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NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies March 2020 v. 60, n. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS The Transnational Turn 2 in Russian Studies On Slavic and Eurasian Studies 8 in Japan 12 Ruling Russia in China To See Paris and Die, An 15 Interview with Eleanory Gilburd 20 Publications ASEEES Prizes Call for 23 Submissions 27 Institutional Member News 29 Personages 30 Affiliate Group News Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) 203C Bellefield Hall, 315 S. Bellefield Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15260-6424 tel.: 412-648-9911 • fax: 412-648-9815 www.aseees.org ASEEES Staff Executive Director: Lynda Park 412-648-9788, [email protected] Communications Coordinator: Mary Arnstein 412-648-9809, [email protected] NewsNet Editor & Program Coordinator: Trevor Erlacher 412-648-7403, [email protected] Membership Coordinator: Sean Caulfield 412-648-9911, [email protected] Financial Support: Roxana L. Espinoza 412-648-4049, [email protected] Convention Manager: Margaret Manges 412-648-4049, [email protected] NEWSNET March 2020 1 Our intervention comes at a historical and unidirectional juggernaut of reinforce those borders, as well as moment that is “both global and globalization”; it does not presuppose stories of failed, partial, or interrupted anti-global”, as Padraic Kenney put the inevitable convergence of crossings. Indeed, the contemporary it in his Presidential Address at the economies, political systems, or world offers few stories that do not 2016 ASEEES Convention.4 Kenney’s cultures.7 Moreover, the prefix trans- carry a transnational inflection, as we keynote came at the end of a year that suggests both an emphasis on are all participants in global political, saw a wave of nationalist populism movement between nations, as well cultural, and economic systems, even that, curiously enough, was global in as a gesturing beyond the nation as an as some people—or countries—may its reach: 2016 witnessed the election epistemological paradigm, though it wish to withdraw from them. Our of Donald Trump in the United States, does not assume—as some predicted three volumes attempt to tell those the United Kingdom’s vote to leave in the 1990s8—the demise of the stories, and to provide analytical the European Union, the purges nation as an empirical phenomenon. frameworks that will capture both the in Turkey after a failed coup, and Indeed, the twenty-first century has multiplicity and the commonalities of Hungary’s attempt to reject EU quotas seen a resurgence of nationalism, and transnational flows. on refugees. In this climate, Kenney new walls and borders have sprung Transnational Russian Studies offered an admirable defense of area up between states. Yet these new studies, highlighting the value of deep divisions only render the critical study Byford, Doak, and Hutchings begin knowledge of languages, histories, of nations and borders a more urgent Transnational Russian Studies with a and cultures of particular regions to task. Moreover, whereas globalization call for a new approach to Russian comprehend a fractured world. Yet he theory assumed the traffic of ideas Studies. Rather than seeing Russian juxtaposed his praise for area studies would flow from West to East, as Studies simply as the acquisition of with a critique of “transnational developed countries exported liberal mastery of the language, history, The Transnational Turn studies,” which he deems suitable democracy to the post-socialist world, and culture of a bounded space only for more “exuberant times,” the past twenty years have proved (“Russia”) over time, they argue that IN RUSSIAN STUDIES citing the enthusiasm of 1989 that multidirectional verbs of motion Russian Studies should historicize when walls tumbled and the star are needed to describe the direction and deconstruct notions such as CONNOR DOAK, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL of democracy shone bright.5 Today, of travel. In our region, we might Russia, Russianness, and Russian KEVIN M.F. PLATT, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA however, Kenney warns: “There is no cite Russia’s alleged interference in language, looking critically at the VLAD STRUKOV, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS transnational story to tell; the dance the elections of Western countries, boundary-work that has sustained of democracy runs out of music at this or, in the realm of culture, the these categories. A transnationally- While Russianists have long recognized the need to situate Russia—its language, point. But area studies, by contrast, spectacular global success of twenty- inflected Russian Studies, then, its culture, and its history—in a broad, comparative context, it is only in recent does have much more to say.”6 first-century Romanian cinema.would involve mapping “the ongoing years that scholars have begun to develop a new critical vocabulary and research Pussy Riot provides an intriguing complex and diverse construction of methodologies in response to the transnational turn that has swept the humanities This polemic against transnational example of multidirectional travel ‘the national’ through particular forms since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This editorial brings together three studies reprises the agon between that intertwines politics and culture: of boundary-making that goes on scholars in Russian Studies, each of whom has recently produced a book that seeks area studies and comparative initially influenced by the American around languages and cultures; and to contribute to this realignment of our field. Connor Doak is co-editor, with Andy transitology from the 1990s. Area riot grrrl scene, they were later able to the continuous parallel processes of 1 Byford and Stephen Hutchings, of Transnational Russian Studies (2020), Kevin M.F. studies scholars criticized the exert their own influences on Western crossing or transgressing, relativizing 2 Platt is the editor of Global Russian Cultures (2019), and Vlad Strukov is co-editor, transitologists’ universalism, their modes of protest. or reconfiguring, breaching or 3 with Sarah Hudspith, of Russian Culture in the Age of Globalization (2018). Our dismissal of language, culture, and When Kenney writes that there transcending the boundaries thus 9 three volumes differ in their critical vocabulary, methodological approaches and history, and their assumption, in is “no transnational story to tell,” he is constructed.” The book forms part of conclusions, but we share a common vision of a Russian Studies that opens up line with Francis Fukuyama, that the correct that there is no single linear a larger project, Transnational Modern the map of our field beyond the Russian Federation. Yet our aim is not simply to global spread of capitalism and liberal narrative in our region that follows a Languages, which seeks to give a extend the existing methodologies of Russian Studies to a larger canvas; rather, we democracy would result in the end predictable plot. There are, however, distinct identity to modern languages are also calling for an epistemological shift that requires us to look critically at the of history. Here, however, we make multiple transnational stories of how as an “expert mode of enquiry whose foundational assumptions of our field as they intersect with political histories and the case for a very different kind of people, cultural artefacts, and ideas founding research question is how realities, to interrogate our own positionality as researchers, and to re-assess our transnational studies. As Ian Tyrrell has move across geographical and political languages and cultures operate curricula at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. argued, the term transnational signals borders, stories of governments and and interact across diverse axes of 10 a distance from the “deterministic other institutions who have tried to connection.” Transnational Russian NEWSNET March 2020 2 NEWSNET March 2020 3 Studies is the first in a book series that patriotism, nationalism, canon, and to function as forms of cultural capital, that cultures are best examined as will eventually include volumes on tradition. Yet no single concept both at home and on the global stage. discrete ethnolinguistic blocs. Such transnationalizing French, German, can fully account for the complex an approach has many benefits, and Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, as network of political, social, and Global Russian Cultures none of us would deny the value of well as a handbook to anchor the cultural developments, nor for the The title of Platt’s volume, Global linguistic expertise, thick cultural series. speed of cultural exchange in Russia Russian Cultures, signals an aim to descriptions, and deep historical and beyond. Strukov and Hudspith decenter Russian culture from the Transnational Russian Studies is knowledge. It is not our intention to conceive the transnational paradigm Russian Federation and to challenge divided into four sections, each of call for an end to institutions such as not only as an exploration of how conceptions of it as bounded and which contains four research-based Slavic Departments, journals, and the meaning crosses national borders, but singular. As Platt writes in the case studies. The first, “Nation, Empire, scholarly associations that sustain our also how it moves between different introduction, “both within and and Beyond,” brings together critical field. However, we should recognize forms of communication, and travels without the Russian Federation, perspectives on the multi-ethnic space that these institutional frameworks framework that imposes a singular—