Conference Program
The cost of the conference is $40 for professionals and $25 for graduate students. One may pay in advance via the PayPal “donate” button at the bottom of the page or pay by check or cash in person on Saturday, April 6.
FRIDAY, APRIL 5 — 4:00-5:45
Reception for NESEEES Participations at the New York Public Library, Room 216, Lenox and Astor Room
Click here to register.
SATURDAY, APRIL 6 — New York University, Jordan Center,
Breakfast — 8:30-9:00 am
SESSION I — 9:00-10:45 am
I.1 Discourse and Tactics in Russia’s War against Ukraine
Chair: Alex Chen, Columbia University
Randall Newnham
Penn State University
Sanctions Against Russia in the Ukraine War: Success or Failure?
Tetiana Hranchak
Syracuse University
The Russian War Against Ukraine as an Onset of the Russian Eurasian Empire
Leonid Libenzon
George Washington University
Patriotic Education in Autocracies: A Case Study of Patriotic Education in Today’s Russia
Discussant: Alexandra Novitskaya, The Wilson Center (Alexandra.Novitskaya@wilsoncenter.org)
I.2 19th Century Russian Literature
Chair: Graham Weaver, New York University
Melkon Charchoglyan
Brown University
“Онегин жил анахоретом…”: Alexander Pushkin’s Engagement with Stoicism in Eugene Onegin
Maria Livadchenko
New York University
“The Poetics of Violence in Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter
Nikolay Smirnov
Brown University
The Significance of Internal Ideas and External Ideals for Character Development in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
Discussant: Anne Lounsbery, New York University (anne.lounsbery@nyu.edu)
I.3 Aesthetics and limitations of media across distance
Chair: Ian MacMillen, Yale University
Bjorn Ingvoldstad
Bridgewater State University
Museum Space, Virtual Space: “Trail of Angels” (“Angelu takais”) and the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art
Yvonne Zivkovic
University of Graz
Longing for Familiarity amidst Alienation: The Post-Yugoslav Migrant Cinema of Goran Rebić
Ekaterina Kokovikhina
New York University
Disco Moves in Late Soviet Latvia: Contradictions of the ‘Relative Abroad’
Discussant: Ian MacMillen, Yale University (ian.macmillen@yale.edu)
I.4 Jewish Writing, in and out of Russia
Chair: Ilya Kliger, New York University
Alexander Nakhimovsky
Colgate University
When it’s about Jews, read for nuance and context
Alex Pekov
Columbia University
A Jewish “Balagan”: Grotesque and the Syntax of Memory in Dina Rubina and Orly Castel-Bloom
Ofer Dynes
Columbia University
Psalms for Stalin: Dovid Hofshteyn in Tel-Aviv and Kiev (1925-1926)
Anna Katsnelson
Columbia University
Dovlatov Channels Proust in The Suitcase
Yuliya Minkova
Virginia Tech
Saviors, Witnesses, and Rogues: Jewish Partisans in Margarita Khemlin’s Fiction.
Discussant: Eliot Borenstein, New York University (eliot.borenstein@nyu.edu)
I.5 Language, discourse, and the arts in Soviet-era West Asia
Chair: Kate Graney, Skidmore College
Diego Benning Wang
Princeton University
The Great Persian Poet in the Land of the Soviets. The Millennium of Ferdowsi in 1934
Irine Chachanidze, Tamar Guchua
Akaki Tsereteli State University
The Problems of Linguistic Russification in Soviet Georgia (According to the Press of the Georgian Emigrants of the First Half of XX Century)
Senem Yildirim
Gazi University of Turkey
Soviet in Design, Turkish in Construction: On Building the Eurasian Periphery and the Architecture of Soviet Funded Factories in Turkey, 1931-1935
Discussant: Heather DeHaan, Binghamton University (hdehaan@binghamton.edu)
SESSION II — 11:00 am-12:45 pm
II.1 Ukrainian Literature and Culture
Chair: TBD
Diana Gor
Shevchenko Scientific Society
Found in Translation: Orwell’s “Animal Farm” in Ukrainian
Yana Lysenko
New York University
Speaking in “Sho”: Ukrainian-Russian Surzhyk in Konstantin Paustovsky’s Written Dialogue
Discussant: Tamara Hundorova, Princeton University (hundorova@gmail.com)
II.2 Liminality and desire, awkwardness
Chair: Dario Lucero, New York University
Auriane Benabou
New York University
The Calm Before the Swarm: Insect Imagery in Anna Starobinets’ The Living and An Awkward Age
Aidan Ward
The New School
Illegitimacy, Immaturity, and Intellectual Injustice: The Plight of Adolescence in Dostoevsky’s Late Novels
Olga Zaslavsky
Harvard University
Between Loving a Vronsky Character and Fearing the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Multiple Intertexts of Annie Ernaux’s novel Se Perdre (Getting Lost)
Discussant: Eliot Borenstein, New York University (eliot.borenstein@nyu.edu)
II.3 Gender, Sexuality and the Practice of Politics in the Baltics, Ukraine and Beyond
Chair: Ekaterina Kokovikhina, New York University
Alex Chen
Columbia University
Measuring the Impact of LGBTQ Activism on Backlash in the Former Eastern Bloc
Aleksandra Wojtowycz
Siena College
Diviersity and Women’s Representation in Ukrainian Diplomacy
Ausra Park
Siena College
Comparing Gender in Baltic States’ Foreign Service (1991-2021): Changes, Patterns, and Challenges Ahead
Discussant: Kate Graney, Skidmore College (kgraney@skidmore.edu)
II.4 Propaganda, Myth, Selective Memory: Fantasy in Southeast Europe
Chair: Ian MacMillen, Yale University
Viktoria Basham
Salisbury University
The Samodiva: Fiery Tempers, Wild Dances, Magical Herbs, and the Bulgarian Core
Kristian Kafozov
Saint John’s University
American public diplomacy and propaganda efforts to change “hearts and minds” in a Soviet satellite state (Bulgaria) during the Cold War, 1945-1991
Mihaela Serban
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Law as Mnemonic Infrastructure: Archival Legal Discourses and Memory Battles in Romania
Discussant: Cris Scarboro, Kings College (cristoferscarboro@kings.edu)
LUNCH/NESEEES Board Meeting — 12:45-1:45 pm
KEYNOTE — 1:45-2:45 pm
Nathaniel Knight (Seton Hall University)
Faces of Russia’s Empire: Ethnographic Images as Princely Pedagogy
SESSION III — 2:45-4:30 pm
III.1 Reclaiming Ukrainian Arts and History
Chair: Auriane Benabou, New York University
Cassandra Draudt
New York University
To Whom Do the Cossacks Reply?: Ilya Repin’s Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks Between Ukraine and Russia
Alesia Mankouskaya
University College London
Exploring Ukrainian Dramaturgy: The Use of Academic Drama Approach in Theophan Prokopovich’s “Volodymyr” and Its Historical Controversiality
Lauren Rechner
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Sound as Material: Composing Suprematism with Mykola Roslavets and Arnold Schoenberg
Discussant: Aristide LaVey, The Ukrainian Museum (amlavey@gmail.com)
III.2 Perspectives on Migration and Empire in Contemporary Russian Contexts
Chair: Heather DeHaan
Marintha Miles
George Mason University
The Role of Transnational Relations and Connections Among Russophone Migrants to the West after 2022
Marina Mikhaylova
Temple University
Modernity, Imperialism, and Transnational Landscapes in Contemporary Russia
Avery Mortimer
National Intelligence University
When the Wind Blows Down the Kremlin; Understanding Defection Cascades in Russia: The Crucial Role of Networked Actors
Discussant: Gina DeFabio, West Point (gina.defabio@westpoint.edu)
III.3 (Counter)revolutionary Women
Chair: Graham Weaver, New York University
Elena Kohn
University of Texas at Austin
Bolshevik Feminism, 1917 to Present
Alina Fiorella
University of Bristol
Revolution Betrayed: Bulgakov’s Margarita as Pilate’s Soviet Double
Laurel Tollison
Brown University
Dichotomies of the Feminine: Idealization and the Grotesque in Early Soviet Literature
Discussant: Nari Shelekpayev, Yale University (nariman.shelekpayev@yale.edu)
III.4 Trauma, Survival, and Witnessing during WWII
Chair: TBD
Eileen Lyon
The State University of New York at Fredonia
Spiritual Resistance in Gestapo Prisons in Nazi-Occupied Poland
Hanna Protasova
University of Western Ontario
The Representation of the Holocaust in Soviet Ukrainian fiction and non-fiction of the 1940s
Irina Makhalova
Humboldt University of Berlin
Soviet Retribution Policy in Crimea: Rethinking War- and Postwar Trials of Collaborators
Discussant: Brandon Schechter, Blavatnik Archive (bmschechter@gmail.com)
III.5 Cinema
Chair: TBD
Ashley Hsu
New York University
‘A sincere mockumentary?’: Alexei Fedorchenko’s First on the Moon and the question of postmodern critique in contemporary Russia
Nika Khomeriki
Indiana University Bloomington
Reimagining the Thaw through Ilyich’s Gate / I Am Twenty: Being Twenty, Sixty Years Later
Alina Poklad
Tallinn University
The image of the disabled person in modern Russian movies as an idea of “overcoming” and realization of social status of “other”
Discussant: Eliot Borenstein, New York University (eliot.borenstein@nyu.edu)
SESSION IV – 4:45-6:00 pm
IV.1 Introduction to the Blavatnik Archive: Oral Histories, Ephemera, Letters, and Diaries Available for Research
Julie Chervinsky, Blavatnik Archive
Brandon Schechter, Blavatnik Archive
IV.2 Chechnya and Ukraine: Decolonization, Recolonization and Post-Colonial Wars
Chair: Mauricio Borrero, St. John’s University
Marat Iliyasov
George Washington University
Decolonization and Recolonization of Chechnya
Galina Bogatova
New York University
Post-Colonial Nature of the War in Ukraine: Familial Language of Russian Imperial Legacy
Discussant: Marina Mikhaylova, Temple University (marina.mikhaylova@temple.edu)
IV.3 Nabokov
Chair: TBD
Rusina Volkova
Independent Scholar
Nabokov’s Novel Luzhin Defense and Philosophical School of “Name Worshippers”
Marina Minskaya
Independent Scholar
Beginning the Journey
Discussant: Corrine Scheiner, Colorado College (cscheiner@coloradocollege.edu)
IV.4 Soviet History
Chair: Kate Graney, Skidmore College
Peter Fraunholtz
Northeastern University
Land, Freedom, and a Subsistence Crisis: Rural Revolution in an Intermediary Province, Penza 1917
Gina DeFabio
United States Military Academy
The Ukrainian Soviet Man: National Identity and Socialism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1956
Discussant: Anne O’Donnell, New York University (aodonnell@nyu.edu)
RSVP to attend in person.