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Catherine the Little and Crimean Puppets: From Vandalism to Voodoo in Ukrainian Popular Culture, Part II
Whereas vandalism is programmatically collective and anonymous, voodoo performance requires a priest: an authorial actor and director of the ritual.
Catherine the Little and Crimean Puppets: From Vandalism to Voodoo in Ukrainian Popular Culture, Part I
In the dismemberment and decapitation of monuments, the anthropomorphism of the destroyed object itself can be just as important as the act of destruction. In the process, the emphasis shifts...
Expanding the ‘Mental Phone Book’: Unconscious Bias and Diversity in Conference Panels and Edited Volumes
An editor or panel organiser cannot involve every participant from their immediate, instinctive ‘mental phone book’ every time.
Oksana Mykhed discusses the role of the plague in the making of the Ukrainian border
On November 6, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed historian Oksana Mykhed to present a lecture titled “A Plague on your Borders: Public Health...
When Russia’s Window on the World Slammed Shut: Reminiscences of an American Researcher, Part I
Cannons rang out and explosions shook the building, interrupting the singing onstage. What was going on? Was the war really here? No. It was just the salute to commemorate February...
Beyond Putin: Report from A Masculinities Workshop
A clear theme emerging from the papers and the following discussion was that of authenticity: what does it mean to be a “real” man in different cultural contexts?
Gothic Doubling and The Double, Gothically
Dostoevsky was well aware of the power of the gothic.
Upcoming Columbia Event
In Search of Empire: the 400th Anniversary of the House of Romanov February 14th-16th 2013 Co-sponsored by the Bakhmeteff Archive, the Harriman Institute, the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia...
Cold War Against Russia—Without Debate
No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point.
Gender Trouble in The Double: Masculinity in Dostoevsky’s Novella and Ayoade’s Film
Right from the outset, Ayoade’s film establishes the presence of a masculine hierarchy.
Inventing the Russian Revolution in the Print Culture of 1917
Several decades ago, Keith Baker explored how the French Revolution was "invented" as people’s conceptions of revolution, and the role that they could play in it, transformed during 1789. Russians,...
Book Review: "Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition"
What distinguishes "Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition" from other works on Russian television is its emphasis on the industry's adaptation to global markets and trends.
Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Persecution under Tsar Nicholas I
In 1843, the tsar and his senior advisers were greatly alarmed by reports from researchers in the Ministry of Internal Affairs who had been investigating religious minorities. According to these...
Colloquium Series: “Bashkiria’s Imperial World,” a discussion with Charles Steinwedel
Charles Steinwedel Associate Professor of History at Northeastern Illinois University-Chicago joined the Jordan Center to discuss his soon to be completed book, Threads of Empire: Making the Russian Empire in...
Universal Pictures: Zvyagintsev, Dostoevsky and the Politics of the Particular
By the end of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, I wanted to scream.
Talking with Yanni Kotsonis about "States of Obligation"
Most people would think taxes and Russia, and then think beatings, unfairness, repression, burden, squalor, and an overbearing state. That’s plain wrong.
‘Take me with you, Putin!’ Erotic Irredentism and the Struggle over Ukraine.
The St. George's Ribbon and National Insanity
Today’s owner of a German car shares his identity with his grandfather, who fought the Nazis.
Cold Snap (Part II): Russian Film after Leviathan
An auteurist orientation, therefore, is neither good nor bad, but it is certainly mismatched to an industry—especially during periods of robust growth—in which so-called “spectators’ cinema” [zritel'skoe kino] is in...
The Bashkir Vanishes?
How Bashkirs endure the intense Russian nationalism characteristic of the last decade remains to be seen.