Jordan Center Undergraduate Research Symposium

The NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia is excited to announce the launch of our new annual master’s research symposium and undergraduate research symposium! This Spring, we will host 20 undergraduates and 20 master’s students at two separate symposia for a day of presentation, discussion, networking, and exploration!

The Undergraduate Research Symposium will feature presentations on a broad array of topics on panels chaired by leading scholars in the field. See the program below, and check back for updates regarding panel chairs!

The symposium will be held in the Jordan Center at 19 University Place on the Second Floor. Non-NYU affiliates must RSVP to attend. This event will not be recorded or streamed on Zoom.

PROGRAM

Research - History: 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM

1. Kathryn Yeager (Yale University) - Internal Opposition to the Sovietization of Kazakhstan

2. De’Vonte Armond Tinsley (Virginia Tech) - Revolution on the Daugava: Revolution and Civil War in Dvinsk

3. Phoebe Metzger-Levitt (Colgate University) - The Soviet Gulag and Soviet Society: A Biopolitical Continuum

4. Elizaveta Brover (University of Pennsylvania) - Modeling Russian Economic Productivity from 1856-1900 with a Geographical Production
   Function

Chair: Yelizaveta Raykhlina (New York University) 

Break: 11:15 AM - 11:30 AM

Research - Political Science: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM

1. Stanley Wu (Tufts University) - Does Kazakhstan’s Economic Reforms in the Oil and Gas Industry Consolidate its Authoritarianism?

2. Brandon Rickett (Bucknell University) - Central Asia: A Road or a Roadblock to Russia’s “Pivot Eastward”?

3. Amelia Fay (Columbia University) - The Effect of State vs. Private Ownership on Extraction Companies' Indigenous Policies: A Comparative Analysis of the Nenets' Relationships With Gazprom and Novatek

4. Ilene Tisnovsky (New York University) - The complex identities of children of immigrants from former republics of the Soviet Union

5. Ana Stanek (New York University) - Homophobia and Russian Asylum Seekers in New York City

Chair: Nargis Kassenova (Harvard University)

Keynote & Lunch: 12:45 - 1:45 PM

Rory MacFarquhar is currently Senior Vice President for International Institutions Engagement at Mastercard. He served for six years in the National Security Council and Treasury Department during the Obama administration, focusing on international economic issues such as US-China relations, the G20 and G7, and the Eurozone crisis. He has worked at Google and at Goldman Sachs in the private sector, and has been a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a graduate fellow at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian Studies.

Experiences in the Field: 1:45-2:15 PM

1. Diana Gor (CUNY Hunter College) - Mobilizing Émigré Writers in Support of Refugee Students through Tamizdat Project

Break: 2:15 - 2:30 PM

Research - Political Science: 2:30-3:30 PM 

1. Daniil Tourashev (United States Air Force Academy) - The Special Military Operation: The War on Ukraine in the Russian Media

2. Lavinia Teodorescu (Harvard University) - The Evolution of Chechen Paramilitary Groups and their Involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war

3. Tudor Boanda (CUNY Hunter College) - The limits of international law in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and their impact on future conflict resolution

Chair: Anastasiia Vlasenko (New York University) 

Break: 3:30 - 3:45 PM

Research - Literature and History: 3:45 - 5:00 PM

1. Nora Nancy Stella Paci-Furlong (Bard College) - The Poet Won't Die

2. Sam Heimowitz (Yale University) - Perspective at the Frontier: (Re)Conceptualizing the Russian-Chinese City of Harbin

3. Nicole Gonik (CUNY Hunter College) - Borders in “A Hero of Our Time” and “The Demon”: Applying Lotman to Lermontov

4. Matthew D. Johnson (Christopher Newport University) - Weaving a Cosmos from Tokarczuk’s Flights: Feminist Universalism in Cosmic Fragments

Chair: Chloe Kitzinger (Rutgers University)