Call for Papers: Cultural Resistance: From Imperial Russia to Post-Soviet States

The concept of cultural resistance has become integral to sociological, political, and cultural studies. Emerging after the "youth revolutions" of the late 1960s (the "long year 1968"), this concept encompasses practices, artistic works, and initiatives aimed at revising or deconstructing established social hierarchies, challenging hegemonic "common sense" and dominant tastes, and confronting neo-fascist and right-wing populist movements as sociocultural forces.

Cultural resistance creates a unified framework for understanding both the politicization of cultural practices (poetry readings, exhibitions) and the aestheticization of political actions (performative political speech, political movements developing subcultural characteristics).

While this concept was initially developed through examples from Western states and their colonies, it has only recently been applied to earlier historical periods. The Center for the Study of Russian Culture at Amherst College invites scholars to explore how this concept might illuminate social and cultural history of Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states. This conference will examine the prospects and limitations of applying the concept of cultural resistance to the history of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet countries. We welcome researchers from diverse disciplines including literary studies, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, education, and of theater, music, and film studies.

We propose to discuss the following range of issues at the conference:

• Actors of cultural resistance: individuals and groups, mechanisms of group formation, struggle for visibility and political representation.
• Methods and strategies of cultural resistance. Types of resistance and subversion: public, semi-public, underground, internal ("for the drawer"). Languages of description and self-description, the role of "traditional" and new media, the role of humanities and social sciences in legitimizing certain forms and places of cultural resistance.
• Places of cultural resistance – real and virtual. In what geographical spaces/topographical locations was cultural resistance possible? What were the institutional "sites" of cultural resistance: magazine editorial offices, websites, clubs, or other "assemblage points"? What real or imagined communities (in Benedict Anderson's terminology) might have formed around these institutional "sites"?
• Regional differences in the strategies and intensity of cultural resistance, horizontal interaction between "points of resistance" independent of (or using) the imperial center.
• The diversity of cultural resistance programs and agendas.
• Does cultural resistance always entail the emergence of innovative practices or initiatives?

Conference Details

• Place: Amherst Center for Russian Culture, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
• Dates: March 28-29, 2026

Submission Information

To participate, please send the following to mmayofis@amherst.edu:

• Name, institutional affiliation, city, and email
• Tentative paper title
• Abstract (maximum 300 words)
• Brief CV highlighting publications relevant to the conference theme

Deadline for conference proposals: September 1, 2025

The official working language of the conference is English.

Travel and Accommodation Support:

We are pleased to provide full travel expenses and three nights of accommodation for all invited participants. These arrangements will be handled directly by the conference organizers.

Search for new Editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers

The Canadian Association of Slavists invites expressions of interest for the position of Editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers, starting in 2026 or 2027. Founded in 1956, CSP is now the world's highest ranked interdisciplinary Slavic studies journal. This is an opportunity for a scholar (or pair of scholars), working in any field of Slavic studies, to read widely, mentor other scholars, and play a leadership role in the field's development both in Canada and internationally. Funds are available to the Editor(s) to employ an editorial assistant and office staff and to pay for a course release if necessary; additional funds may be available in the form of a research grant or other compensation for the Editor(s). While affiliation with a Canadian higher education institution is preferred, the Association is open to other arrangements. For further information, please contact the current Editors, James Krapfl and Rolf Hellebust, at csp@ualberta.ca by August 15, 2025. The Association aims to have a succession plan in place by December 2025.

Russian teaching positions at DLIFLC

The Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC) at San Diego State University (SDSU) is currently seeking two experienced Russian instructors to fill 6-month contractual teaching positions in Monterey, California at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). Please review the position and application details below.

General Details

Two positions available:

Expected work dates: January 6th or 13th, 2025 until July 2nd or 3rd, 2025.

Gross (pre-tax) monthly pay is ~$7,083.

Funds are also available for round-trip travel to and from Monterey, CA for the start and end of the appointment

Each successful candidate will also receive a taxable living stipend of $23,500 for the 6 months period, to support/defray living costs

The job is full time (40 hours per week), M-F, and comes with training and orientation provided by DLIFLC, as well as ongoing support from SDSU-LARC staff.

How to Apply: Interested parties should email their CV/resume to galsaadi@sdsu.edu to apply, preferably before October 1, though applications are welcome after this date, until both positions are filled.

Additional Questions? If you have additional questions prior to applying please email Chris Brown, chris.brown@sdsu.edu

The full job description: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ii_1UgGpQzmHZXk8s4VoRVmW9ve3NHnC/view

Deadline reminder: Processing Perestroika Conference, Mar. 2025 at Georgetown University - submit by Oct 1

Call for Papers

Processing Perestroika: Making Sense and Making Do

Georgetown University, Washington DC, March 7–8, 2025

Much of the backlash against neoliberalism and democracy in Russia and across the former socialist world is rooted in narratives of grievance about the period of “transition,” or what we call the “Long Perestroika” (1985–2000). Politicians, activists and thinkers from across the political spectrum often point to missteps and roads not taken at the end of state socialism as key to understanding the current moment in Eastern Europe and across the former Soviet Union. But what did that time look and feel like to those living it? How did late- and post-socialist subjects in the USSR and the socialist bloc navigate, negotiate and comprehend the changing worlds around them? This conference will focus on the lived experience of the “Long Perestroika” and the impact of political and economic upheaval on real-time cultural production.

Scholarship on the culture of the era has often focused on the lifting of censorship and new freedoms, as previously banned literature was widely read and new cultural forms flooded in. But two complementary phenomena—instability and fragmentation—were no less important for cultural development.

Though instability ranged from peaceful change to violent conflict, social upheaval characterized broad swaths of Central and East Europe and Eurasia for much of the era. How did artists, cultural creators, and everyday citizens make sense of the seismic changes taking place around them even as they scrambled to cope or even take advantage of economic and political disarray? How did the demands of an increasingly unstable everyday existence affect subjects’ abilities to make sense of and aesthetically represent the world around them? What new forms—institutional, artistic, interpersonal—did they create? What functions of art and culture dominated and what aspects atrophied as ideological strictures faded and market incentives arose?

The culture of the “Long Perestroika” is no less characterized by the fragmentation of the cultural landscape. Glasnost unleashed a flood of new voices while institutions began to diverge from the Party line, sometimes ceding control or succumbing to market demands. Centralized distribution also atrophied, and the media and cultural production of one city or region might never connect with audiences elsewhere. How did the fragmentation of the cultural landscape change what was represented and how? How did the emptying out or capture of cultural institutions stymie or facilitate cultural production? And what can we learn from this moment of fragmentation that might be useful for decentering or “decolonizing” the study of our region today?

We invite scholars of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to propose papers that examine how the “Long Perestroika” was experienced, understood, and represented by the people living it across the former socialist space. Our goal is to consider both strategies for survival and the forms of representation such strategies engendered. We especially encourage contributions that consider the impact of instability and fragmentation in the cultural landscape in the shaping of real time representations of perestroika.

This conference will be conducted as a workshop. Draft papers will be circulated a month in advance. The meeting will consist of brief presentations, followed by considerable time for discussion.

This conference is the second in a series under the aegis of the European Research Council grant Perestroika from Below and is supported by a Georgetown University Faculty Global Engagement Grant. The first, “Re-constructing Perestroika,” was organized in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague in March 2024. A third conference, “Appropriating Perestroika,” will be hosted by the ZZF in Potsdam in 2026. Participants in the first conference are welcome to apply for the second and third events.

Proposals of no more than 500 words accompanied by a one-page CV should be sent to Kathleen Smith (kes8@georgetown.edu) by 1 October 2024. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the first week of December.

The conference will be held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on March 7 and 8, 2025.

Travel and lodging for participants will be subsidized.

Organizing committee: Juliane Fürst (ZZF Potsdam), Bradley Gorski (Georgetown), Veronika Pehe (Czech Academy of Sciences), and Kathleen Smith (Georgetown)

JOB: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (Slavic Department) - University of Pittsburgh

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (Slavic Department)

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position to begin in September 2025, pending budgetary approval. The area of specialization is fully open and all primary fields of specialization within Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian languages, literatures, and cultures will be considered. We are especially keen to receive applications from candidates whose research traverses our region of study, foregrounding one or more cultural and linguistic communities from the following aggregate groupings: Eastern European; East Central European; South Slavic; Central Asian; Russian and Russophone (including diasporic Russophone); and indigenous Eurasian (including within the Russian Federation). Candidates with additional fields of specialization in such areas as art history; digital humanities; disability studies; film and media studies; music; performance studies; race, ethnicity, and migration studies; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies are particularly welcome.

A Ph.D. in Slavic or a related field is required at the time of appointment. Native or near-native (or ACTFL Superior-level) proficiency in English is required; ACTFL Advanced High proficiency in one or more Slavic, East European, and/or Eurasian language(s) is required, with ACTFL Superior-level proficiency desirable. The position entails teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate level, where undergraduate courses may involve some combination of language and general-education literature, culture, and/or cinema courses in English.

Candidates should submit a letter of application; CV; representative student teaching evaluations; representative syllabi; samples of scholarly writing (the length of one or two journal articles); a teaching statement; a research statement; a brief description of how their research, teaching, and service demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion; as well as the names and contact information for three persons able to provide confidential professional letters of recommendation. Questions may be directed to Kelly Britcher, Faculty Actions and Recruitment Coordinator (ksb85@pitt.edu).

Application Deadline: Friday, October 18, 2024.

The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences is committed to building and fostering a culturally diverse environment. Excellent interpersonal and relationship-building skills and the ability to work effectively with a wide range of individuals and constituencies in support of a diverse community are required.

The University of Pittsburgh is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and values equality of opportunity, human dignity, and diversity. EOE, including disability/vets

https://cfopitt.taleo.net/careersection/pitt_faculty_external/jobdetail.ftl?job=24007148&tz=GMT-04%3A00&tzname=America%2FNew_York

Assistant Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Oberlin College

Assistant Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Oberlin College

Summary:The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program at Oberlin College invites applications for a full-time tenure track faculty position in the College of Arts and Sciences in Russian language, literature, and culture. We seek a dynamic, versatile, and broadly interdisciplinary scholar and pedagogue who shows strong potential for future leadership in both the program and the college, who can teach the Russian language at multiple levels, and who can offer a range of courses in translation, for a broad audience of majors and non-majors alike, on 19th, 20th, and 21st-century Russian literature and corollary areas such as film, philosophy, and the intersection of culture and politics. The ability to teach across multiple periods is desirable, as is secondary expertise in other (non-Russian) cultural traditions (including Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia). Initial appointment to this position will be for a term of four years, beginning fall semester of 2025, and will carry the rank of Assistant Professor.

About: Founded in 1833, Oberlin is a private four-year, highly selective national liberal arts college near Cleveland, Ohio and is also home to an outstanding Conservatory of Music. Together, the two divisions enroll approximately 2900 students. Oberlin College was the first college in the US to make interracial education and co-education central to its mission. Among liberal arts colleges, Oberlin is a national leader in successfully placing graduates into PhD programs. The Oberlin Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program consists of core faculty teaching Russian language and literature as well as affiliate faculty in a range of other departments (History, Politics, Sociology, East Asian Studies, Studio Art). The REEES Program offers two majors: one in Russian (with a focus on Russian language, literature, and culture), and another in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. We are also home to the Oberlin Center for Russia, East European, and Central Asian Studies (OCREECAS), which for over twenty-plus years has sent dozens of students on internships in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia and has brought a wide range of scholars, journalists, and artists from Russia and elsewhere to campus to lecture and teach.

Responsibilities: The incumbent will teach the standard teaching load (4.5 courses per year) in the general area of Russian language (at multiple levels) and Russian literature and culture, both in English and in the original. That person will be expected to contribute regularly to Oberlin’s First-Year Seminar Program, and to share responsibilities with other faculty for directing our student- taught Winter Term Elementary Russian Intensive. The successful candidate will be expected to participate actively in running and shaping both the REEES program and OCREECAS. The incumbent will also be expected to engage in sustained scholarly research and/or other creative work appropriate to the position and participate in the full range of faculty responsibilities, including academic advising, mentoring undergraduate research, and service on committees. <{>Qualifications: Among the qualifications required for appointment is the Ph.D. in Russian Literature (in hand or expected by first semester of academic year 2025) and native or near-native fluency in Russian. Candidates must demonstrate interest and potential excellence in undergraduate teaching. Successful teaching experience at the college level is desirable.

Oberlin is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the excellence and diversity of the academic community through their research, teaching, and service. Oberlin College is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. The incumbent will bring understanding of or experience working with underrepresented and diverse academic populations. Oberlin recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran’s status, and/or other protected status as required by applicable law.

Quick Link for Posting: https://jobs.oberlin.edu/postings/15607

Compensation: Within the range established for this position, salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience and includes a competitive benefits package.

Special Instructions to Applicants

A complete application will be comprised of:

• 1) a Cover Letter describing your teaching, scholarship, mentorship, and service, detailing any connections to supporting an inclusive learning environment;

• 2) a Curriculum Vitae;

• 3) an unofficial graduate transcript;

• 4) a statement (or statements) on your teaching philosophy and expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion;

• 5) a research statement that includes how you will support undergraduate research and, if applicable, how you might incorporate undergraduate students into your research program; and

• 6) Letters of Reference from three recommenders.*

All application materials must be submitted electronically through Oberlin College and Conservatory’s online application process at: https://jobs.oberlin.edu/. Initial interviews by zoom.

*By providing three letters of reference, you agree that we may contact your letter writers.

Review of applications will begin on October 16, 2024 and will continue until the position is filled. Completed applications received by the October 16 deadline will be guaranteed full consideration.

Questions about the position can be addressed to Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Chair of REEES, sjager@oberlin.edu

Scholarships to learn Russian in Yerevan with ASPIRANTUM - 2025 summer school

We are pleased to announce Dostoyevsky scholarships for eligible students in Slavic Studies and associated disciplines to attend ASPIRANTUM's 2025 summer school for the Russian language.

Venue: Yerevan, Armenia

Deadline: January 15, 2025

For more details, please visit: https://aspirantum.com/scholarships/dostoyevsky-grants-to-learn-russian

Undergraduate (BA), graduate (MA), and postgraduate (Ph.D.) students, as well as researchers in Slavic Studies and related fields, enrolled in universities and other academic institutions from the below-specified countries, are eligible to apply for the Dostoyevsky scholarship.

The ideal candidates will be 19 - 39 years old by the program's start.

Only the citizens of the following countries are eligible for this scholarship:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay.

In 2024, we had 6 Dostoyevsky scholarship recipients.

For more details, please visit: https://aspirantum.com/scholarships/dostoyevsky-grants-to-learn-russian