The 2009 Soyuz Annual Symposium will be held in the Department of Anthropology at Yale
University on April 24-25.
We have assembled two full days of panels gathered under the general rubric of "Global
Socialisms and Postsocialisms." In the best traditions of Soyuz, our papers span
geographical, topical, and theoretical interests and feature everyone from graduate
students to senior scholars. This year, we have sought to explore themes that bring us
into conversation with scholars working on non-East European / former Soviet socialisms
and postsocialisms.
Ivan Szelenyi, William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Yale
University, will deliver a keynote address entitled "The Global Financial Crisis and
the Post-Communist World" on April 24.
Below is a preliminary program. If you wish to travel to New Haven for all or part of
the symposium, we have put together some information on transportation and local hotels:
Hotel information for Yale Soyuz Symposium (pdf)
Note in particular that we have reserved a limited number of slightly discounted rooms
for Soyuz members at the Courtyard Marriott at Yale. This discounted rate will expire
on March 24, 2009--instructions on making reservations may be found in the Travel
Information document.
Please address all inquiries to douglas.rogers@yale.edu.
This is a preliminary program, intended to facilitate planning for travel to New Haven;
exact times may change slightly. We will circulate a final program closer to the
symposium dates. All events will take place at the Department of Anthropology, Yale
University, 10 Sachem St., New Haven, Connecticut.
Friday, April 24, 2009
9:00—9:15
Welcoming remarks
Douglas Rogers, Yale University
Helen Siu, Yale University
9:15 – 10:45 Panel 1: Crossing Socialist and Postsocialist Borders
Maryna Y. Bazylevych, State University of New York, Albany, Socialist and
Post-Socialist Dynamics of Physicians’ Work in Africa. Same Geographies, Different
Meanings
Ekaterina Melnikova, European University of St. Petersburg, The Cross-Border
Communication at the “Closed” Territory: Between the Myth and the Myth
Maxim Matusevich, Seton Hall University, Probing the Limits of Internationalism:
African Students Confront Soviet Ritual
Elana Resnik, University of Michigan, Transnational Affiliations, Local Articulations:
Romani Movements in Bulgaria
Discussant: Kelly Askew, University of Michigan
Coffee Break
11:00—12:30 Panel 2: Building Socialist and Postsocialist Cities
Alima Bissenova, Cornell University, Housing Dreamworlds and Realities in Kazakhstan's
New Capital
Emanuela Grama, University of Michigan, Impenetrable Plans and Porous Expertise:
Building Socialist Bucharest in the 1950s
Samu Szemerey, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Socialism, Architecture and
Postcolonial Exchange
Christina Schwenkel, University of California-Riverside, Layered Post/Socialist
Memories: East German Architectural Legacies in Contemporary Vietnam
Discussant: Erik Harms, Yale University
Lunch Break
During the Friday lunch hour, there will be a screening of Fedor’s Helpers, a film by
Evgenyi V. Aleksandrov, Head of the Laboratory of Visual Anthropology, Moscow State
University.
2—3:45 Panel 3: Ideas and Practices in Circulation, I
Chair: Kristen Ghodsee, Bowdoin College
Olena Fedyuk, Central European University, Budapest, Circular Migration Between Two
Generations: Ukrainian female labor migration to Italy.
Priscilla Song, New School for Social Research, Transnational Experiments in
(Post)socialist Chinese Health Care
Anna Geltzer, Cornell University, When the Standards Aren't Standard: Evidence-based
Medicine in the Russian Context
Mary Taylor, Hunter College, City University of New York, Lenin at UNESCO? Tracing the
Influence of Socialist and Postsocialist Delegations on the Development of UNESCO
Intangible Heritage Policy.
Discussant: P. Sean Brotherton, Yale University
Coffee Break
4:00 Keynote Address
The Global Financial Crisis and the Post-communist World
Ivan Szelenyi, Yale University
A reception will follow the keynote address.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
9:00-10:30 Panel 4: Rethinking Socialist and Postsocialist International Orders
Chair: Julie Hemment, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Alaina Lemon, University of Michigan, East is West, Hollywood is Soviet: The Manchurian
Candidate, or, Paranoid Politics, Theatrical Art, and the Invisibility of Movement from
Moscow…
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Cambridge University, Socialism as a Global Gift-Scape
Rossen Djaglov, Yale University, The World Republic of Leftist Letters, ca.
Mid-twentieth Century.
Andrew Gilbert, University of Toronto, The Politics of Impartiality and Post-Cold War
Order
Discussant: Mike McGovern, Yale University
Coffee Break
10:45—12:15 Panel 5: Transformations of Socialist Economies
Chair: Doug Rogers, Yale University
Jun Zhang, Yale University, Title TBA
Ken Maclean, Clark University, Audit Regimes and the Rituals of Compliance in
Contemporary Vietnam
Narcis Tulbure, University of Pittsburgh and New Europe College, Bucharest, The
Cultural Mediation of Transnational Regulations: Competing Institutional Forms for
Romanian Mutual Funds
David Kideckel, Central Connecticut State University, Shifting Economies and Political
Practice in Two Postsocialist Societies
Discussant: TBA
Lunch Break
2:00—3:30 Panel 6: Ideas and Practices in Circulation, II
Chair: J. Dickinson, University of Vermont
Sonja Luehrmann, University of Michigan, The Modernity of Manual Reproduction: The
Material Culture of Soviet Propaganda
Victor A. Shnirelman, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of
Sciences, The Idea in Travel: Eurasian Discourse in the post-Soviet World.
Kimberly Coles, University of the Redlands, Mapping Democracy Promotion: Postsocialist
Experiences in a Globalizing Election Circuit
Anya Bernstein, New York University, Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Mobility, Authority, and
Cultural Politics in Siberian Buddhism
Discussant: Jessica Greenberg, Northwestern University
Coffee Break
4:00-5:00 General Discussion
The 2009 Soyuz Symposium is supported by the following Yale University units: the
Department of Anthropology, the Center for Transnational Cultural Analysis, the Edward
J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, and the Councils on European, African, and
East Asian Studies of the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies.