Schedule-Friday, February 26th

Friday, February 26th 

Franke Institute for the Humanities – 1100 East 57th Street

9:00am Breakfast

9:30am First Keynote Lecture

Nazım Hikmet’s Future Past: Communist Mediations Between Turkey and the Soviet Union

Nergis Ertürk (Penn State University)

10:45am Break

11:00am Hegemonic Languages and Local Literatures in Central Eurasia, 1905-1941

Chair: Sam Hodgkin (University of Chicago)

How Tatiana’s Voice Rang Out Across the Steppe: (Dis)Orienting Pushkin in Soviet Central Asia

Naomi Caffee (University of Arizona)

O Communist Khayyam!: Persian Canons in the International Turkic Revolutionary Press

Sam Hodgkin (University of Chicago)

Developing and Debating Soviet Buryat Language and Literature

Melissa Chakars (St Joseph’s University)

Discussant: Harsha Ram (University of California, Berkeley)

12:45pm Lunch

2:00pm The Organization of the Arts in the Soviet “East”, 1917-1941

Chair: Eleonor Gilburd (University of Chicago)

A Cultural Revolution from the “East:” The Influence of TatLEF and the Kazan School on the Soviet Avant-Garde

Angelina Lucento (Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)

From Progressive to People’s Artist: Jadidist Influence in Early Soviet Azerbaijani Theater and Opera

Kelsey Rice (University of Pennsylvania)

Folklore as Device: On Vertov’s Three Songs of Lenin

Nariman Skakov (Stanford University)

Discussant: Leah Feldman (University of Chicago)

3:45pm Break

4:00pm Stakhanovite, Conqueror, Saint: Heroes in Central Asia

Chair: Claire Roosien (University of Chicago)

Zulfiya’s Shock Worker and the Making of Uzbek Mass Culture

Claire Roosien (University of Chicago)

Genghis Khan and Analogous Conquerors of the East in the Literary Imagination of the Soviet 1920s and 1930s

Katerina Clark (Yale University)

Super-Soldiers, Selfless Shepherds: Cultural Revolution Heroes in Xinjiang

Joshua Freeman (Harvard University)

Discussant: Robert Bird (University of Chicago)

5:45pm Reception