Violence and its Aftermath in Soviet & Post-Soviet Context

Fourth International Social Science Summer School in Ukraine
“Violence and its Aftermath in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Context”
Zhytomyr (Ukraine), 4-10 July 2012

Program description: 
 “How naïve, how kindly and patriarchal the old prisons huddled on the
outskirts of towns now appeared – beside these camp-cities, beside the awful
crimson-black glow that hung over the gas ovens! You might well think that
the management of such a vast number of prisoners would have required an
equally vast army of guards and supervisors. In fact, whole weeks would pass
by without anyone in an SS uniform so much as appearing inside the
barrack-huts. It was the prisoners themselves who policed the camp-cities
(…) It seemed as though the German authorities could disappear altogether,
the prisoners would maintain the high-voltage current in the wires and go on
with their work.”

This is the way Vasily Grossman, a Soviet writer born in a Jewish family in
central Ukraine, defines in his major novel Life and Fate the level and
sophistication of violence reached in the XXth century. The novel dedicated
to the Second World War is a reflection on the management of violence in war
conditions and its ambiguity, but also on the violence experienced by
political prisoners in Stalinist camps and on the pervasiveness of violence
in all spheres of life.  Having lost his mother in the Berdichev ghetto
during the war, the writer dedicated his novel to her and her shadow is
present in the author’s whole work of writing and memory.

Following Grossman’s path, not only symbolically but also physically by
installing the school near his native city, the Summer School will address
the complexity and the aftermaths of violence, not only in war times, but
also in times of peace, in the Soviet and post-Soviet context.

The Fourth International Social Science Summer School in Ukraine will
provide a unique forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest
research on violence issues, involving specialists of the topic, as well as
young promising researchers.

The School is interdisciplinary. The organizers welcome proposals from the
disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, political science,
economics, and adjacent fields. While the primary focus will be on the
socialist and post-socialist era (in the former Soviet Union, Central,
Eastern and Southern Europe), pre-Soviet history may also be examined. The
discussions and presentations will analyze different dimensions of violence:
war and non-war situations; state management of violence, as well as
individual and collective strategies; mechanisms of violence outbreak;
violent practices and post-violence situations; perpetrators and victims;
sources and methods.

Some of the issues of particular interest to the School include:

•               State monopoly of violence, implementation and resistance
(past and present)
o   Soviet repressive practices
o   Police: use of force and violent practices
o   Justice, prison, coercion
o   Terrorism and anti-terrorism
o   State management of public protest
o   Violence of/towards economic actors (mafia, raids)
•               War and post-war, conflict situations
o   Mobilization and control of violence in combat
o   Civil population during war and post-conflict
o   Ethnic conflicts, border conflicts, other forms of mass violence
o   Return to civilian life
•               Violent practices and violent behaviour
o   State and non-state violence towards property or objects
o   Social, domestic and everyday violence
o   Gendered dimension of violence
o   Violence and non-violence as a strategy for political, social and
economical actors
o   Public protest practices: strikes, demonstrations 
o   Education and socialization to violence
•               Memory and representation of violence
o   Collective memory of violence
o   Representation of violence in media and art
o   Life course and trauma
o   Veterans and veterans’ movements

The Summer School is designed to be interdisciplinary and international.
Participants are expected to present their own work and to participate in
group discussions. The School’s program consists of lectures, panel
presentations and discussions, as well field trips within the region,
followed by discussion sessions.

Location
Zhytomyr (Central Ukraine, 130 km from Kyiv) is nowadays a middle-sized city
of 278,000 inhabitants in a mostly rural area. The official founding date is
884, though this fact and has only a legendary basis. The first records of
the town date from 1240 and are linked to Zhytomyr being sacked by the
Mongols of Batu Khan. Successively Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Soviet and
Ukrainian, the town has been destroyed and rebuilt several times.
From the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, many Poles and Jews
lived here. The Jewish roots of Vladimir Lenin are related to Zhytomyr. His
grandfather, Mr Blank, belonged to the local town dwellers. In Zhytomyr for
a long time lived Khaim Byalik – one of the founders of the modern Hebrew
language. The Zhytomyr region is also related to the biography and writings
by authors such as Honoré de Balzac, Lesya Ukrainka, and Józef Kraszewski.
The famous musicians Svyatoslav Richter and Juliusz Zarembski are also
Zhytomyr natives. 
During the Soviet years – and still nowadays - the city was more willing to
be proud of another of his children, the designer of the first Soviet space
rockets Sergey Korolev; two local museums commemorate its life and the
Soviet conquest of the space.
During the 20th century Zhytomyr has gradually lost its multicultural
nature. The predominant Jewish community was largely annihilated in the
Holocaust; the Soviet migration policy has brought there a more mixed
population. Today, Zhytomyr is a rather typical post-Soviet city, combining
in its landscape architectural traces of the old times, past conflicts
injuries, Soviet urbanization marks and post-Soviet commercial development. 

Duration: 
One week, Wednesday 4 – Tuesday 10 July 2012. 

Eligibility
The Summer School is open to PhD students (or students enrolled in a
kandidat nauk program) and young researchers (up to six years removed from
their PhD or kandidat nauk degree). Empirically grounded proposals are
particularly welcomed.

The working language of the Summer School will be English, and it is
important that prospective participants have a good knowledge of this
language.

The selection committee will select candidates based on their responses to
this Call for Proposals. The selected candidates will be advised before the
end of May.

Program Costs
There is no program fee. Local transportation from/to Kyiv, accommodation,
meals, classes, lectures, seminars and excursions are provided by the
organizers and free of charge. The participants or their universities should
only pay the travel expenses from the participant's country to Kyiv. 

How to apply?
To be considered for the Summer School, candidates must complete an
application form (that includes a 500 word project proposal) and add a CV.
They can also send an additional written sample, such as a conference paper,
a dissertation chapter, or a publication (optional). The application must be
sent by e-mail to ukrainesummerschool@gmail.com, by 15 April 2012.

The application form can be requested at Ukrainesummerschool@gmail.com or
downloaded on the following address:
http://historians.in.ua/index.php/ogoloshennya/89-summer-school-in-ukraine-2
012

For more information, please contact us at ukrainesummerschool@gmail.com 
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS 15TH APRIL 2012


Partners:
Embassy of France in Ukraine
Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada) 
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales [EHESS] (France)
Internet network “historians.in.ua”
Research project “Understanding Violence in
Russia”russiaviolence.hypotheses.org 
Doctoral School of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine) 
French-Russian Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences in Moscow (Russia)
Zhytomyr State University (Ukraine)

STUDY ABROAD: NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition & Culture

Study Abroad: NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture (NYI)
Deadline: April 1/April 15, 2012


July 9-27, 2012
St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.nyi.spb.ru/news


NYI is a phenomenal way for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students to have an eye-opening overseas experience, while continuing their focus on Linguistics/Cognitive Science or Cultural/Media Studies. The school is a 3-week Institute, held in beautiful St. Petersburg, Russia, at which students choose 4 seminars in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences. Faculty are from a wide range of fields and institutions. This year's program features Tom Bever (Arizona), Rajesh Bhatt (UMass), James Hurford (Edinburgh), Roumyana Pancheva (USC), Irina Sekerina (CUNY), Sergei Tatevosov (Moscow State), John F. Bailyn, Robert Crease, Robyn Deluca, Heidi Hutner, Gary Marker (Stony Brook), and others.


All classes are in English. NYI is a superb way to spend 3-4 weeks of summer 2011!
There are two ways students can participate:


(i) For credit through Stony Brook's 4-wk Study Abroad program to St. Petersburg, for which they get 6-9 transferrable credits and pay SUNY (low) tuition and a program Fee. For this option, which includes study of beginning Russian and group excursions, a cultural program and so on, the deadline is April 1 (short extensions possible), and interested students should go to the Stony Brook Study Abroad website for application details. http://www.stonybrook.edu/studyabroad/shorts_russia.html


(ii) Students can attend NYI directly, without receiving any US-side credit (just our Certificate of Completion) and without paying US tuition for the program, just a reduced Program Fee. For this option he deadline is April 15, 2012. Interested students should contact jbailyn@notes.cc.sunysb.edu

Russian Academy of Arts Summer School in St Petersburg

The Repin Art Institute (The Russian Academy of Arts) is announcing a new program — The Summer School.


It will be run directly at the premises of the Repin Institute, in the workshops of well known professors of the Academy. There will be 2 sessions with 4 weeks duration: June 1-29 and July 2-27, with the total of 100 academic hours.


The program is concentrated on providing an intensive course on classical drawing and painting to students of intermediate level. At the end of the program an official certificate is awarded to all the students who successfully complete the program. The Certificate is signed by the Provost and the Institute Board of Professors, listing total hours, disciplines and amount of credits, printed in Russian and English. 

Program Description 
The program duration is 4 weeks: 
- June Session (1-29 June 2012), or 
- July Session (2-27 July 2012)
5 academic hours a day, 5 times a week;
Total amount of hours: 100 hours
Total amount of students in a group: minimum 14, maximum 16.
At this time one group is recruiting English speaking students, another group is set up for Russian graduate students (Advanced Training Program). A third group is intended for international students who speak Chinese (interpreter is provided as well).

The program is concentrated on studying classical drawing and painting. The program and its time frame are offered exactly the way as it was traditionally taught at the Academy:
10.00am - 11.45am – Drawing
12.15pm - 3.00pm – Painting
Materials, techniques, class duration
Portrait Drawing – paper, pencil, 50x40 sm = 14 hours
Nude Figure Drawing – paper, pencil, 60x40 sm = 22 hours
Portrait Painting – oil, canvas, 50x40 sm = 21 hours
Nude Figure Painting – oil, canvas, 60x45 sm = 33 hours

Here is the link to the Summer School website: http://rai-summer.blogspot.com.

Please contact:

Liana Solonkina
Summer School Manager
Repin Art Institute
+7 (921) 317-9890
admin@artacademia.org
www.rai-summer.blogspot.com

Courtauld Summer School: Russian Art 1863-1932 with Dr Natalia Murray

Summer School 2012
A variety of week-long intensive art history courses at one of the word’s leading Institutes for the study of art history and conservation. Open to everyone over the age of 18.


Course 9:Russian Art 1863-1932: Innovations, Influences and the Roots of Modernity
Dr Natalia Murray
9 - 13 July 2012 (£435)

Image: Léon Bakst, La Sultane Bleue. A costume sketch for the ballet Schéhérazade. 1910, watercolour on paper, collection of Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky.



This course will examine the history of Russian art in all its diversity from the first artists’ rebellion against St. Petersburg’s almighty Art Academy in 1863, the blossoming of arts in Russia’s Silver Age, and the upsurge of avant-garde art to its subsequent disappearance after 1932, when Socialist Realism became the only artistic style permitted in the Soviet Union. We will look at the cultural as well as geographical boundaries of Russian art, and its contact with developments in European art as well as the shifts of cultural context, which often occurred through emigration, cultural export, exhibitions, publications, and collaborations.  The complex nature of the Russian avant-garde, its origins and roots, will be examined throughout the course. We will also look at traditional Russian art and icons and their influence on the Russian avant-garde and will discuss the works of Repin, Serov, Benois, Bakst, Somov, Vrubel, Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky, Filonov, Rodchenko, Chagall, Popova, among others.  Lastly, we will examine the influence of political changes in Russia under Stalin on the fate of Russian art. Visits include the Victoria and Albert Museum (Ballets Russes drawings and stage designs); the Naum Gabo archive at Tate Britain; Tate Modern and The Courtauld Gallery.


Lecturer’s Biography
Dr Natalia Murray was born in St Petersburg, where she studied Art History for five years at the Academy of Arts.  In 1995 Natalia won a place at the State Hermitage Museum to study for her Doctorate, also in Art History.  From 1997 to 2006, she organized exhibitions of contemporary Russian art in London and has completed the first biography of one of the most influential Russian art critics, Nikolay Punin (due to be published in 2012).  In the last five years Natalia has been giving lectures on 20th- century Russian Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art.


For further details and to book, contact:
Short Courses, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
T: 020 7 848 2678; E: Short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk