The Caucasus is primarily seen as a contested territory, an interregional space caught between rival empires as well as local polities. At the same time its topographic and ethnolinguistic diversity has captured the imagination of travelers over the centuries. This talk explores the tensions and convergences between territorial ambition and the literary imagination as exemplified by the Russian tradition. It suggests that literature, rather than simply corroborating or resisting the goals of the state, articulates the problem of sovereignty in ways that touch on the aesthetic as well as political dimensions of power.
Harsha Ram is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at the University of California - Berkeley.
This event will be live-streamed via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npqUgsP1aBQ
This lecture series is a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each center focusing on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region. The series is sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University; the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; the Russian, East European & Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University; the Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan; the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin; the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center at Indiana University; the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin - Madison; the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies at The University of Chicago; and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at The Ohio State University.