Program: "Sots-Speak: Regimes of Language under Socialism" (Princeton, May 20-22)

[Petre Petrov]

Friday, May 20


12:30 Welcome Address


12:45 – 2:45	Panel 1	LINGUISTIC ANATOMIES
 
Konstantin Bogdanov (Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg): “Soviet 
Language Culture in the Light of Ethnolinguistics”

Anastasia Smirnova (Ohio State U): “Aligning Language to Ideology: A Socio-
Semantic Analysis of Communist and Democratic Discourse in Bulgaria”

Câlin Morar Vulcu (Babe?-Bolyai U, Cluj): “From Subject of Action to Object of 
Description: Classes in Romanian State-Socialist Discourse”

Chair: Olga Hasty (Princeton U) 
Discussant: Mirjam Fried (Czech Academy of Sciences)



3:00 – 5:15		Panel 2	MAKING THINGS WITH WORDS

Choi Chatterjee (California State U, Los Angeles): “Lady in Red: Bolshevik 
Feminism in the American Imagination, 1917-1939”

Samantha Sherry (U of Edinburgh): “Bird Watchers of the World, Unite! The 
Language of Ideology in Soviet Translation” 

Jessie Labov (Ohio State U): “The Puzzle of the Yugoslav Nationalist/Dissident 
from Helsinki to Dayton” 

Alyssa DeBlasio (Dickinson College): “Philosophical Rhetoric and Istoriia russkoi 
filosofii”

Chair: David Bellos (Princeton U)
Discussant: Irena Grudzinska Gross (Princeton U)




5:30 – 6:45		KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Jochen Hellbeck
Associate Professor, Rutgers University
“The Language of Soviet Experience and Its Meanings”




Saturday, May 21

9:00 – 11:00	Panel 3	SPEAKING STALINESE

Carol Any (Trinity College): “Sots-Speak and Self-Concept in the Soviet 
Writers’ Union under Stalin”

Ilya Venyavkin (Russian State U for the Humanities): “Mystical Insight under 
Socialism: The Language of Political Confessions in the Late 1930s”

Anastasiya Ryabchuk (National U of Kyiv Mohila Academy): “Parasites, Asocials, 
and Work-Shy: Discursive Constructions of Homelessness and Vagrancy in the 
USSR”

Chair: Petre Petrov (Princeton U)
Discussant: Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers U) 



11:15 – 1:15	Panel 4	FIGURES OF RHETORIC

Elena Gapova (Western Michigan U / European Humanities U): “‘The Party 
Solemnly Proclaims: The Present Generation of Soviet People Shall Live in 
Communism’: The Rhetoric of Utopia in the Khrushchev Era”

Karen Petrone (U of Kentucky): “Afghanistan and the New Discourse of War in 
the Late Soviet Era”

Yulia Minkova (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U): “Our Man in Chile, or 
Victor Jara’s Posthumous Life in the Soviet Media and Popular Culture”

Chair: Ellen Chances (Princeton U)
Discussant: Eliot Borenstein (New York U) 



2:30 – 4:45		Panel 5	ON THE LITERARY FRONT

Maria Kisel (Lawrence U): “Satirical and Philosophical Dimensions of Sots-Speak 
in Andrei Platonov’s Fiction”

Natalia Skradol (Hebrew U / Ben Gurion U of the Negev): “The Evolution of the 
Soviet Bestiary: Satirical Fables from Bednyi to Mikhalkov”

Eva Cermanova (U of Aberdeen): “The Diktat of Language: Bureaucratic 
Paranoia in Havel’s Memorandum”

Baktygul Aliev (McGill U): “Visuality in V. Narbikova’s Okolo Ekolo”

Chair: Emily Van Buskirk (Rutgers U)
Discussant: Helena Goscilo (Ohio State U) 




5:00 – 6:15		MEDIA PRESENTATION
Vitaly Komar: "Word and Image: The Duality of Sots-Art"



Sunday, May 22 

9:00 – 11:15	Panel 6    PRACTICES OF LANGUAGE 

Jonathan Larsson (U of Iowa): “Heteroglossic Hazards: Wooden Language and 
Fiery Kritika in Socialist Czechoslovakia”

James Robertson (New York U): “Speaking Titoism: Non-Alignment and the 
Language Regime of Yugoslav Socialism”

Susanne Cohen (Temple U): “In and Out of Frame: The Soviet Training as 
Sots-Speak”

Julia Lerner and Claudia Zbenovich (Ben Gurion U of the Negev / Hadassah 
College of Jerusalem): “Talk and Dress: Adapting the Therapeutic Paradigm to 
Post-Soviet Speak”

Chair: Margaret Beissinger (Princeton U)
Discussant: Anna Katsnelson (Princeton U)



11:30 – 1:30	Panel 7   DISCURSIVE LEFTOVERS
 
Maria Sidorkina Rives (Yale U): “Authoritative Discourse in Post-Authoritarian 
Russia”

Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (Edinburgh U): “Stalinism as an Auteur Project: Meta 
Sots-Speak in Contemporary Russian Public Discourse”

Gasan Gusejnov (Academy of National Economy / Moscow State U): “On the 
Vitality of Artificial, or Stalin’s Rhetoric Revisited” 

Chair: Rossen Djagalov (Yale U)
Discussant: Caryl Emerson (Princeton U)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------