Conceptualizing the Human is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the changing concept of the human in Slavic and Eurasian culture. While many scholars have recently devoted much attention to the “crisis in the humanities,” our conference will turn to the many ways in which “the human” has been perceived, re-imagined, interrogated, and critiqued.
The 1917 revolution induced a radical re-evaluation of what it meant to be human among Russian intellectuals. In the Soviet Union, writers like Platonov, Bulgakov, and Zamiatin envisioned how the human being might transform itself under changing social conditions. New technologies influenced Gastev’s and Vertov’s close scrutiny of the mechanics of human action. In the first Czechoslovak Republic, Karel Čapek posed the question of what it means to be human in physical and cognitive terms in his science-fiction prose, as well as in terms of ethical judgment and the pursuit of truth in his mid-1930s trilogy. Earlier, thinkers such as Fyodorov, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, and the Decembrists incorporated fantasies or critiques of the “new man” into their thought, while contemporary writers like Sorokin and Pelevin have used images of physical violence to challenge traditional notions of human dignity.
Bringing together students and scholars from a range of disciplines and national focuses, “Conceptualizing the Human” seeks to advance a conversation addressing the humanities in their very essence.
http://conceptualizingthehuman.wordpress.com/about/
The conference is organized by the graduate students in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
All Panels, Keynote, and Roundtable will be held in East Pyne 010
FRIDAY October 18th
9:20 am: Brief welcome address
First panel: Soviet Humanism (9:30 am – 11:00 am)
Laura Brown, Pennsylvania State: “Stravinsky and the Sounds of Human Emotion: A Musical Study of the Human Characteristics of the Puppet Petrushka.”
Brian Droitcour, NYU: “Shakespeare for Stalin: Restaging Humanism with Romeo and Juliet”
Pavel Khazanov, U Penn: “Pulling a Fast One on the World: Happiness, Immortality and the Problem of Ethics in Andrei Platonov’s Happy Moscow”
Discussant: Robert Bird, U Chicago
- 30-minute Break -
Second panel: Political Subjectivity (11:30 am – 1:00 pm)
Andru Chiorean, University of Nottingham: “Re-Writing the New Man: Censors and Censorship in Stalinist Romania, 1948-1955”
Julian Gantt, CUNY Graduate Center: “Oil, Infrastructure, and Personhood in Postwar Azerbaijan”
Philip Gleissner, Princeton: “Totalitarian Repression or Carnivalesque Game?: Jiří Kratochvil’s Experience of the Czechoslovak Repressions in the 1950s”
Discussant: Serguei Oushakine, Princeton
Third Panel: Personhood in Russian Thought (2:30 pm – 4:00 pm)
Alexandre Gontchar, Harvard: “Language as a Tomb of Reification: The Problem of the Human in Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit”
Maya Larson, University of Oregon: “Why Does the Rusalka Have to Die?: Gippius’ Critique of Necrotheology in Sacred Blood”
Keith Walmsley, University of St. Andrews: “The Human in the Writings of A. F. Vel’tman”
Discussant: Randall Poole, College of St. Scholastica
Keynote: Mikhail Iampolski, NYU: 5:00 pm
SATURDAY October 19
Fourth panel: Humans in Space and Time (9:30 am – 11:00 am)
Ryan Allen, Cal State LA: “’Time Takes on the Flesh’ in Béla Tarr’s Turin Horse”
Lidia Levkovitch, Rutgers: “The Zhungle Book: Place, Body and Language in Iurii Buida’s Story Cycle Zhungli”
Matthew Mangold, Rutgers: “People and Place in Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island”
Discussant: Julie Buckler, Harvard
Fifth panel: Humans and Other Animals (11:30 am –1:00 pm)
Geoff Cebula, Princeton: “’Mne zhalko chto ia ne zver”: Animals as Objects of Sorrow and Longing in Oberiu Poetry”
Matthew Sutton, University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne: “The Wild Animal’s Metamorphosis”
Abigail Weil, Harvard: “On the Origin of the Specious: Monkey Business with Hašek and Kafka”
Discussant: Anindita Banerjee, Cornell
Roundtable (2:00 pm – 4:00 pm)
Moderator: Devin Fore, Princeton
Participants:
Anindita Banerjee, Cornell
Robert Bird, U Chicago
Julie Buckler, Harvard
Mikhail Iampolski, NYU
Randall Poole, College of St. Scholastica
Serguei Oushakine, Princeton.
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