REMINDER CALL FOR PROPOSALS--Russian Futures: Contexts, Challenges, Trends

Thu Jun 18 15:24:21 UTC 2009

The Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Duke
University is pleased to announce a call for proposals to present at a
conference to be held in February 2010: 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

Conference Title: Russian Futures:  Contexts, Challenges, Trends

To be held at Duke University, Durham, NC, February 19-21, 2010 

Deadline for submission of proposals: July 15, 2009. Submissions should be
sent by fax in the form of a one-page outline with title to: Russian Futures
Conference Committee, Duke University, 919-660-3141

Format of conference:  All papers will be circulated no later than one month
prior to the conference dates.  Conference proceedings will be published in
a peer-review venue.  The conference will consist of several panels of
speakers organized on the following themes:

__________________________________________________

PANEL: SEMIOTIC TRANSPOSITIONS

This panel is devoted to explorations of the application and critique of
structuralist, post-structuralist and non-structuralist semiotic theories
with a focus on Russian cultural space.

Suggested Topics:

* Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics

* Semiotics of Culture

* Semiosphere and semiotic spaces

* Mechanisms and modelling of languages and discourse 

* Artistic texts and contexts 

* Autocommunication 

* C.S. Peirce in the Russian context 

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: LOST IN TRANSITION?  WOMEN'S PLACE, WOMEN'S WORK IN RUSSIA TODAY AND
TOMORROW

This panel explores how women's private and professional experience and
public influence are evolving in today's Russia, considering in particular
how women have been affected by both the legacies of Soviet culture and the
commercial juggernaut of the transition.  

Suggested Topics:

* The life of the working woman

* Place and identity

* Women's welfare

* Family roles and their sociopolitical currency

* Public prominence = public influence?

* Religion and spirituality

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: COMMUNICATION, MEDIA, AND RUSSIA IN THE WORLD

The media may be considered as that essential circulatory system, whose
success or failure might be characterized as reception and non-reception
both in terms of cognition and penetration.  In addition, critical questions
include: what is the shape of Russia in the international system; what and
who is in the "national conversation" in the country via the media; and the
strategies and methodologies of investigation.  All of these may be
considered in earlier eras of Russia as well as more recent ones.

Suggested Topics:

* What is Russia in global politics?

* Reception and non-Reception

* Russian mass media within the historical/cultural, hierarchical and
centrally determined "value" of cultural products

* The role of technology and center/ periphery is part of the question.

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: TOWARD THE RULE OF LAW IN RUSSIA

This panel will consider law and legality in Russia.  We invite proposals
from different disciplines to examine any aspect of the following topics:

Suggested Topics:

* Current state of law

* Legal institutions

* Legal culture in Russia

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN RUSSIA

This panel will look at the phenomenon of political violence in Russian
history in a fresh manner in which the panelists will be asked to try to
integrate the separate discourses of state and insurgent terrorism into a
general theory.  The focus of the panel will be the era of 1905-1917.

Suggested Topics:

* Violence from the Insurgent Right: the Black Hundreds and Jewish Defense
Organizations 

* Violence from the Insurgent Left: Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists

* Violence from the State: Who Gave the Orders to Fire and What were the
Justifications?

* Toward an Integrated Theory of Political Violence in Late Imperial Russia

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE: WILL HEALTH AND SOCIAL STABILITY FOLLOW SUSTAINED
ECONOMIC GROWTH?

This panel is devoted to analysis of the changes in demographic behaviors -
health, life expectancy, marriage, divorce, fertility, migration (and
possibly educational attainment) - in Russia. The panel will seek to
identify what has happened in the recovery decade (1999-2008) relative to
the Soviet era and post-Soviet shock, and will examine the likely impact of
continued economic growth on future outcomes.

Suggested Topics:

* Life expectancy recovery 1999-2008; their determinants and forecasts

* Patterns of disease-related mortality: declining infectious diseases and
persistent degenerative mortality

* External cause mortality: accidents, homicide, and suicide

* Disability and health status: is Russian health improving even in the
absence of life expectancy gains?

* Marriage and its consequences (births and divorces) - response to economic
boom

* Is Russia undergoing a transition to Western European patterns of
cohabitation and non-marital fertility?

* Internal migration within Russia: will the remote areas cease
depopulating?

* When will the Russian population stop shrinking?

______________________________________________________________

PANEL: VISUAL AND INFORMATION LITERACY IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

This panel discusses the proliferation of information, and its consequences,
for scholars of Russia, as well as for the Russians themselves.  We plan to
discuss the need for visual and information literacy, that is, for a
systematic approach to understanding the post-Soviet structure of
information and the nature of Russian visuality itself.