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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...
Alfred J. Rieber approaches Soviet history through Stalin and the nationality question
On March 28, 2016, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia and the NYU Department of History welcomed Alfred J. Rieber from Central European University for a...
Redemption of Sold or Purchased Land in Muscovy during the Reign of Ivan IV (1533-1584) and the Russian Attitude toward Rule of Law
How Muscovites understood the right of redemption (re-acquisition) of sold land or land donated to monasteries shows that, under Ivan the Terrible, statutory law and case law did not always coincide.
Gothic Doubling and The Double, Gothically
Dostoevsky was well aware of the power of the gothic.
The Bashkir Vanishes?
How Bashkirs endure the intense Russian nationalism characteristic of the last decade remains to be seen.
Film Review: Sarik Andreasian's "Guardians" (2016)
With "Guardians," cinemas saw a Russian superhero team at last. Most of them wished they could unsee it.
Teymur Ateşli: A Traitor-Hero for the Cold-War Era
For an ethnically Turkish man from the Soviet Union, fighting with the Nazis was no betrayal.
Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith: Conference Recap
The Jordan Center's first all-day conference of the fall on Friday October 18th: "Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith"
Minds and Bodies in the World, or: Learning to Love Dostoevsky
I'm not one of those American Slavists who came to the study of Russian literature by way of Dostoevsky. For a long time, I wasn’t even particularly interested—I’m afraid that...
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Cold War Again: Who’s Responsible?
The East-West confrontation over Ukraine, which led to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea but long predated it, is potentially the worst international crisis in more than fifty years—and the most fateful....
Smoked Out
Yes my friends, it's finally here, a federal law prohibiting smoking indoors
A Walk With(out) Svetlana
I write this homage to Svetlana Boym from afar. The news of Svetlana’s passing found me, as many of her friends, too abruptly and too far to pay our homage...
Tweets from Underground
How would Raskolnikov use Twitter?
Play Based on Venedikt Erofeev's "Moskva-Petushki" Debuts at the East Village Playhouse
Like Erofeev's Venya, our own contemporaries seem to suffer from strong disillusionment with authority — an unsurprising outcome in the face of the degradation of discourse, institutions, and stable employment....
An interview with Donna Orwin on her new book, "Simply Tolstoy"
We heard that Donna Orwin had just published a new book called "Simply Tolstoy" and had to find out all about it.
The Power of the Past
Ten years ago, when I began writing a series of novels set in Russia during the minority of Ivan the Terrible, since published under the pen name C. P. Lesley,...
Getting One Thing Straight: “Postmodernists” Are Not the Problem
Discussions of Trump and Putin as “Postmodern politicians” come in many different forms and degrees of sophistication. My own modest contribution is intended only to dispel a bit of confusion...
Person or Persons Unknown
Everyone loves to be proven right, but novelists don’t often expect it — especially five hundred years after the period where their books are set. After all, that’s half the...
How NATO Destabilizes Europe
As NATO has expanded since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow’s sphere of influence has shrunk. The result is an environment that contributes to Russia's sense that...