THINKING “RACE” IN THE RUSSIAN AND SOVIET EMPIRES
March 5-7 University Of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago campuses
Thursday, March 5
University Of Illinois at Chicago
Institute for the Humanities, Stevenson Hall — Lower Level
701 S. Morgan Street
OPENING ROUNDTABLE: “RACE — A USEFUL CATEGORY…”
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Moderators: Leah Feldman, Marina Mogilner
Is race a useful category of historical analysis in Russian and Soviet Studies? Does Eurasia have a space in Critical Race Theory? How are race, gender, and sexuality addressed in Slavic and Eurasian studies more broadly? Why do we encounter resistance in scholarly discussions of race in the former Russian empire and Soviet Union? This roundtable also invites reflections on the climate of Eurasian studies.
Presenters: Anna Elena Torres, Faith Hillis, Anindita Banerjee, Eugene Avrutin, Adrienne Edgar, Nariman Skakov, Leah Feldman,
Marina Mogilner
Reception 6:00 – 7:30pm
PERFORMANCE BY PSOY KOROLENKO:
SONGS IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE
7:30 pm
UIC Theatre
Room L285 Recital Hall
1044 West Harrison
Translations, songs in non-native languages, macaronic songs, artistic functions of “other” and “othered” languages and various cases of inter- and multilingualism in the genre of song will be the theme of lecture-blended concert presented by the “avant-bard” and “wandering scholar” Psoy Korolenko.
Friday, March 6
University Of Illinois at Chicago
Institute for the Humanities, Stevenson Hall — Lower Level
701 S. Morgan Street
Breakfast and Coffee 9:00 am
PANEL 1: UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE THROUGH THE POLITICS OF RACE
9:30 -11:15 am
Chair: Faith Hillis, University of Chicago
Sergey Glebov, Smith College/Amherst College
“Goods and Bodies: Nationalizing Empire, Race, and the Invention of Chinese Commerce in the Imperial Far East”
Eugene Avrutin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Racial politics in Imperial Russia’s Borderlands”
David Rainbow, University of Houston
“Siberian Self-Racialization: the Case of the Regionalists”
Discussants:
Laura Hostetler, University of Illinois at Chicago
Charles Steinwedel, Northeastern Illinois University
Coffee break 11:15 -11:30 am
PANEL 2: RACIALIZING RUSSIAN JEWS: RACIAL SELF AND
RACIAL OTHER
11:30 am – 1:15 pm
Chair: Matthew Kendall, University of Illinois at Chicago
Semion Goldin, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
““Race” and the “national body” in the late imperial nationalist imagination: Russian, Polish and Jewish cases”
Marina Mogilner, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Lev Shternberg: connecting Jewish race and Soviet etnos”
Amelia Glaser, University of California San Diego
“From the Yangtze to the Black Sea: Yiddish Poets Rethink Ethnicity in Soviet Crimea”
Discussants:
Na’ama Rokem, University of Chicago
Karen Underhill, University of Illinois at Chicago
Lunch 1:30 – 2:30 pm
PANEL 3: RACE IN “REVOLUTIONARY DREAMS”
2:30 – 4:15 pm
Chair: Leah Feldman, University of Chicago
Michael Kunichika, Amherst College
“Specters of Empire: Early Soviet Cinema and the Representation of Race”
Nariman Skakov, Stanford University
“Eisenstein in Ferghana: Framing National Form”
Anindita Banerjee, Cornell University
“Race-ing to the Fabled Land of Ind: The Journey of the Russian Columbus from Victorian England to Soviet Bollywood”
Discussants:
Julia Vaingurt, University of Illinois at Chicago
Saturday, March 7
University of Chicago
Classics Building, Room 110
1010 E. 59th Street
Breakfast and Coffee 9:30 am
PANEL 4: RETHINKING RACE AND GENDER IN THE SOVIET UNION
10:00 am – 11:45 am
Chair: Marina Mogilner, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dmitry Shumsky, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“Stalin’s Nationalities Policies and Jewish Assimilation: A Reappraisal”
Brigid O’Keeffe, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
“Racializing Roma in the Stalin-era Soviet Union”
Adrienne Edgar, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Rethinking Race and Gender in the Soviet Union through the Lens of Intermarriage”
Discussants:
Ilya Gerasimov, Ab Imperio quarterly
Lunch 12:00 – 1:00 pm
PANEL 5: “RACE” AS AN INTERNATIONAL CONVERSATION
1:00 – 2:45 pm
Chair: Jonathan Daly, University of Illinois at Chicago
Benjamin Balthaser, Indiana University
“From Lapwai to Leningrad: Archie Phinney and the Making of
Indigenous Marxism”
Steven Lee, University of California, Berkeley
“Beyond Interference: Soviet and Russian Lessons for American
Multiculturalism”
Leah Feldman, University of Chicago
“Embodied Philology: Translating Race in Theater from Tashkent to Chicago”
Discussants:
Sonali Thakkar, University of Chicago
Anna Elena Torres, University of Chicago
Coffee break 2:45 – 3:00 pm
PANEL 6: RACE AND “CANON”: REVISITING KEY TEXTS,
SCHOLARS AND ACADEMIC SCHOOLS
3:00 – 4:45 pm
Chair: William Nickell, University of Chicago
Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
““New People” as Others: Race and Empire in “What is to Be Done?””
Vera Tolz, The University of Manchester
“Re-negotiating Cultural Diversity: The Rise and Endurance of Nationality, National Religion and Race in Modern Russia and Its Empire”
Jonathan Daly, University Of Illinois at Chicago
“Richard Pipes, the Race Question, and the Accusation of Russophobia”
Discussants:
Faith Hillis, University of Chicago
Rama Mantena, University of Illinois at Chicago
PANEL 7: ROUNDTABLE WITH THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS OF THE WAYLAND RUDD COLLECTION
5:00 – 6:00 pm
Yevgeniy Fiks, Jonathan Flatley, Christina Kiaer
The African-American actor Wayland Rudd (1900-1952) worked in the Soviet Union from 1932 until 1952, appearing in numerous Soviet films and serving as a model for paintings and propaganda posters. Using Rudd’s story as a springboard, The Wayland Rudd Collection (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020) combines over 200 Soviet images (paintings, movie stills, posters, graphics, etc.) of Africans and African-Americans produced between 1920 and 1980 curated by the conceptual artist Fiks, alongside responses from contemporary artists, writers, and scholars.
Reception 6:00 pm