Previous events

2024

Writing Against the Empire: Anticolonial Ukrainian Poetry Across the Past Two Centuries

Lecture with award winning poet Iryna Shuvalova about Ukrainian contemporary poetry.

Time and place: Nov. 25, 2024 3:15 PM–5:00 PM, P.A. Munchs hus, seminarrom 14

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian poets have become the country’s global cultural ambassadors, spreading awareness about the conflict and promoting knowledge about Ukraine beyond its borders. Others went on to take up arms, fundraise, volunteer, and investigate war crimes. This high level of civic engagement, however, has been characteristic of Ukrainian poets for far longer than just the past decade and the war that has defined it. The sense of political awareness has been a prominent, perhaps even essential, feature of Ukrainian writing for the past several centuries, inherent in working with the language and culture singled out as targets of Russia's colonial violence.

In this talk, Iryna Shuvalova will consider the contemporary poetry scene in Ukraine in the context of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression and against the backdrop of this longstanding tradition of anticolonial resistance.

Iryna Shuvalova is a postdoctoral fellow at UiO. Shuvalova holds a PhD in Slavonic Studies from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge scholar, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where she was a Fulbright scholar. Shuvalova is also a translator and award-winning poet. She authored five books of poetry, including Pray to the Empty Wells (2019), available in English. Her most recent collection Stoneorchardwoods (2020) was named book of the year in Ukraine.

The arrangement will be streamed:

https://uio.zoom.us/j/68791014745?pwd=b3orsWs43OS8rCGBZIEMb2EhDRqhJR.1

Organiser

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies

Open seminar: Memory Politics of the North, 1993-2023

The seminar presents on-going research from the NRC-funded project NORMEMO, examining arenas, actors, and agendas of memory politics in North-West Russia and in relations between Norway and Russia in the post-Soviet period.

Time and place: Sep. 23, 2024 12:00 PM–5:00 PM, Stallen, Professorboligen/UiO, Karl Johans gate 47, Oslo

Program

12.00-12.15 Professor Kari Aga Myklebost, NORMEMO project PI: Welcome and opening remarks

PART 1

Memory politics in the Russian European North

12.15-12.45 Associate Professor Helge Blakkisrud: Installing patriotism: Recent developments in Russian History Education

12.45-13.15 Associate Professor Elena Kochetkova: Small agents of emotional memory: Local libraries and the memory politics of the Great Patriotic War in the Russian North

13.15-13.45 PhD Candidate Artem Spirin: Contested memories of the violent past in a border region: the political use of Stalinist terror and Finnish occupation in post-Soviet Karelia

13.45-14.15 Senior Research Fellow Håvard Bækken: Malaya Rodina in Policy and Practice: The Local Anchoring of Grand Patriotic Narratives in North-West Russia

14.15-14.35 Q&A

14.35-15.00 Coffee break

PART 2

Transborder memory politics: Russia and Norway

15.00-15.30 Professor Stian Bones, Professor Kari Aga Myklebost, and Senior Research Fellow Kristian Lundby Gjerde: Preserving the Narrative of Liberation. The Kirkenes Red Army Liberation Commemorations in Norwegian-Russian Relations, 1994-2019

15.30-16.00 Head of Department Joakim Aalmen Markussen and Associate Professor Petia Mankova: Russian-Norwegian preservation of WWII cultural heritage in Northern Norway

16.00-16.30 Professor Marianne N. Soleim: The exhibition 'Soviet Prisoners of War in Norway' on travel in Russia 2010-2024

16.30-17.00 Q&A, followed by concluding remarks

***************************************

The seminar is free and open to a general audience, but registration is mandatory. You can register here: https://nettskjema.no/a/444543

The NORMEMO project is headed by UiT The Arctic University of Norway and conducted with partner institutions University of Oslo, The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, The Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and University of Bergen. For more, please visit the NORMEMO home page, Memory Politics of the North 1993–2023 | UiT

Central Asia: Navigating Security Challenges Amidst the Ukraine War

Rustem Kadyrzhanov will talk about the security situation in the Central Asian region after Russia started the war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Time and place: Sep. 18, 2024 3:15 PM–5:00 PM, Sophus Bugge Seminarrom 5, Universitetet i Oslo, Blindern

Russia's policy in Ukraine since 2014 has radically changed the image of Russia in Central Asia as a close ally and partner into one of the main threats to the security and sovereignty of the states in the region. In this situation, the leaders of the Central Asian states face three problems. First, to maintain relations of neutrality and loyalty in interaction with Russia, on which all states in the region are economically and politically dependent. Second, despite Russian pressure, to continue a multi-vector foreign policy, including the search for strategic allies in the event of the realization of Russia's threats. Third, to maintain stability in their states in the context of securitization from Russian policy and a split in society in the perception of Russia and its policies.

Dr. Rustem Kadyrzhanov is a leading researcher of projects on the nation-building and ethnopolitics in Kazakhstan at the Institute of Philosophy, Political Science and Religious Studies (Science Committee, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Republic of Kazakhstan). He is also a professor of international relations at the Abylai khan University (Almaty, Kazakhstan), where he teaches regional studies in Central Asia. He is also an author of a number of books, including Ethnocultural Symbolism and National Identity in Kazakhstan (2014), Cultural Integration of Ethnic Groups in Kazakhstan (2020), Social and Cultural Foundation of the Nation-Building in Kazakhstan (2022).

Organiser

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies

What the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian State Want from Each Other

John P. Burgess will talk about the relationship between the Russian State and Church.

Time and place: Sep. 11, 2024 3:00 PM–5:00 PM, P.A.Munchs Hus, Seminarrom 11, Universitetet i Oslo, Blindern

Burgess will argue that the Orthodox Church in Russia today seeks to be a state-established national church with a privileged place in public life, while the Russian state asks the church to be politically loyal and to sacralize state power. However, the relationship is not symbiotic. The church is excessively dependent on the state, whereas the state sees the church as only one source among many for its legitimation. If the church is to have a future as a social-religious force, it will be because of local initiatives that seem to represent no threat either to the church hierarchy or to state officials.

Dr. John P. Burgess teaches systematic theology and theological ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (USA). Among his books are Encounters with Orthodoxy; Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia; and Why Read Pavel Florensky? Burgess has had three sabbatical years in Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Belgorod), has lectured in Ukraine, and had written and spoken extensively on the religious dimensions to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Organiser

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies

Healing the Present: Ukrainian Museums Amidst the War

Welcome to a discussion with Ukrainian museum professionals and a screening of the documentary "Izyum. Liberation."

Time and place: Mar. 20, 2024 4:00 PM–6:30 PM, Sophus Bugge Auditorium 2, Universitetet i Oslo, Blindern

In February 2024, we marked the tragic second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The attack on Ukrainian cultural identity, along with the looting and destruction of cultural heritage, stands as a crucial aspect of the Russian war strategy. Ukraine's museum and heritage sector has faced significant losses but also demonstrated remarkable resistance and self-organization.

Our speakers — directors and curators of three Ukrainian museums — will share their experiences of preserving and safeguarding cultural heritage in extreme circumstances. In conversation with Dr. Lars Rowe, they will reflect on the changing role of museums amidst the war, focusing on the evolving mission to document unfolding history under fire and support affected communities. The event will include short presentations, panel discussions, and a Q&A session. After the discussion, we will screen the documentary about the WWII Museum's expedition to the Kharkiv region shortly after its de-occupation in autumn 2022.

16:00 - 16:10 - Introductory remarks by Iryna Sabor (EWC) and Anna Chebotarova (ILOS)

16:10 - 17:30 - Discussion with Ukrainian museum professionals

17:40 - 18:30 - Documentary Film Screening "Izyum. Liberation” (dir. Dmytro Chornyi, Smart Movie Studio)

Participants:

Yurii Savchuk (Director of The National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Kyiv)

Lesya Onyshko (Academic Secretary of the Maidan Museum / Museum of Liberty, Kyiv)

Olha Honchar (Director of “Territory of Terror” Memorial Museum, Lviv, head of "Museum Crisis Center" Initiative)

Moderator: Lars Rowe (Director of Norway’s Resistance Museum, Oslo)

The event will be held in English.

Organiser

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies and The European Wergeland Center

The conflict of interpretations: history, values, politics, and Russia’s war in Ukraine

Alexander Agadjanian, Alicja Curanović and Pål Kolstø will discuss Russian identity and religion in light of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Time and place: Feb. 1, 2024 2:00 PM–4:00 PM, Niels Treschows hus floor 12, Universitetet i Oslo.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which has thrown the world into turmoil, has prompted new and renewed debates in Russia on a number of identity issues. As Russia is struggling to hold on to its influence in the former Soviet space, the specter of imperialism is rearing its head in Russian debates. Should Russia be an empire or a nation state? Are Ukrainians a part of the Russian nation or a separate nation? Is the war Russia is fighting in Ukraine a just war, and what exactly does “justice” mean for the Russian Orthodox Church?

Alexander Agadjanian and Alicja Curanović are two of the most influential international experts on the political role of the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church. Agadjanian’s book Understanding World Christianity (with Scott M. Kenworthy) appeared in 2021 on Fortress Press while Alicja Curanović’s book The Religious Factor in Russia’s Foreign Policy was published by Routledge in 2012. Pål Kolstø is the author of Strategic Uses of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: Interest and Identity in Russia and the Post-Soviet Space (Edinburgh University Press 2022).

Presentations:

Alexander Agadjanian: The ghost of empire and decolonization in the former Soviet space.

Alexander Agadjanian is Professor at Center for Civilization and Cultural Studies, Yerevan State University.

Alicja Curanović: The contemporary perspectives on justice in the Russian Orthodox Church: order, war and revolution

Alicja Curanovic is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw.

Pål Kolstø: “Ukrainians and Russians are one people”, Putin says. The claim is wrong, but why?

Pål Kolstø is Professor emeritus at ILOS, University of Oslo.

The talks will be followed by a question and answer session. Helge Blakkisrud, Associate Professor at ILOS, University of Oslo, will lead the seminar.

Organiser

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies and LegitRuss

2023

Code-switching and language-mixing in Russian literature: Two examples from the 19th and 21st centuries

Julie Hansen will discuss Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus as examples of translingual literature.

Time and place: Dec. 4, 2023 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM, Sophus Bugge Seminarrom 3, Universitetet i Oslo, Blindern

Many works of Russian literature contain other languages. This talk will consider examples of code-switching and language-mixing in the novels War and Peace (1867) by Leo Tolstoy and Laurus (2012) by Eugene Vodolazkin. Applying recent theory on literary multilingualism, Julie Hansen will discuss the functions and effects of different languages in these texts.

Julie Hansen is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at Uppsala University and a specialist in comparative literature and Slavic literature. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph Reading Novels Translingually: Twenty-First-Century Case Studies (Academic Studies Press, 2023).

"After Russia" - The emigration of intellectuals in the 1920s and the 2020s

A conversation with Roma Liberov - director, scriptwriter, and producer.

Time and place: Oct. 13, 2023 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, University of Oslo, Sophus bugge hus, Seminarrom 1

About the project

After Russia (afterrussia.world) is a musical and literary project that connects the poetry of Russian emigrants of the 1920s with the music of the artists from 2020s who found themselves in a desperate situation in February 2022. This project, a music album, received its name after Marina Tsvetaeva’s poetic book (1928).

The album includes 16 tracks, where the lyrics are based on the poems by Vladimir Nabokov, Yuri Mandelshtam, Vadim Andreev, Sergey Bongart and others. The musicians that participated in the project include Noize MC, Monetochka, Pornofilmy, AloeVera, Sansara, Tequilajazzz and others.

About the event

In this event Anastasia Kriachko Røren (ILOS) will have a conversation with Roma Liberov about these two waves of intellectual emigration from Russia, after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Civil War and the War in Ukraine. The conversation will also touch upon Liberov’s previous projects on the documentaries about writers.

This conversation is a unique opportunity to learn about migration processes during two turbulent historical periods in Russia: the stories of the so-called “unnoticed” generation of emigrated intellectuals from 1920s, as well as recent experience of many who chose or were forced to leave in the past few years.

About Roma Liberov
Roma Liberov is a Russian documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and the founder of the Ulysses Foundation for the Support and Preservation of Culture. Liberov is the author and creator of numerous art, literature, music, and film projects.

His films and projects about well-known writers Joseph Brodsky, Sergey Dovlatov, Osip Mandelstam, Andrey Platonov, and others, as well as about “unnoticed” talents, made a great contribution to the preservation of the cultural heritage.

Organizer
Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies

Trauma, Memory, and Counter-Culture. Borders and Border Transgressions in (Post-)Communist Europe.

The conference explores borders and border transgressions in the context of trauma, memory, and counter-culture and aims to highlight the specific relevance of Border Studies for better understanding literature, arts, and everyday culture in repressive, transformative and (post-)war societies.

Conference Program

THURSDAY, JUNE 1
10:00 – 10:15: Registration

10:15 – 10:30: Welcome

Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)
Christine Meklenborg Nilsen (Head of the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo)

10:30 – 12:00: Concrete and imagined Borders
Chair: Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)

Tetiana Ostapchuk (London) Crossing Borders of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: from Real to Imaginary and Back
Marta Smolińska (Poznań) and Burcu Dogramaci (München) Artistic Borderscaping of Migration and Economics: the Polish-German Border as a Phantom Border between East and West
Olha Polishchuk (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken) The real and mental Border in T. Antypovych‘s Novel “Pomyrana”

12:00 – 12:15: Break

12:15 – 13:15: Keynote
Moderator: Aileen A. Espíritu (Kirkenes)

Susanne Frank (Berlin)
1922-2022: Soviet “binary” Border Politics, monolingual Nation-building, and a fatal Legacy.

13:15 – 14:15: Lunch Break

14:15 – 15:45: Shifting Borders
Chair: Bjarge S. Fors (Kirkenes)

Tetiana Shestopalova (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken) Borders of Memory and Identity of Donbas in the Novels of Olena Styazhkina and Volodymyr Rafeyenko
Elena Nikiforova (Helsinki / Athens) “Narva that we lost and gained”: Cultural Rebordering of a Border City through the Means of documentary Theater
Irene Sywenky (Alberta) Shifting eco-borders: Environmental Visual Art in Poland and Ukraine

15:45 – 16:00: Break

16:00 – 17:30: Border Transformations
Chair: Tuulikki Kurki (Joensuu)

Aigi Heero (Talinn)Going back to Ukraine. Dmitrij Kapitelman’s Novel “Eine Formalie in Kiew” (A Formality in Kyiv)
Even Teistung (Oslo) East German non-identities. Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Aller Tage Abend”
Johan Schimanski (Oslo) Towards a Border Poetics of European Borderlands

17:45: Reception

FRIDAY, JUNE 2
10:00 – 11:00: War, Memory, and Trauma
Chair: Aileen A. Espíritu (Kirkenes)

Alina Mozolevska (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken) Discursive Power of Maps and Borders in Ukrainian Visual Arts: Narrating Russia’s War in Ukraine
Damjan Božinović (Oslo) Reading Border Aesthetics in Kristian Novak’s “Dark Mother Earth” (Črna Mati Zemla) (2013) and “Gypsy, but Fairest of them All” (Ciganin, al’ Najljepši) (2016)

11:00 – 11:15: Break

11:15 – 12:45: Oppression, Memory, and Trauma
Chair: Susanne Frank (Berlin)

Elizaveta Khachaturyan (Oslo) How to narrate Silence and Fear: Children’s Books about the Thirties in the Soviet Union
Mónika Dánél (Budapest) and Stijn Vervaet (Oslo) Transnational Memory, Border-Crossing, and Perpetrator Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Fiction: Zoltán Danyi and Faruk Šehić
Svitlana Kot (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken) “Perimeters of our Lives”: exploring Biopolitics of Borders in repressive Societies through the Lens of Dystopias

12:45 – 13:45: Lunch Break

13:45 – 14:45: Round Table – (Post-)repressive Spaces
Moderator: Johan Schimanski (Oslo)

Tuulikki Kurki (Joensuu) Short Keynote: After the Narrative: Vernacular Memory of Trauma in Borderlands
Vera Dubina (Bremen / Berlin) Public History, Soviet Union, Putin‘s Russia
Bjarge S. Fors (Kirkenes) Border Studies, Border Regions, Anthropology
Yngvar B. Steinholt (Tromsø) Slavonic Studies, Cultural Studies, Popular Music Studies

14:45 – 15:45: Challenged Borders
Chair: Zhanna Guzenko (Kirkenes)

Witold Kanicki (Poznań) POLAROID. Cultural Contraband of the Cold War Era
Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes) Soviet Ellipses – Omission as Border Transgression in Photography of the Soviet Era
15:45 – 16:00: Break

16:00 – 17:30: (De-)Materialized Borders
Chair: Marta Smolińska (Poznań)

Natalija Arlauskaite (Vilnius) Stitching Political Body: Microsurgery, Geography, and Soviet Medical Imagery
Agnese Zviedre (Riga) Overcoming Borders: Creating Accessibility in the Exhibition “Invisible Lives”
Fabian Heffermehl (Oslo) Borders of Skin

18:00 – 19:00: Public Lecture (Sophus Lies Auditorium)
Moderator: Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)

Vera Dubina (Bremen / Berlin)
The Weapons of the Weak. Silent Protest in Russia

19:30: Dinner

The Public Lecture is open to the public without registration.

If you wish to attend the panels, you need to sign up:
https://nettskjema.no/a/334971

Location: Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS), University of Oslo (UiO), Norway.

Panels: HF-12 Niels Treschow Hus, Niels Henrik Abels vei 36, UiO Blindern.
Public Lecture: Sophus Lies Auditorium at UiO, Moltke Moes vei 35, UiO Blindern.

The conference builds on the MSCA-project “Soviet Ellipses. Omissions as Techniques of Border Transgression in Photography, Literature, and Everyday Life” (SOVEL) at UiO.

Organizer: Vera Faber.
Contact: vera.faber@ilos.uio.no

With cooperation of the Barents Institute Kirkenes and Johan Schimanski.
Co-funded by The European Union, UiO:ILOS, The Barents Institute (UiT), UiO:demokrati, and Border Readings (UiO).

Student Assistant: Eleonora Mincheva.

SOVEL

co-funded by

Co-funded by the European Union

co-funded by UiO:demokrati
UiT

Border Readings Research Group

co-funded by UiO:ILOS

Organizer

Vera Faber

Anna Ohoiko: The Ukrainian Language: Before and After

The lecture will explore the challenges and triumphs of the Ukrainian language over the years.

Time and place: Apr. 25, 2023 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM, University of Oslo, Eilert Sundts hus, A-blokk, auditorium 2

The presenter will focus on the impact of the full-scale invasion on the language situation, examining changes in the Ukrainian language's popularity within Ukraine and their implications. The second part of the lecture will focus on learning and teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. Drawing on the extensive experience of the UkrainianLessons.com user community, the presenter will delve into how the number of people learning Ukrainian and their motivations for doing so have evolved in recent times.

Anna Ohoiko is a Ukrainian teacher and the founder of UkrainianLessons.com, an educational platform that offers podcasts, books, and other inspiring resources to help Ukrainian learners reach their goals. Anna obtained her Master's degree in Theory, History of Ukrainian Language, and Comparative Studies from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Then, Anna taught Ukrainian at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright scholar. Currently based in Sweden, Anna is dedicated to sharing her passion for the Ukrainian language by bringing inspiring educational resources to the world.

Ivan Krastev: How the war in Ukraine is changing Europe

The political dynamics of fragmentation and polarization after the covid crisis and Russia's war in Ukraine.

Time and place: Feb. 13, 2023 5:00 PM, University of Oslo, Scene HumSam, Georg Sverdrups hus

About the lecture

The war in Ukraine is having a dramatic impact on the political imagination of Europe. It has reframed the East-West divide by replacing the Cold War narrative of the past decades with one of decolonization and the threat for the sovereignty of the European nation states born out of the disintegration of the 20th century continental empires. The war does not simply change the borders of Europe but also the nature of EU's external borders. It increases the tensions between the imperative for geopolitical EU and the imperative to preserve the constitutional integrity of the Union.

About Ivan Krastev

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and member of the Board of Directors of GLOBSEC.

He was a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times (2015-2021) and currently is an Financial Times contributing editor. Ivan Krastev is the author of "Is it Tomorrow, Yet? How the Pandemic Changes Europe" (Allen Lane, 2020); The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (Allen Lane, 2019), co-authored with Stephen Holmes - won the 30th Annual Lionel Gelber Prize; “After Europe” (UPenn Press, 2017); “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, 2014) and “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). Ivan Krastev is the winner of the Jean Améry Prize for European Essay Writing 2020.

The event will be streamed: https://www.ub.uio.no/kurs-arrangement/live/humsam/

Organizer

Center for Slavic and Eastern European Studies

2022

EU, Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership in War and Post-War Times: Quo Vadis?

Anne Pintsch and Maryna Rabinovych from the University of Agder will come to UiO to give a lecture on the future of the relationship between Ukraine and the EU.

Tid og sted: 28. nov. 2022 09:15 – 11:00, Auditorium 2, Georg Sverdrups hus, UiO

In their lecture, they will briefly present the research project "Lowering the Bar? - Compliance Negotiations and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement" and focus on three main findings that they have made so far.

In the first part, they will show what role compliance negotiations play in the implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. They will also outline the main characteristics of these negotiations and how they differ from compliance negotiations within the European Union.

In the second part, they will focus on the European Union’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They show how the self-reinforcing development of networks consisting of members from the EU and Ukraine, and the subsequent socialization of the network members from the EU influenced the EU’s massive reaction.

In the third part, they broaden the view and ask about future perspectives for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The ENP originally included Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The increasing heterogeneity of these countries, however, presents a challenge. They provide evidence that the ENP has addressed this challenge by shifting the focus from the partners’ European integration and democratization to sustainable development and critically point to the problems of this shift.

Anne Pintsch is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder. Maryna Rabinovych works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the project "Lowering the Bar? - Compliance Negotiations and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement", funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

The lecture will be given in English. After their presentation, Maryna and Anne invite questions from the audience.

The event is free and open to all interested participants.
Welcome!

Arrangør
Senter for slaviske og østeuropeiske studier, UiO

Mentality Coded in Language – the role of Polish as one of the keys to understanding Polish culture

Time and place: Oct. 19, 2022 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM, P.A. Munchs hus, room 15, Blindern (University of Oslo)

Does Polish language reflect Polish mentality? What do Polish phonetics and grammar tell us about Poles and their attitude towards reality? What keys to understanding Polish way(s) of thinking can be found in Polish language on the levels of phonology, word formation and syntax? The number of tongue twisters and diminutive suffixes, double negation and the frequency of “if” in use can’t be accidental.

Dr Terka’s lecture equips the audience with elementary knowledge about Polish culture and mentality, offering a light and funny approach to the topic. It treats language as a guide leading us through the maze of the Polish mind.

Dr Beata Terka is a Research and Didactic Assistant, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

Triannual Conference of Nordic Slavists 2022

Participate in the largest conference for Nordic slavists!

Time: Aug. 10, 2022 – Aug. 14, 2022

Introduction

Conference programme

Key speakers

Brita Bryn, University of Bergen
Tore Nesset, UiT the Arctic University of Norway
Renata Ingbrant, University of Stockholm
Thomas Olander, University of Copenhagen
Irina Sandomirskaja, Södertörn University College
Bo Petersson, University of Malmö

Banquet

The conference will arrange a banquet for participants and speakers. The banquet will take place 13. august, 19.00.

Organiser

Nordic Slavist Association

Time and place

The Triannual Conference of Nordic Slavists takes place between 10. - 14. august 2022. The conference will be held at the university of Oslo, campus Blindern, Georg Sverdrups hus, HumSam-library. 14. August is the day of departure and is hence without programme. Welcome!

Lecture with Matthew Blackburn: The Transformation of Russia’s Political System 2012-2022

Professor Matthew Blackburn will be visiting the University of Oslo on Tuesday May 10 to give a lecture on the processes of transformation taking place in Russia after 2012.

Time and place: May 10, 2022 3:15 PM – 5:00 PM, Auditorium 1, Sophus Bugges hus, Universitetet i Oslo

Matthew Blackburn is a visiting research fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Warsaw and a researcher at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. His research focuses on political legitimation, memory politics, nationalism and identity politics in the post-Soviet space.

This is what professor Blackburn is saying about his upcoming lecture:

"The decision to invade Ukraine not only represents the crossing of a deadly Rubicon; it is tempting to see it as the culmination of ten years of political transformation in Russia, a decade marked by political restructuring, elite reconfiguration and ideological hardening. This lecture unpacks the key elements in the radicalisation of the Kremlin: (1) policies and reforms; (2) elites and institutions; (3) ideological actors and identity politics.

The point of departure is 2011-12, when key developments were set in motion. Political transformation is interpreted in relation to external dynamics (geopolitics and foreign relations) alongside internal factors (regime stability and legitimacy) related to Russia. The process of transformation is examined across two periods: the post-Crimean consensus (2014-2018) and Putin’s third term (2018-2022). I argue Russia remains an electoral authoritarian system (albeit in a securitised ‘emergency’ mode) and represents a certain type of Limited Access Order (North et al 2012). In ideational terms, I focus on how a set of discourses (“Fortress Russia” against the West, Russia as a “unique civilization-state”, Russian culture as vulnerable body in need of protection) has become dominant and unifies a still relatively diverse group of systemic politicians and ideological actors into loyal stances.

I conclude with some key points in understanding the nature of the current system and raise issues for future research on the evolution, consolidation and future stability of such regimes in a broader comparative perspective."

The lecture will be given in English.

2021

The state of mind: transformation of public opinion in Russia, 2018-2021

Lecture by Ekaterina Schulman.

Time and place: Dec. 3, 2021 3:15 PM–5:00 PM, University of Oslo, auditorium 2, Georg Sverdrups hus. Zoom.

In this lecture Schulman plans to describe the tendencies in the Russian public opinion as manifested in polling results, other types of sociological data and in political behaviour; electoral and protest. The description follows these transformation since the start of the erosion of Crimean consensus - 2016-2017, to the first occurrences of "protest voting" on the regional elections of 2018, the after-effects of presidential elections of 2018, pension age reform, to further protest activity of 2019, the voting for the constitutional amendment, mass protests and parliamentary elections of 2021 and the effects of covid restrictions on the loyalistic base. She will place these transformations within the broader context of power and generational transit of the 2020's and the gradual change of values that affects the way Russian society thinks of itself and the outside world. How far are we justified in speaking of the "Russian society" as a whole? What are the regional and generational divides within it? How can the Russian "proto-party" groups or opinion clouds be described, and how could these correspond to the people's political behaviour in the nearest future?

Ekaterina Schulmann is a political scientist specializing in legislative processes, parliamentarism and decision-making mechanisms in hybrid political regimes. She holds a position of a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School of Public Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow and at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES), aka “Shaninka”, and an Associate Fellow for Chatham House. From December 2018 to October 2019 she was a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights.

Schulman is the author of the books Legislation as a Political Process and Practical Politology: a Guide to the Contact with Reality (collection of articles), and one of the co-authors of The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin's Russia (Brookings Institution Press 2018), edited by Daniel Treisman. Mrs. Schulmann is a regular contributor to Vedomosti newspaper, The New Times magazine, online media such as Republic.ru Colta.ru, Carnegie.ru, and others. She hosts of a weekly program on the radio station Echo Moskvy dedicated to popularizing political science terminology and concepts. Previously, she has worked as a civil servant in a local administration, deputy’s assistant, political faction analyst and expert in Analytical department of the Russian State Duma, and legislative affairs director of a consulting company.

Singing about Lukashenko

A musical talk on protest and propaganda songs about Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Time and place: Nov. 23, 2021 4:00 PM–6:00 PM, Auditorium 3, Sophus Bugges hus

A winter clad man looks into the camera, with a hilly landscape and blue sky in the background.
Andrei Rogatchevski is Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Tromsø.

President Aliaksandr Lukashenka can be complimented on inspiring song writing ever since his first election in 1994. There are dozens of songs about him, mostly composed by Belarusian and Russian musicians. These songs belong to a wide range of genres, from folk and estrada to rock-n-roll, rap and punk, and can broadly be divided into three categories: pro-Lukashenka (inspired by a short-term survival strategy of praising the ruler), anti-Lukashenka (a long-term survival strategy undermining the ruler) and ambivalent (aka stiob, undermining the ruler by ostensibly praising him). This illustrated talk will discuss the comparative (dis)advantages of all three strategies.

The Blind Icon. Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma Stories

Welcome to a lecture by Fabian Heffermehl!

Time and place: Oct. 26, 2021 4:00 PM–6:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus, Auditorium 3

Image may contain: Squad, Gesture, Military person, Font, Crew.
Kolyma tales by Varlam Shalamov

The presentation examines challenges to face and faciality in the works of the Russian author and Gulag survivor Varlam Shalamov. In Russian classics (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy etc.) the face served as introduction or “entrance” into the inner life of the narrator. In the medieval icon the imprint of the exhausted and bloody face of Christ became a model for theological dissemination. Shalamov however, downplays the function of the face as representation or appearance. Instead, his techniques of writing promote facelessness and tactile feeling from the body’s inside.

Shalamov’s approaches to face and body derive first of all from his Gulag experience as a fragile and ‘porous I’, which denied the writer’s possibility of descriptive distance from the events that he narrates. The fusion of subject and object can also be traced back to artistic practices of the Russian avantgarde, with which Shalamov became acquainted in the 1920s. Against this double background of revolution and banishment, traditional paradigms of face, person and portrait are erased, reinterpreted or perverted.

Accommodation of Regional Diversity in Ukraine

A project studying identity and political reform in Ukraine.

Time and place: Feb. 19, 2021 2:00 PM–3:15 PM, Zoom webinar

The project "Accommodation of Regional Diversity in Ukraine" started in 2018 and is led by researcher Aadne Aasland at NIBR/OsloMet. The project examines how ethnicity, language and regional-local identity interact within the context of political reform in Ukraine. Its main aim is to find out to waht extent, and how, current Ukrianian decentralisation, education and language policies affect social cohesion among ethnocultural groups in two very different border regions, Kharkiv and Chernivtsi.

At this event, three researchers participating in the project from NIBR/OsloMet will each give a lecture about regional political reform in Ukraine.

Program

Aadne Aasland: Managing regional diversity in Ukrainian reform policy.
Marthe Handaa Myhre: Ukrainian education reform and language in schools.
Jørn Holm-Hansen: A federal solution to Ukraine's regional tensions?
Q&A

Workshop in relation to the "Fakespeak" project

Join a workshop in relation to the project "Fakespeak - the language of fake news" on Tuesday and Wednesday 16th and 17th of February.

Time and place: Feb. 16, 2021 9:00 AM–Feb. 17, 2021 1:00 PM, Zoom

The linguistics-driven project "Fakespeak - the language of fake news. Fake news detection based on linguistic cues" involves a core team of linguists and computer scientists based in Norway and the UK. They seek to reveal the grammatical and stylistic features of the language of fake news, referred to as "Fakespeak", in English, Norwegian and Russian. The overall aim of the project is to enable fake news detection systems to discover and flag potentially harmful fake news items in a more accurate, efficient and timely manner than offered by current state-of-the-art systems.

The aim with the workshop is to provide a background for the project, and shed light on the problem of fake news and misinformation from different perspectives.

Programme Tuesday 16th of February

Public session I.

9:00-9:15 Silje Susanne Alvestad and Christine Meklenborg Nilsen (Head of Department, ILOS) Welcome
9:15-9:45 Edson C. Tandoc Jr. (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; https://nanyang.academia.edu/EdsonTandoc/CurriculumVitae). Scholarly definitions of fake news
9:50-10:20 Sharon Levy (University of California, Santa Barbara; https://sharonlevy.github.io/publications/). On Fakeddit: A New Multimodal Benchmark Dataset for Fine-grained Fake News Detection, and related works from William Wang’s lab
10:20-10:30 Break
10:30-11:00 Geir Hågen Karlsen (Stabsskolen; https://www.forsvaret.no/forskning/ansatte-FHS/karlsen-geir-hagen). Influence operations in social and other kinds of media, political communication, one-sided history writing etc. The case of Russia and China
11:00-12:00 Closed session + break

Public session II

12:00-12:45 Industrial collaboration partners. How do two of our industrial collaboration partners encounter and counter fake news and other kinds of disinformation? How do the fact-checkers at Faktisk.no work? What kind of research findings would be of most interest to them? How can we collaborate? (Through a knowledge exchange?)
12:00-12:20 NTB (Geir Terje Ruud/Sarah Sørheim; https://www.ntb.no/) – presentation + discussion
12:20-12:45 Faktisk.no (Kristoffer Egeberg; https://www.faktisk.no/) – presentation + discussion
12:45-13:00 Closed session II - summary

Programme Wednesday 17th of February

9:00-9:30 Maite Taboada (Simon Fraser University, Canada; http://www.sfu.ca/~mtaboada/). The language of fake news and misinformation
9:30-10:00 Helena Woodfield
(https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/edacs/departments/englishlanguage/research/postgraduateresearch/profiles/woodfield-helena.aspx) and Jack Grieve (University of Birmingham; https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/elal/grieve-jack.aspx). The language of fake news. Corpus studies
10:00-10:15 Break
10:15- Potentially collaborating projects (10-15 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for Q and A/discussion)
10:15-10:40 PAR-TS (Tor Olav Grøtan, SINTEF Trondheim; https://www.sintef.no/alle-ansatte/ansatt/?empid=383;https://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/projects/pandemic-rhetoric-trust-and-social-media/index.html)
10:40-11:00 Threat-defuser (Laura Janda, University of Tromsø; https://en.uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=41561; https://threat-defuser.org/)
11:00-11:20 SCAM (Bente Kalsnes, Kristiania University College and member of Fakespeak´s Advisory Board; https://www.kristiania.no/en/about-kristiania/ansatte/school-of-communication-leadership-and-marketing/institutt-for-kommunikasjon/bente-kalsnes/; https://www.oslomet.no/en/research/research-projects/scam)
11:30-13:00 Closed session III + break

2020

Patriotism, Militarism and Upbringing in Post-Soviet Russia

Senior Fellow Håvard Bækken (Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies) will give a talk about the increasing military exposure in the Russian civil society since the late 1990s.

Time and place: Sep. 25, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Auditorium 2, Sophus Bugges hus

Increased military exposure

Since the late 1990s, the Russian civil society has become increasingly exposed to the military world. The exposure is broad-based, encompassing both military parades and war memorials, patriotic storytelling in Russian schools, and outright military training both in schools and youth clubs. State-initiated programs for patriotic upbringig are on the rise, and the so-called "Young Army Cadets National Movement" (Yunarmia) has recruited over half a million children in just a few years, where military actors are directly involved in most of the activities.

In his talk, Håvard Bækken will explain the increasing military exposure, and explore several issues related to this developmnet. Which processes can explain the ongoing militarization of the civil society? What roles does the military actors play in this regard, and what do they want to achieve? And how do the militaristic politics appeal to the Russian public opinion?

About the speaker

Håvard Bækken is currently a Senior Fellow at the Norwegian Insitute for Defence Studies (IFS), doing reseach on the security implications of resurgent state patriotism in Russia. He has also been working as a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and as guest researcher at the Norwegian University Centre in St. Petersburg and the EU-Russia Centre in Brussels. He has been teaching Russian politics and historiy at the Institute of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo, and Russian language at the Nansen Academy. He holds a PhD in Russian Area Studies and an MA in European and American studies.

Guest lecture for students: Russian Messianism and Russia's Foreign Policy

We are very pleased to announce a guest lecture by Alicja Curanović, Assistant Professor at University of Warsaw. The lecture's title is "On a Mission to Save the World? Contemporary Messianism and Russia’s Foreign Policy".

Time and place: Feb. 12, 2020 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, Seminar room 14, P.A. Munchs hus

A messianic revival?

Messianism is often referred to as one of the inherent features of Russia’s culture and politics. The annexation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine and the so called “conservative turn” in Russian politics have revived talk of Russian messianism. Some have interpreted these developments as a manifestation of the revival of Russian messianic imperialism. In regard to the fundamental issue whether contemporary Russian foreign policy is messianic, experts’ opinions are divided.

Messianic motifs in Russian foreign policy

Some hold that messianism disappeared with the fall of the USSR. Others, however, insist that the sense of mission is an indispensable part of the Russian worldview. In her talk, Curanović will present the main findings of her research whose main goal was to characterise messianic motifs in the foreign policy of the Russian Federation (2000-2018).

About the speaker

Alicja Curanović is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw. She holds a PhD in political science (PhD thesis: "The Religious Factor in the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation"). Her main research interests are: Russian foreign policy; religious factor in international relations; international relations in the post-Soviet area, perception, identity, image and status, messianism in politics. She has conducted research inter alia at the Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the Russian State University for Humanistic Studies and MGIMO.

The Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Diplomacy

Alicja Curanović, Assistant Professor at University of Warsaw, will give a talk about the Russian Orthodox Church's increasingly prominent role in the Russian state diplomacy.

Time and place: Feb. 10, 2020 4:15 PM–6:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

The Church and the state in Russia

The Russian Federation's use of religion in foreign policy is exercised with a growing efficiency. This is, to a certain degree, a consequence of processes taking place in Russia: For many Russians, including the political elite, religion is a crucial component of tradition and as such the foundation of values for spiritual recovery of Russian society and Russia regaining its power status. The religious diplomacy is therefore a part of a wider phenomenon of rapprochement between Church and state in Russia.

The Church as a valuable diplomatic asset

Religion appears frequently in Russia’s official concepts of state policy: The country is depicted as a “civilisational pole” with its own cultural space (russkiy mir) and mission (i.e. promoting interfaith dialogue). Both russkiy mir and interfaith dialogue are connected with state security and soft power. Loyal religious organisations, capable of conducting transnational activity, are a valuable asset of state diplomacy. This is the case of the Russian Orthodox Church.

About the speaker

Indigenous Literature in Russia: Yuri Rytkheu

Associate Professor Audun Johannes Mørch will give a talk about indigenous Russian literature, based on the works of the Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu (1930-2008).

Time and place: Jan. 31, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Stort møterom, Georg Sverdrups hus

A linguistic barrier

If we compare Russian indigenous literature with similar phenomena, we will soon discover that the literature is often written in the indigenous people's own language. As few literary scholars master these languages, the result has been that this particular literature has been studied to a very small extent by scientists and critics. However, the works of the Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu are different – after writing a few minor works in his native language, he went on to write in Russian. This enabled Mørch to study his works more thoroughly.

The Chukchi universe

The aim of Mørch's literary project is to understand Rytkheu's fictive universe, and in the extension of this, the indigenous Chukchi universe. Mørch will guide us through both shamanism, mysticism, the tundra, the Arctic Ocean and the polar sky, as well as the encounter between the Chukchi indigenous culture and modern Russian (later Soviet) culture. The audience will gain insight into how the traditional Chukchi worldview represents a knowledge of the human race and its place in nature that has been lost in the civilized world, but which can be of great value for us today – especially from an ecological point of view. Mørch claims that this is perhaps the most important reason why it is necessary to read indigenous literature in general.

About the speaker

Audun Johannes Mørch is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities at University of Oslo. His academic interest is Russian literature from several eras, including indigenous literature from Russia, which was the main topic of his latest publication: Between the Primordial, the Modern and the Post-Modern: The Chukchi Writer Yuri Rytkheu (2017).

2019

History as Fate: The Cultural Politics of Memory, 1957-present

Professor Catriona Kelly (University of Oxford) will give a talk about how the history of Leningrad and St. Petersburg has afflicted the identities of both the city and the people living there.

Time and place: Dec. 16, 2019 4:15 PM–6:00 PM, Stort møterom, Georg Sverdrups hus

Suffering as part of the city identity

Since the late 1950s, and particularly since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, reflections on the suffering of Leningraders between 1941 and 1944, when the city was under siege, has been an inseparable part of city identity in St. Petersburg. Allied to this is the widespread belief that this suffering has been overlooked by the outside world and that its memory was systematically suppressed by the government and political elite of the USSR.

Local identities and social memories

Yet war memory, vital as it may be, is far from the only significant past in modern St. Petersburg, where local identities are shaped by layered and contradictory personal recollections and by shared social memories. In this talk, based on participant observation as well as oral history, literature and culture, and archival documents, Catriona Kelly offers a guide to the imaginative and real world of what Joseph Brodsky, in a famous essay, referred to as the "renamed city".

About the speaker

Catriona Kelly is Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. She has published many books and articles on Russian history and culture, including St. Petersburg: Shadows of the Past (Yale University Press, 2014), which was shortlisted for the Pushkin Russian Book Prize. She often visits Russia, and has owned a flat in St. Petersburg since 2005. She is currently completing Soviet Art House, a study of the Lenfilm studio from the early 1960s to the 1980s.

The Zelensky Phenomenon: From Where Did It Come and Where Will It Lead

Adrian Karatnycky (Atlantic Council) will give a talk about Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian comedian-turned-president, and how his electoral triumph was possible.

Time and place: Nov. 29, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Stort møterom, Georg Sverdrups hus

From comedian to president

Volodymyr Zelensky's rapid ascent from satirist and comedian to president of a strategically important country, Ukraine, is one of the most remarkable developments in the history of post-Soviet Europe. How and why did Zelensky emerge? What were the forces that drew him to the apex of power in war-ravaged Ukraine? And in what direction is he likely to lead a crucial state facing challenges of reform amid external aggression?

About the speaker

Adrian Karatnycky is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, and the former President of Freedom House. He is also the former co-director of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on the US and the United Nations. Karatnycky has co-authored and edited over twenty books about the post-Communist countries and their reforms, and writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.

Organizers

Centre for Slavic and Eastern European Studies, in collaboration with Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce (NUCC).

Eastern Europe’s Dissident Decade: How a transnational figure was forged 1969-79

Drawing on his book “Dissidents in Communist Central Europe”, researcher Kacper Szulecki will explain how the convergence of certain factors enabled the emergence of dissidentism under the Communist period in the Eastern Europe.

Time and place: Oct. 25, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Seminar room 3, Sophus Bugges hus

From unknown novelties to political stars

When in the late 1960s Western media began reporting on the trial of a group of Soviet intellectuals, the word used to describe them – “dissidents” – was still something of a novelty. Ten years later, “the dissident” was a “new type of intellectual”, according to the Bulgarian-French author Julia Kristeva, and a “star in the theatre of the opposition” as Vaclav Havel – one of the prominent specimen – put it. By 1979 Eastern Europe’s dissidents were stealing the show, to the extent that Western critical intellectuals were complaining that after all they are “dissidents too”. What happened over those ten years and how was this new transnational figure forged?

The emergence of dissidentism

Kacper Szulecki will explain how domestic fame, transnational recognition and open, legal opposition activity enabled the emergence of dissidentism. This would not be possible without transnational circulation – enabled by new communication channels, created by émigrés, technological innovations in self-publishing, as well as a new universal “language” of human rights. Together, these factors gave “the dissident” a transferrable charismatic authority, and empowered those who functioned under the “dissident” label in their struggles with authoritarian regimes.

About the speaker

Kacper Szulecki is a researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. He holds a PhD in the social sciences from Universität in Konstanz, and an M.Sc. in political science from VU Amsterdam. He was a Dahrendorf Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at EUI Florence. His main research interests are in energy policy and security, but he spent many years studying social movements and dissents in Central Europe. He is the (co)editor of Rethinking Order (Transcript, 2015), Cracking Borders, Rising Walls (Kultura Liberalna, 2016), and Energy Security in Europe (Palgrave 2017), and the co-author of the first monograph on the Polish anti-nuclear movement. His book Dissidents in Communist Central Europe is forthcoming with Palgrave in October 2019.

Becoming Banal: Incentivizing and Monopolizing the Nation in Russia

Associate Professor J. Paul Goode (University of Bath) will give a talk about how nationalism becomes a banal fact of everyday life in his analysis of Post-Soviet Russia.

Time and place: Oct. 22, 2019 4:15 PM–6:00 PM, Seminar room 1, Sophus Bugges hus

The process of 'banalization'

New governments often seek to make the bond between state and nation into a banal fact of life, but there have been few attempts to explain how this is accomplished or how the process might differ among democracies and autocracies. Drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted during 2014-2016, this examination of post-Soviet Russia fleshes out the process of 'banalization' since the 1990s and 2000s, and considers the consequences of success or failure for the evolution of Russian politics under Putin.

About the speaker

J. Paul Goode is Associate Professor and Convenor of the Research Group on Nationalism, Populism, and Radicalism at the University of Bath. He has published widely on regionalism, nationalism, and authoritarianism in Russia, including in such journals as Perspectives on Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, Social Science Quarterly, Problems of Post-Communism, and Europe-Asia Studies. His research has been funded by Fulbright, IREX, and in 2020 he will be a research fellow at New York University's Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. He also serves as Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers and is a member of the international advisory and editorial boards for Nations and Nationalism, Russian Politics and Social Science Quarterly.

Organizers

Centre for Slavic and Eastern European Studies, in collaboration with Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).

Reverse Integration: A Reconstruction of Hungarian as the Language of the Social Environment in Socialist Yugoslavia

Minority language speakers learning the language of the majority is taken for granted in nation states, however, the opposite case is a rare practice. In this talk, Marija Mandić and Krisztina Rácz present such a practice.

Time and place: Sep. 13, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Seminar room 3, Sophus Bugges hus

The talk aims to contribute to ongoing discussions about the relation of language and ethnicity, majority/minority power relations, the role of memory, bilingual educational policy and multilingualism as a paradigm.

Minority languages learned by the majority

The school subject Hungarian as the Language of the Social Environment was introduced at the beginning of the 1970s in Vojvodina (Serbia). This happened at the same time when other minority languages were learned by majority (Serbo-Croatian) language speaking students at elementary and secondary schools in Yugoslavia, where members of minority ethno-linguistic groups were living in significant numbers.

The function and ideology behind reverse integration

Hungarian as the Language of the Social Environment was taught in Vojvodina for two decades, being abolished at the beginning of the 1990s when after Milošević’s rise to power policies specific to Vojvodina, including language and educational policies, were “blended into” Serbian central legislation. Through a critical reconstruction of relevant documents of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, textbooks of Hungarian as the Language of the Social Environment, as well as analyzing interviews conducted with former students and teachers of this subject, we will discuss the functional and the ideological content, and the aims it had.

About the speakers

Marija Mandić is a senior research associate at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Belgrade. Her major research interests are in the areas of linguistic anthropology, Balkan studies, nationality, migrations, and social memory. Her monograph Discourse and Ethnic Identity: the Case of the Serbs from Hungary was published for Verlag Otto Sagner in 2014.

Krisztina Rácz has a degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest and an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Ljubljana. She is a postdoctoral research fellow at ILOS. Her research interests and publication topics lie in multilingualism, minorities and language use, as constituted by ethnicity, gender and class.

The Utopian Geopoetics of the Russian Avant-Garde

Associate Professor Harsha Ram will give a talk about the utopian geopoetics of the Russian avant-garde, focusing on work by the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov and constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin.

Time and place: June 4, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Georg Sverdrups hus, Klubben

Russian avant-garde

The utopianism of the Russian avant-garde, in its collisions and collusions with the Bolshevik Party, has long been recognized as a constitutive feature of cultural production during the early Soviet era. Yet the question of aesthetic utopia has largely been studied with respect to the visual poetics of Russian constructivism.

Khlebnikov and Tatlin's utopism

Harsha Ram's talk seeks to extend this discussion by placing the visual alongside the literary: its focus will be the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov’s Gesamtkunstwerk Zangezi (1922), staged by the constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin in Petrograd in 1923.

Alongside Tatlin’s unrealized Monument to the Third International, Khlebnikov’s Zangezi may well be the most eloquent example of a utopian aesthetic internationalism which sought to abolish all boundaries, linguistic no less than spatial.

About the speaker

Harsha Ram is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Imperial Sublime. A Russian Poetics of Empire (2003) and is currently working on two book projects: The Scale of Culture. Empire, Nation, City and the Russian-Georgian Encounter, a cultural history of Russian-Georgian relations over the span of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a second project on the Russian revolution and world literature, on which this talk is based.

Published May 31, 2022 2:28 PM - Last modified Oct. 2, 2026 1:50 PM