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