Kenneth Slepyan (Ph.D. University of Michigan) is a professor of history at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the author of several publications on Soviet resistance in the Second World War, including Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (University Press of Kansas, 2006).
This talk is devoted to the hard social, spiritual and human questions of contemporary Russia and their reflection in the Russian cinema. As a jumping-off point, it uses the film ELENA by Andrei Zvyagintsev, the most profound and internationally recognized film among recent Russian movies.
Gregory Kataev attended the Russian State Institute of Cinematography and is a film, television and theater director, who has directed theater and opera at the Stanislavsky Dramatic Theater, Lyubimovka Theater Festival, the Moscow State Conservatory, Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, the Moscow Art Theater and on Russian television. He has directed two feature films, My Life and Collage, and the documentary film about the dissident poet Naum Korzhavin.
Karen Petrone is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Kentucky, and a specialist in Russian and Soviet Cultural and Gender History. She is author of Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (2000) and The Great War in Russian Memory (2011), a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012. She is editor (with Valerie Kivelson, Michael S. Flier, and Nancy Shields Kollmann) of The New Muscovite Cultural History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel B. Rowland (2009); and editor (with Jie-Hyun Lim) of Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives (2011).
Frederick Cooper is Professor of History at New York University and a specialist in the history of Africa, colonization, decolonization, and empire more generally. He is the author of a trilogy of books on labor and society in East Africa and more recently of Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (1996), Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (2002), and Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (2005). He is also co-author with with Jane Burbank of Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010). He is currently writing about citizenship in France and French Africa between 1945 and 1960.
Come chat in Russian. Speakers of all levels and abilities are welcome. You do not have to be a UK student attend. This is a chance to practice your spoken Russian. Давайте поговорим по-русски!
The panelists will discuss issues of education in their countries since the break up of the USSR.
Siberian indigenous peoples' intertwined striving for self-determination and spiritual vitality has been an impressive trend in the past twenty years, but their efforts are threatened by political, social and ecological change. This talk, based on long-term fieldwork in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and beyond, probes the implications of indigenous peoples’ concerns. Focus is on the Sakha (Yakut), who are the farthest North of the Turkic language speakers and the majority indigenous group of their multiethnic republic in the Far East of the Russian Federation. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, they have been coping with the tensions of increased development, mixed signal federal policies and valiant attempts at cultural revitalization. How far do the ripple effects of climate change go? How do indigenous land keepers discuss the dangers and potential remedies of change? Are indigenous peoples yet again at the forefront of human rights abuses?
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is Research Professor at Georgetown University in the Anthropology Department and the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES).
