Illicit Relics: Icons of Stalinism - Symposium at USC, February 2006

[Boris Wolfson]

University of Southern California Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures,
the Institute of Modern Russian Culture,
USC's 125th Anniversary Project,
USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences,
USC Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative,
Division of Critical Studies, USC School of Cinema-Television
                                      present

     I L L I C I T   R E L I C S  :  I C O N S   O F  S T A L I N I S M

An international symposium at the University of Southern California
celebrating the University's 125th anniversary
and the acquisition of the Ferris Collection of Russian and Soviet Culture

			F E B R U A R Y   1 7 - 1 8,  2 0 0 6
_______________________________________________________________________________

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17
4-6 PM - Taper Hall (THH) Room 202
	Screening and Discussion of a Major Stalinist Film:
		"The Pledge" (Kliatva/Pitsi, 1946, dir. Mikheil Chiaureli),
		introduced by Olga Matich (UC Berkeley)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18
10 AM-3:30 PM - Doheny Memorial Library Intellectual Commons (2nd floor)
	An Interdisciplinary Forum on Stalinist Culture featuring
		Irina Paperno (UC Berkeley)
		Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers)
		Robert English (USC)
		Ekaterina Degot' (European University, St. Petersburg)
		Vladimir Paperny (Los Angeles)
		Syrago Tsiara (State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki)
		John E. Bowlt (USC / IMRC)

More information about the Symposium: www.usc.edu/dept/las/sll/stalinism.html
__________________________________________________________________________________

	THE FERRIS COLLECTION is an extraordinary assortment of
publications and artifacts, unmatched in its variety, scope, and rarity.
No component of Soviet life is left unexamined: the emphasis is equally on
the "high culture" of the Stalin period and on everyday life.  This vast
assemblage of objects includes journals, paintings, books, prints,
industrial and decorative art objects, toys, and ephemera.  The collection
provides invaluable insights that cannot be found in written
documentation, and presents objects as both agents and expressions of
change, whether that be a coffee-table album celebrating Stalin, a survey
of the Moscow metro, a cigarette-case, an abacus, a school uniform, a
portrait of a communist party leader, a porcelain figurine or plate
carrying Stalin or Kirov, a panorama of the Soviet army, a vintage
photograph of Lenin, a partisan's how-to manual, a dissident painting, a
caricature of Brezhnev, or a money-box in the form of Gorbachev, etc. The
Ferrises were able to amass a collection that astounds by the quality and
quantity of the materials.

	THE SYMPOSIUM brings together scholars from the fields of literary
and cultural studies, history, social sciences, and art history to take
stock of the state, direction, and variety of current scholarly approaches
to Stalinist society and culture.  They will consider many different
elements of Stalinism's controversial legacy, and offer a broader cultural
context for the exploration of Stalinism's "icons".  How does contemporary
scholarship interpret the artifacts and documents that have survived from
the Stalin period?  How did these relics allow crucial aspects of the
Stalinist worldview to come to be internalized, appropriated and
re-imagined - and in what ways have they become "illicit"?
___________________________________________________________________________________

	PLEASE JOIN US AT THE RECEPTION honoring the Ferrises and
celebrating the acquisition of the Collection

		SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2006, at 4 PM

		Mudd Hall of Philosophy Room 101
	3709 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-0451

   RSVP for the reception by February 6: 213.740.2735 or susan at usc.edu

   Information about parking on and around the USC campus: 213.740.3575
		or www.usc.edu/about/visit/upc/

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