Call for Papers for the 15th Annual Aleksanteri Conference - Culture and Russian Society

Time and venue: 21-23 October 2015, University of Helsinki, Finland 
Organiser: Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki and Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies - Choices of Russian Modernisation

After the initial surge of new artistic and institutional experiments in the post-1991 years, many Russians involved in cultural production became disillusioned with the prestige and role of culture in the emerging social and political order. Meanwhile, the Russian state was struggling to reform and maintain cultural and educational institutions and their infrastructure. The vocabulary of modernisation re-entered Russian political discourse during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency. Technological and economic innovation was to be in the forefront of the country’s political agenda.

With Vladimir Putin’s third re-election, the creative class gathered political momentum, and cultural and intellectual practices in Russia regained social and political relevance. At the same time, culture and its traditional institutions became increasingly integrated into state policies in order to reconstruct a uniform national and geopolitical Russian identity. Official views of the country’s future draw from an understanding of Russia as a unique civilization separate from the West.

In keeping with the Aleksanteri Institute’s multidisciplinary research agenda and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence “Choices of Russian Modernisation,” the 15th Aleksanteri Conference invites proposals that focus on the cultural challenges and intellectual choices Russia and its diverse population face today. We welcome scholars from all fields of humanities, social and political sciences to contribute to the investigation of the role of cultural analysis in enriching our understanding of Russia’s recent developments. We encourage panel proposals with three presentations, discussant and chair, but will also review individual paper proposals.

Keynote speakers:

• Michael Gorham, Robin and Jean Gibson Term Professor, Russian Studies
  University of Florida, USA: Russia’s Digital Revolution: Language, New Media, and the (Un)making of Civil Society
• Catriona Kelly, Professor of Russian, University of Oxford, UK: “Russia and Europe, 1991-2014 La grande disillusion
• Vlad Strukov, Associate Professor in Digital Culture, University of Leeds, UK: The Conservative Turn: Culture as Politics in Putin's Russia
• Vera Tolz, Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies, University of Manchester, UK:Ethnicity and Nationhood on Russian Television during Vladimir Putin's Third Presidency
• Elena Vartanova, Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University, Russia: High or Mass? Media as a Driving Force of Contemporary (Russian) Culture
• Evert van der Zweerde, Professor in Political Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Democracy in Russia - Perspectives, Expectations, Concepts

Conference Schedule and Deadlines:

Panel proposals (c.a. 500 words): May 17, 2015 
Abstracts for individual papers (c.a. 300 words): May 17, 2015
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2015 
Programme published and registration opened by: End of August, 2015 

Please submit your abstract and contact information through the abstract submission form

or the panel proposal submission form.

The conference language is English, but we also welcome bilingual panel proposals (English and Russian).

For further assistance please contact the Conference Coordinators at fcree-aleksconf [at] helsinki.fi.

The Aleksanteri Conference is an annual, multidisciplinary, international conference organised by the Aleksanteri Institute, the Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies, affiliated with the University of Helsinki. Aleksanteri Conferences have attracted broad interest among researchers and policy-makers in a wide variety of disciplines, both in Finland and abroad, who are interested in the development of post-socialist countries.

Более подробную информацию см. на сайте: http://www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/conference2015/