Behind the Porous Curtain: Photography by Anatoly Pronin
Monday, 23 January 2012–Friday, 09 March 2012
Harriman Atrium, 12th floor IAB, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY
Behind the Porous Curtain, curated by Regina Khidekel, showcases 20 works by Anatoly Pronin. These works capture the Soviet period of artistic inspiration of the 1970s, as the post-Stalin thaw opened a pathway through the iron curtain for modern Western art and culture to enter the Soviet Union. Most of Pronin’s photographs were shot behind the theater curtain, capturing the private and almost intimate world of rehearsals with iconic figures such as George Balanchine, Laurent Terzieff, and Marcel Marceau.
The theater tours displayed in this exhibit ended the isolation of the Soviet art scene, reviving names erased from history and introducing new ideas and methods. One of the central subjects of this collection is Leonid Jakobson, a non-conformist choreographer who created masterpieces despite strict state control, transforming classical ballet technique into modern dance lexicon.
Anatoly Pronin has pursued photography since childhood. After graduating from Leningrad State University, he worked for Leningrad publishing houses and magazines before moving to the United States in 1981. His works are part of the collections of the State Russian Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, among many others. He has been awarded numerous grants and awards, including the silver medal at the 1971 Berlin International Photo Exhibition.
This exhibit is part of the Fragments from the Past series, an ongoing collaboration between the Russian American Cultural Center and the Harriman Institute which aims to create a mosaic of historical events related to the Russian artistic and cultural landscape both in the Soviet Union and the West.
Exhibit Opening: Tuesday, January 31st, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
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The Role of Think Tanks in Public Political Discourse: the U.S. and Russian Experience
Wednesday, 01 February 2012, 12:00pm
Room 1219, International Affairs Building
Please join a talk by Olga Khvostunova, Harriman Institute Visiting Scholar and Assistant Professor, Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State University.
Today, think tanks play a significant role in public political discourse in Western countries. In the U.S. the key drivers for the development of think tanks have been major political and economic challenges, such as the Great Depression, World War II, the cold war, etc. At the same time, in the Soviet Union many research institutions, that might be named the Soviet think tanks, followed the same path in their development. After the Soviet Union collapsed, they played a crucial role in democratization of the modern Russia. Many of them adopted institutional forms of their Western counterparts, alongside the ambitions to influence the political process and to shape the public opinion. Although think tanks are considered the key factors of the democratic development, in the U.S. they are being more and more often criticized for their political bias and servility to the corporate interest. In Russia, the same criticism can be applied, but to a much larger scale—due to the country’s slide-down to authoritarianism during Vladimir Putin’s rule. Russian think tanks have to realize that their mission is to work for the public good and to launch a new ‘thaw’ period in the country’s political life. Considering the recent social upheaval in Russia, it is quite clear that there is a growing demand for political change. And think tanks can contribute greatly in the change by initiating and maintaining a constructive dialogue between authorities and the public.
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Medicine and Magic at the Rooftop of the World
Friday, 03 February 2012, 1:00pm–3:30pm
School of Social Work, Room C03
Please join the Harriman Institute and the Culture, Religion, and Communication Unit of the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia in the International Symposium of the Healing Paradigms Series.
Panelists include: Paolo Delaini (University of Bologna), Paolo Ognibene (University of Bologna), and Yuri Stoyanov (SOAS, University of London).
There will also be a film screening of Legami e riti (Love and Rituality), a short documentary by Paolo Delaini. Produced by the University of Bologna and the Italian Institute for Oriental and AFrican Studies, this film offers an unprecedented look at medico-magical birthing practices.
Dedicated to the medicinal culture of Central Asian mountain societies, the symposium features members of the international research group for the study of the Yaghnobi people at the University of Bologna. Over the past five years, linguists, medical researchers, historians, anthropologists, and pharmacologists affiliated with this research group have conducted expeditions in the Yaghnob Valley, tucked in the mountains of north-western Tajikistan. Their field research has focused on the remarka-ble medical tradition of the Yaghnobi community, which lives at high altitude, far from hospitals, medical assistance, and Western medical influences. The presenters will share their fascinating discoveries in the context of other mountain societies in Central Asia, while raising important methodological questions about the study and conservation of Central Asian cultures.
The conference program is attached.
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Mobility and Dualist Heretical Movements in Western and Central Eurasia
Monday, 06 February 2012, 5:30pm–7:00pm
Religion Department Building, Room 101,
80 Claremont Ave.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Yuri Stoyanov, (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).
This lecture intends to explore movements in Western and Central Eurasia like Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism, and Ismailism, across extensive Eurasian networks. Why did normative Christian and Islamic elites view them as dualist and heretical? How did they defy this label to achieve the character of religious internationals?
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, The Unit for Culture, Religion, and Communication at the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia, and the Harriman Institute.
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Ukrainian Scholars in American Slavic Studies:
The Case of George Y. Shevelov and Dmytro Chyzhevs'kyj
Tuesday, 07 February 2012, 12:00pm
Room 1219, International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Dr. Oxana Blashkiv.
Dr. Blashkiv is Lecturer at Ivan Franko Drohobych State Pedagogical University, Department of Romance and Germanic Philology, Chair of Germanic Philology and Translation Studies. She recieved her kandydat nauk in Comparative Literature Studies, at Volodymyr Hnatyuk Ternopil Pedagogical University and a Ph.D. in Slavic Literary Criticism at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Poland) where the title of her dissertation was: “Czech and Slovak Culture in Dmytro Čyževs’kyj’s Life and Intellectual Heritage.”
Presently, Dr. Blashkiv is Visiting Researcher, Fulbright Faculty Development Program (Pace University, New York), where she is working on her project entitled History, Biography, Identity: the Case of Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and George Y. Shevelov.
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China's Strategy as Chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Wednesday, 08 February 2012, 6:15pm–7:45pm
1219 International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute and the Weatherhead Institute for a discussion with Pan Guang.
Dr. Pan Guang is the Vice Chairman and Professor of Shanghai Center for International Studies and the Academic Director of Institute of European and Asian Studies at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Director of SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) Studies Center in Shanghai, Dean of Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai (CJSS) and Vice President of Chinese Association of Middle East Studies. He is an International Council Member of Asia Society in USA, Senior Advisor of China-Eurasia Forum in USA, Advisory Board Member of Asia Europe Journal (by ASEF) in Singapore, Member of the Board Management Committee of Asian Scholarship Foundation in Bangkok and Senior Advisor on Anti-terror Affairs to Shanghai Municipality and Ministry of Public Security of PRC. He obtained 1993 James Friend Annual Memorial Award for Sino-Jewish Studies, Sankt Peterburg-300 Medal for Contribution to China-Russia Relations awarded by President Putin in 2004 and Austria Holocaust Memorial Award in 2006. He was appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a member of the High-Level Group for the UN Alliance of Civilizations in 2005, and appointed by UN as Ambassador of the AoC in 2008.
He has been doing research and giving lectures widely in North America, East Asia, Russia, Central Asia, Europe, Middle East and Australia. He holds a number of prestigious posts in Chinese institutions on International Studies, Asian Studies, Middle East Studies and Jewish Studies, and published books and articles on a variety of topics such as “The Jews in China”, “The Jews in Asia: Comparative Perspective”, “2003: US War on Iraq”, “From Silk Road to ASEM: 2000 Years of Asia-Europe Relations”, “A Comprehensive Studies on Shanghai Cooperation Organization”, "Contemporary International Crises”, “China’s Success in the Middle East”, “China’s Anti-terror Strategy”, “Islam and Confucianism: the Development of Chinese Islam”, “China’s Energy Strategy”, and “China’s Policy on AF/PAK”.
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The Russian Opposition and the Presidential Election
Thursday, 09 February 2012, 6:00pm–8:00pm
Kraft Center, 606 West 115th Street (bet. Broadway and Riverside)
Get an inside look at the Russian protest movement from prominent opposition leaders and political experts, as they discuss implications of the Russian Winter on Putin and the March 4 election.
Sponsored by the Harriman Institute and the Institute of Modern Russia, the panel discussion will feature founder of youth movement “DA!” Maria Gaidar, leader of the opposition group “Solidarity” and RTVi Washington bureau chief Vladimir Kara-Murza, renowned author and scientist Andrey Piontkovsky and Columbia professors discussing how and when the opposition should assert itself leading up to forthcoming vote and where the movement will go if (when?) Putin wins a third term.
Moderated by Lincoln Mitchell, Harriman Institute. Introductory remarks by Timothy Frye, Director, Harriman Institute.
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Arab Spring and Beyond: Social Networking and Political Change in the Middle East, Russia and China
Friday, 10 February 2012, 10:30am–12:00pm
918 International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute for a discussion with:
Xiaobo Lu (Professor of Political Science, Barnard College);
Thanassis Cambanis (Journalist);
and Timothy Frye (Director of The Harriman Institute and Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy)
This event is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Middle East Institute and the Harriman Institute.
Registration is required to attend this event. Registration will open Monday, January 30th at 5PM.
Please register at: http://socialnetworkingeastasia.eventbrite.com/.
This event is open to Columbia students only, with preferential registration given to current Columbia College, GS, SEAS and Barnard students. Columbia graduate students can sign up on a waitlist to attend each talk, and will be notified if space is available.
Breakfast will be served.
This event is part of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute's Undergraduate Discussion Series, "Social Networking and Political Participation in East Asia." To find out more:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/socialnetworking.html.
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International State-Building and Privatization in Kosovo: Success or Failure?
Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 12:00pm
1219 International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Rita Augestad Knudsen (Visiting Scholar, Harriman Institute and PhD Candidate in International History, London School of Economics & Political Science).
The report may be downloaded in English and Albanian.
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Considerations of Honor in Russia's Foreign Policy
Thursday, 16 February 2012, 12:00pm
1219 International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Andrei P. Tsygankov (San Francisco State University).
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Ukraine as a Novel with Strong Plot and Weak Characters
Thursday, 23 February 2012, 12:00pm
Room 1219, International Affairs Building
Please join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Andrey Kurkov.
Andrey Kurkov, born in St. Petersburg in 1961, now lives in Kyiv.
Having graduated from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder at Odesa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays, and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels. The first of which he had to borrow money from friends to self-publish and sell on the sidewalks of Kyiv. He has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers in Ukrainian history, and his books have been translated into 25 languages.
This event is free and open to the public For more information please contact Mark Andryczyk at (212) 854-4697 or ma2634@columbia.edu.
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Workshop: Peripheral Visions of Sovietization
Friday, 24 February 2012–Saturday, 25 February 2012
1512 International Affairs Building
Radically transformative in its intentions as well as many of its results, certain to have History on its side, Soviet Socialism was also a political system and an ideology with its legitimacy at risk. Its ability not merely to maintain a status quo but to continually claim further transformation was a condition of its very survival. This workshop will focus on one key aspect of this vital Soviet mission of transformation and the practices and discourses it produced: the Sovietization of peripheries after 1939. By putting the peripheries at the center, the workshop approaches the Soviet phenomenon as a whole from an oblique yet pivotal perspective: Confronting the Other, be it in terms of modernist-developmental hierarchies or spatial and cultural distance, it could not but also confront – as well as reveal – itself.
Key issues to be explored at the workshop will include the relationship between nationalizing policies and Sovietization; the postwar conjuncture between late Stalinism, prior Soviet modes of nationality policy, and war, conquest, policing and repression; the everyday life of local elites and populations; the practices and meanings of resistance, subjugation, co-optation and adaptation; the multiplicity of encounters between Sovietizers and Sovietized, from the official to the intimate; the persistence or disappearance of alternatives; and the effect the peripheries had not only on the center but on the Soviet Union as a whole as well as each other.
This workshop is by invitation only. For more information, please contact Tarik Amar.
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Conference: Legacies of the Russian Avant-Garde
Friday, 24 February 2012–Saturday, 25 February 2012
Room 1501, International Affairs Building
This conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, poets, and artists, to re-examine the story of the Russian avant-garde. The panels, talks, and screenings will treat seminal and lesser-known works from a wide range of media, including literature, the visual arts, architecture, dance, film, and theater. Key issues to be explored will be the formation of the historical avant-garde; its appropriation by both official and dissident culture; avant-garde theory; and the Russian avant-garde’s dissemination abroad. By examining the seemingly paradoxical "traditions" of the avant-garde, we hope to raise broader questions about art practice and the cultural heritage of the twentieth century.
Participants: Arnold Aronson (Columbia), John Bowlt (USC), Svetlana Boym (Harvard), Devin Fore (Princeton), Boris Gasparov (Columbia), Nina Gourianova (Northwestern), Boris Groys (NYU), Tim Harte (Bryn Mawr), Valentina Izmirlieva (Columbia), Dragan Kujundzic (U of Florida), Mark Lipovetsky (U of Colorado at Boulder), Ronald Meyer (Columbia), Nicoletta Misler (Istituto Universitario Orientale), Catharine Nepomnyashchy (Columbia)
Eugene Ostashevsky (NYU), Harsha Ram (Berkeley), Masha Salazkina (Concordia), Yuri Shevchuk (Columbia), Nariman Skakov (Stanford), Tatiana Smoliarova (Columbia), Rebecca Stanton (Columbia), Malynne Sternstein (U of Chicago), Cristina Vatulescu (NYU), Matvei Yankelevich (Ugly Duckling Presse).
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