Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

“Crime and the Criminal in Early Soviet Science: with Ken Pinnow

October 11, 2013 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

The Jordan Center’s Colloquium Series serves to introduce the most recent work of scholars within the Slavic field.  Participants come from universities across the country and abroad and work in disciplines ranging from history, political science and anthropology to literature and film. In the second session of the Fall 2013 Colloquium Series, Ken Pinnow will join us from Allegheny College to present “Crime and the Criminal in Early Soviet Science: Human Nature, Interdisciplinary Knowledge, and the Social Sciences.”

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 not only rearranged the boundaries of society, but also ushered in a decades-long exploration into human nature. These two developments came together in the Soviets’ efforts to study crime in the 1920s and early 1930s. Epitomized by the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal and a series of regional criminological laboratories, they sought to unify the human sciences (medicine, anthropology, psychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, and sociology) in the search for solutions and understanding. I examine the interdisciplinary work of these institutes in order evaluate the degree to which they challenged, eroded, redefined, or even reinforced a number of boundaries (institutional, professional, ideological, and individual). By considering the origins and results of these interdisciplinary aspirations, we gain additional perspective on the Soviet regime and the role of the sciences within it. In the process, we also may gain insight into our conversations about the disciplines and interdisciplinary knowledge in the present.

Ken Pinnow is Associate Professor of History and Global Health Studies at Allegheny College. His research focuses on the modern state’s role in constructing and regulating populations, with a particular interest in its use of the social and biomedical sciences to study individuals and groups. He is the author of Lost to the Collective: Suicide and the Promise of Soviet Socialism, 1921-1929(Cornell University, 2010) and is working on a new project that explores the history of medical ethics and human experimentation in Russia and the Soviet Union. He lives in Meadville, PA.

 

Link to written event recap

Details

Date:
October 11, 2013
Time:
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Event Categories:
,

Organizer

The Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia

Venue

19 University Place, Room 222