This quarter we are pleased to inaugurate the workshop for Interdisciplinary Approaches to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (REECA)! Our workshop aims to provide a forum for graduate students, post-docs, and faculty from a broad array of disciplines to share works-in-progress on research related to these any of these regions.  Our primary goal is to share and encourage advanced research in any field on any of these three areas of the world, given both the contemporary importance of these regions and their intertwined histories with one another. Further, an important goal for our workshop will be to explore what it means, in practice and in theory, to do research in area studies. As this is necessarily an interdisciplinary concern, we invite contributions from scholars across the social sciences and humanities. Topics can address any historical era and may encompass any one or a number of geographical spaces encompassed by Russia, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia. The workshop will typically accept papers in the form of dissertation chapters, drafts of journal articles or book chapters, MA theses, and dissertation proposals.

Please join us for the following workshop presentations this quarter:

April 14

“Symbolist Poetics of Correspondence”

Monica Felix, Comparative Literature PhD Candidate (UChicago)

April 28

“The Collective Memory of WWII and Legitimacy in Putin’s Russia”

Evgenia Olimpieva, Political Science PhD Student (UChicago)

May 12

“Empathy and Form: The Bakhtin Circle and the Perspective of Architectonics”

Zachary King, Slavic Languages and Literatures PhD Candidate (UChicago)

May 26

“Finding a Light in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt contra Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons”

Chris Chambers, MAPH Student (UChicago)