Research Workshop: Russia and the Global Color Line
July 14-15, 2022 (Hybrid Format)
Workshop Organizers: Eugene M. Avrutin (Tobor Family Endowed Professor of Modern European Jewish History, University of Illinois) and Professor Valeria Sobol (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois)
Zoom registration link: https://illinois.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrcu6orDssGN3HsXsJerNdDaegFgeApRVA
Probing the role of Russia in the global dimensions of the color line, this interdisciplinary workshop raises exploratory questions about the meanings and functions of racial identifications and categories; the relationship between race, whiteness, and geography; how Russia fits into the global dimensions of the color line; and when and why skin color emerged as an important element in the complex process of identity formation.
This workshop is a part of this year’s Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute, the University of Illinois History Department, Slavic Languages & Literatures Department, Slavic Reference Service, and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (Ralph & Ruth Fisher Fund).
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Workshop Program:
*All times are in CDT*
Day 1, July 14th Main Library Building, Room 106
10am: Welcoming remarks (Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Panel 1: 10:05am-12pm
- Luke Jeske, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: “Russians, Race, and Religion in the Holy Land, 1882-1914”
- Liao Zhang, Michigan State University: “A Short-lived Brewery: Chinese Diaspora, Cross-Border Business, and Soviet Citizenry in the Russian Far East, 1920s-1930s”
Discussant: Eugene Avrutin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Keynote lecture: 1:30-2:30
Yoshiko Herrera, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "The Sunny Side of Essentialism: Race and Jazz in Contemporary Russia”
Panel 2: 3pm-5pm
- Ismael Biyashev, University of Illinois at Chicago: “Modernity in Motion: Archaeology, Nomadism, and the search for the ‘Siberian New Man’” (on Zoom)
- Lindsay Ceballos, Lafayette College: “Russian Colorism and Political Agency in Chernyshevsky’s Chto delat’? (1863) and Turgenev’s Nov’ (1877)”
Discussant: Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Day 2, July 15th Main Library Building, Room 106
Panel 3: 9am-11am
- Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, University of Pennsylvania: “The Soviet Socialist Lives of Angela Davis: An Afro-Pessimist Reading of the Soviet Union and Blackness”
- Thom Loyd, Cardiff University: “The Absent-Minded Racists”
- Hilary Lynd, University of California, Berkeley: “Race, Culture, and the Paradoxes of Soviet Anti-Apartheid”
Discussant: Peter Wright, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Think Tank session (with workshop organizers and Think Tank students only): 11:15 am-12:15 pm
Panel 4: 1:30pm—3pm
- Ksenia Pavlenko, Cornell University: “Time and ‘Types’: Mining Modernism in Photographs from Imperial Khiva and Turkestan”
- Felix Cowan, University of Toronto: “Making Russians White: Civilization and Racialization in Late Imperial Russian Popular Discourse” (on Zoom)
Discussant: Yoshiko Herrera, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Concluding thoughts—3:30pm-4:30pm