Department of Slavonic Studies
Departmental Research Projects and Areas of Collaboration
The research of individual members of the Department is described in Staff Profiles. There are also a number of collaborative research projects organised by members of the Department of Slavonic Studies:
Information Technologies in Russia, 1450-1850
An awareness of the contemporary social, economic, and cultural implications of changes in information technologies can and should prompt us to ask fresh questions about analogous processes in the past. Led by Professor Simon Franklin, this project seeks to do precisely that. Changes in the ways in which information is encoded, stored, distributed, exchanged and retrieved have profound implications which stretch from personal correspondence to the global economy. They affect the relations between the public and the private, and between the rulers and the ruled, vastly increasing the efficiency of intelligence and surveillance, yet, paradoxically, also empowering popular expression and action. They make possible new forms of creativity, new patterns of association, new means of learning and teaching and discovering, new tools of analysis. They stimulate new ways of manipulating and maneuvering money, and goods, and even weapons.
In this context this project looks beyond the important but now somewhat familiar and limited paradigm of the 'print revolution'; indeed, beyond any notion of technological 'progress' which implies either that older technologies are simply replaced by newer ones, or that the introduction of new technologies automatically causes a given set of associated social and cultural changes. An advantage of taking Russia as a case-study is precisely that it does not comfortably fit the paradigm, and hence it poses a challenge to straightforward assumptions about technology-driven change.
The project's focus is not on the linear development of particular technologies, (though this, too, is important), but on their shifting interrelationships and functionalities. We look at how such relationships and functionalities vary not just over time as the relatively compact Muscovite State was expanded and transformed into the vast Russian Empire, but also in different social and cultural spaces: from the society salon to the village church, from the court to the streets, in commerce and in bureaucracy, in public and in private, in litigation and in education. We impose no cultural hierarchy. Non-standard or ephemeral uses of technologies are as relevant as their more widely studied high-status products. The outcome will be a contribution to the wider understanding of the social and cultural dynamics of information technologies in the transition from pre-modernity to modernity – which may, in turn, provide a helpful perspective on processes which preoccupy us today.
For more information, please contact Prof. Simon Franklin (Principal Investigator) or Dr. Katherine Bowers (Postdoctoral Research Associate from Jan 2012).
Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine
A Memory War is raging in Eastern Europe, a cultural conflict that is leading states in the region to act against their own interests. Led by Dr. Alexander Etkind (Department of Slavonic Studies, MML and King's College, Cambridge), an interdisciplinary team of scholars from five European universities (Cambridge, Groningen, Bergen, Helsinki, and Tartu) explores the battles taking place in this Memory War. Using a pioneering methodology for mapping memory events across the national borders of Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, we trace their trajectories in literature, film, new media, history textbooks, and public politics. The project examines how myriad texts and artefacts perform memory of the traumas of the twentieth century; how the nation-state participates in the public sphere by promoting, revising, or censoring memory events; and how the transnational dynamics of culture affect the prospect of peace for participants in the East European Memory War.
This major project is funded by the HERA Consortium (Humanities in the European Research Area) for 2010-2013. The award supports post-doctoral researchers and graduate studentships, as well as a rich international programme of conferences and events, drawing together participants from within academic and socio-political spheres. The project sorganises the 'East European Memory studies Research Group' and the interdisciplinary seminar 'Europe East and West: Film History and Mourning'. It also hosts regualr workshops and conferences. Please visit www.memoryatwar.org for more information.
Cambrige Ukrainian Studies
This Departmental initiative, which was launched in 2008, organises an array of public lectures, film screenings, and exhibitions throughout the academic year. These events are designed to deepen public understanding of Ukraine, which is the largest country within Europe and a critical crossroads between 'East' and 'West' with a rich historical, linguistic, and cultural inheritance. Highlights of the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme include the Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film and the Annual Stasiuk Lecture in Ukrainian Studies.
Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet Cinema
Emma Widdis and Susan Larsen publish on the cinema of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, and collaborate with Rory Finnin in Ukrainian . They are members of the Russian Cinema Research Group, and organize a number of conferences and events in Cambridge on this and related subjects. During the Michaelmas Term 2011, they will be joined by Professor Lilya Kaganovsky (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), who will be a Visiting Fellow Commoner in Trinity College.
