 2009

9:00-10:30 Panel 4: Rethinking Socialist and Postsocialist International 
Orders

Chair: Marianna Pavlovskaya (Hunter College, City University of New York)

Alaina Lemon (University of Michigan) East is West, Hollywood is Soviet: 
The Manchurian Candidate, or, Paranoid Politics, Theatrical Art, and the 
Invisibility of Movement from Moscow...

Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (Cambridge University) Socialism as a Global 
Gift-Scape

Rossen Djaglov (Yale University) The World Republic of Leftist Letters, 
ca. Mid-twentieth Century

Andrew Gilbert (University of Toronto) The Politics of Impartiality and 
Post-Cold War Order

Discussant: Mike McGovern (Yale University)

Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 Panel 5: Transformations of Socialist Economies

Chair: Douglas Rogers (Yale University)

Jun Zhang (Yale University) Consuming Cars, Driving toward Modernity: A 
Study of the State, the Market and the Individuals in (post?)Socialist China

Ken Maclean (Clark University) Audit Regimes and the Rituals of 
Compliance in Contemporary Vietnam

Narcis Tulbure (University of Pittsburgh and New Europe College, 
Bucharest) The Cultural Mediation of Transnational Regulations: 
Competing Institutional Forms for Romanian Mutual Funds

David Kideckel (Central Connecticut State University) Shifting Economies 
and Political Practice in Two Postsocialist Societies

Discussant: Tiantian Zheng (State University of New York, Cortland)




Lunch Break

2:00-3:30 Panel 6: Ideas and Practices in Circulation, II

Chair: Kristen Ghodsee (Bowdoin College)

Sonja Luehrmann (University of Michigan) The Modernity of Manual 
Reproduction: The Material Culture of Soviet Propaganda

Victor A. Shnirelman (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian 
Academy of Sciences) The Idea in Travel: Eurasian Discourse in the 
post-Soviet World

Kimberly Coles (University of the Redlands) Mapping Democracy Promotion: 
Postsocialist Experiences in a Globalizing Election Circuit

Anya Bernstein (New York University) Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Mobility, 
Authority, and Cultural Politics in Siberian Buddhism

Discussant: Jessica Greenberg (Northwestern University)

Coffee Break

4:00-5:00 General Discussion


The 2009 Soyuz Symposium is supported by the following Yale University 
units: the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Transnational 
Cultural Analysis, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, 
and the Councils on European, African, and East Asian Studies of the 
Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies.