Annual Newsletter of the Slavic Research Center,
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No.15
, December 2007 |
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SRC Winter Symposium in 2006 (Dec.)
The SRC 2006 Winter International Symposium "Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context" was held from December 13 (Wed.) to 15 (Fri.), 2006, under the auspices of the 21st Century COE Program "Making a Discipline of Slavic Eurasian Studies" as well as the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of JSPS "Dialogue and Confrontation: The East-West Paradigm in the Slavic and Eurasian World."
A newly placed booth for simultaneous
interpretation
in the SRC conference room
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The main aim of the symposium was to reexamine the cultural identity of Russia as a Eurasian superpower in the context of globalization. Topics of the separate sessions were: "Manipulation of images of Russia in contemporary literature," "The Russian version of orientalism and post-colonialism," "Images of Russia in the light of mental geography," "Images of Russia and Russians abroad," "Visual memory of the Soviet Empire," and "Formation of images of Russia in Art and Education."
Twenty-four scholars from seven countries (Russia, Latvia, Poland, Germany, England, USA, and Japan) gave their papers in the sessions and took part in the quite intensive and fruitful discussions. There was also the presentation of a unique film about the history of Soviet cinema culture by Prof. Thomas Lahusen and others.
The conference made us recognize that Russia is now reviewing and assessing the whole history of her identity problem, and the very concepts of "Russia" and "Russians" are going through redefinition in that process, which will require reconsideration of the methodology and framework of our research itself.
The results of the symposium will be published as a book in the near future.
MOCHIZUKI Tetsuo
Speakers of the Symposium