The Soviet Union in the Twenty-First Century (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Monday, February 18th, 2019

Russia becomes both a force to be reckoned with and an oppressed minority on the world stage.

A Hero of Someone Else’s Time (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Thursday, February 14th, 2019

An alien visiting Russia, whether that alien is from America or Mars, is going to require a huge amount of information to get up to speed

UFOs after the USSR (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Monday, February 11th, 2019

It doesn’t hurt that the alien visitor happens to look like he would be equally at home in either his spaceship or on the cover of Tiger Beat.

A Hothouse Flower in a Communal Apartment (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Thursday, February 7th, 2019

Sinyavsky exploits the alien metaphor to the fullest by making his narrator an exotic plant that can barely survive in the harsh Moscow winter and the harsher Soviet communal apartment.

Undocumented Aliens (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Monday, February 4th, 2019

“Once again, a UFO has landed in America, the only country UFOs ever seem to land in.”

Fantastic Beasts and Where Not to Find Them (Russia’s Alien Nations)

Eliot Borenstein Thursday, January 31st, 2019

Science fiction has inestimable value for considerations of alterity

New Book, New Blog: Russia’s Alien Nations

Eliot Borenstein Thursday, January 10th, 2019

As some of you know, I spent a couple of years writing the first draft of “Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism” on my blog (plotsagainstrussia.org). Now that the book is coming out (from Cornell University Press, this March), I’m back to work on my next projects. And one of them is…another book whose rough draft will be posted on a blog.

Anindita Banerjee speaks on Aelita, Queen of Mars in Radiant Futures keynote speech

Natasha Bluth Friday, April 29th, 2016

On April 8, 2016, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia hosted a conference entitled “Radiant Futures: Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction.” After the first panel, NYU Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies Eliot Borenstein introduced keynote speaker Anindita Banerjee. “If we think of our conference and our field in terms of science fiction, then she is Queen of Mars, our Aelita,” Borenstein said. Banerjee, a professor of comparative literature at Cornell University, centered her talk on Aelita, Queen of Mars, a 1924 Soviet silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov based on Alexei Tolstoy’s eponymous novel.

“Radiant Futures” conference brings Soviet science fiction and fantasy out of the periphery

Ilaria Parogni Thursday, April 28th, 2016

On April 8, 2016, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia hosted a conference entitled “Radiant Futures: Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction.” The conference was convened by Eliot Borenstein, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies and Collegiate Professor at New York University, and it featured a varied lineup of speakers from the literary field. In his introduction, Borenstein said that the idea behind the conference was to gather a group of people who have been thinking about nauchnaya fantastika (scientific fantasy) from a scholarly and non-scholarly perspective, particularly given the peripheral role this genre usually plays in the academic context.