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)
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