The goal of this working group is to interrogate the relationship between aesthetics and conservative politics. It takes the nineteenth century as its starting point, asking what happened when the age’s aesthetic sensibility lent itself to its political life and its modes of governance. We identify the resulting fusion as a conservative imaginary–an aesthetic mediation of a conservative political experience. To this end, this working group asks: what precisely constitutes a conservative imaginary? What is it preserving and to what ends? Who is enacting the conservative aesthetic impulse, and who is it enacted upon?
Taking as its subjects historiography, literature, painting, monumental sculpture, and cultural criticism, this working group seeks to examine the breadth and variability of conservatism in the 19th century. Preservationist and reactionary aesthetics have often been overlooked in favor of radical art and political movements. However, this group aims to examine conservative aesthetics not as a monolith, but as a dynamic field, the limits of which are constantly negotiated. The group will interrogate conservatism in its many facets: from its middling and centrist modes of discourse, to its spaces for moral ambiguity, to its restorative ethics and public ethos. Ultimately, it seeks to crystallize our understanding of conservative imaginaries, arguing that such imaginaries are fundamental not only to nineteenth-century cultural production, but also to political experience and the generation of meaning itself.
The working group will convene online monthly in a seminar format to examine the aesthetics of conservatism in Slavic Studies and beyond with a focus on the Imperial period. Discussion topics and questions will be guided by the interests of our members and might include, among others, works of art and literature, political, cultural, and intellectual figures, specific governmental policies, and mass-circulation publications. Participants can volunteer to lead seminars pertinent to their in-progress or future research projects.
To join the 19v Conservative Imaginaries working group, please add your name and contact information to this form. We will then reach out by email over the summer months as we solicit participants and develop the AY 2026-2027 seminar schedule.
Organizers: Valeria Mutc (UC Davis) and Chloe Papadopoulos (University of Southern California)
