Event Archive 2016 - Present

March 5-7 UIC and UChicago campuses This conference explores shifting conceptions of race and ethnicity through the transition from the Russian to the Soviet empires. It proposes an approach to race and ethnicity as discursive formations that emerge in a broad archive of ethnographic, linguistic, geographic, and popular media, which furnished both hegemonic discourses of scientific modernity and Russian/Eurasian exceptionalism. Exposing this interdisciplinary notion of “race sciences” and its intersections with related scientific, aesthetic, and political regimes, this conference will examine how race science came to be grounded in both the practical imagination and Imperial Russian and Soviet policies, which served in the ordering and management of the colonial population through diversity mandates, nation-building and border redistricting, as well as restructuring aesthetic and affective regimes of seeing and feeling. We will trace how conceptions of race and ethnicity shifted over the revolutionary transition and responded to specific local and global geopolitics. Working across the disciplines of history, history of science, anthropology, literature, as well as visual media and performing arts, this workshop will expose the ways in which shifting conceptions of race and ethnicity influenced the development of new scientific paradigms and contributed to the restructuring of the social, political and artistic imagination amidst the process of imperial expansion. Day 1 Location (Please see days 2-3 listed separately): University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for the Humanities 701 South Morgan Street 4-6pm At 7:30pm, there is a performance by Psoy Korolenko in a nearby location: Theatre Building, L285 Recital Hall 1040 West Harrison Street

Michal Peles-Almagor (PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature, University of Chicago)will deliver a paper for the Jewish Studies Workshop. The respondent will be Samuel Catlin (PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature, University of Chicago and Religion, Literature & Visual Culture, University of Chicago Divinity School). For information contact the workshop coordinators, Mendel Kranz (mkranz@uchicago.edu) and Samuel Catlin (scatlin@uchicago.edu).

Sayed Kashua is the author of the novels 'Dancing Arabs,' 'Let It Be Morning,' which was shortlisted for the international IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 'Second Person Singular,' and 'Native.' He writes a weekly column for Haaretz and is the creator of the prizewinning sitcom Arab Labor. At this Co-Op Bookstore event, he will discuss his new book, 'Track Changes,' followed by a time of Q&A with the audience. The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Joyce Z. and and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. For information see the website at https://www.semcoop.com/event/sayed-kashua-track-changes.

Erin Faigin (PhD Candidate and Weil Distinguished Graduate Fellow, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison) will present a paper for the Jewish Studies Workshop. A response will be given by Jessica Kirzane (Assistant Instructional Professor, Germanic Studies, University of Chicago). For information, contact the workshop coordinators, Mendel Kranz (mkranz@uchicago.edu) and Samuel Catlin (scatlin@uchicago.edu).