Call for papers: International conference

Conference "Russian Futures: Contexts, Challenges, Trends"

To be held at Duke University, Durham, NC, February 19-21, 2010

Deadline for submission of proposals: July 15, 2009.

Submissions should be sent by fax in the form of a one-page outline with title to: Russian Futures Conference Committee, Duke University, 919-660-3141

Format of conference: All papers will be circulated no later than one month prior to the conference dates. Conference proceedings will be published in a peer-review venue. The conference will consist of several panels of speakers organized on the following themes:
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PANEL: SEMIOTIC TRANSPOSITIONS

This panel is devoted to explorations of the application and critique of structuralist, post-structuralist and non-structuralist semiotic theories with a focus on Russian cultural space.

Suggested Topics:
* Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics
* Semiotics of Culture
* Semiosphere and semiotic spaces
* Mechanisms and modelling of languages and discourse
* Artistic texts and contexts
* Autocommunication
* C.S. Peirce in the Russian context
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PANEL: LOST IN TRANSITION? WOMEN'S PLACE, WOMEN'S WORK IN RUSSIA TODAY AND TOMORROW

This panel explores how women's private and professional experience and public influence are evolving in today's Russia, considering in particular how women have been affected by both the legacies of Soviet culture and the commercial juggernaut of the transition.

Suggested Topics:
* The life of the working woman
* Place and identity
* Women's welfare
* Family roles and their sociopolitical currency
* Public prominence = public influence?
* Religion and spirituality
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PANEL: COMMUNICATION, MEDIA, AND RUSSIA IN THE WORLD

The media may be considered as that essential circulatory system, whose success or failure might be characterized as reception and non-reception both in terms of cognition and penetration.. In addition, critical questions include: what is the shape of Russia in the international system; what and who is in the "national conversation" in the country
via the media; and the strategies and methodologies of investigation.
All of these may be considered in earlier eras of Russia as well as more recent ones.

Suggested Topics:
* What is Russia in global politics?
* Reception and non-Reception
* Russian mass media within the historical/cultural, hierarchical and centrally determined "value" of cultural products
* The role of technology and center/ periphery is part of the question.
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PANEL: TOWARD THE RULE OF LAW IN RUSSIA

This panel will consider law and legality in Russia. We invite proposals from different disciplines to examine any aspect of the following topics:

Suggested Topics:
* Current state of law
* Legal institutions
* Legal culture in Russia
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PANEL: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN RUSSIA

This panel will look at the phenomenon of political violence in Russian history in a fresh manner in which the panelists will be asked to try to integrate the separate discourses of state and insurgent terrorism into a general theory. The focus of the panel will be the era of 1905-1917.

Suggested Topics:
* Violence from the Insurgent Right: the Black Hundreds and Jewish Defense Organizations
* Violence from the Insurgent Left: Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists
* Violence from the State: Who Gave the Orders to Fire and What were the Justifications?
* Toward an Integrated Theory of Political Violence in Late Imperial Russia ______________________________________________________________

PANEL: DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE: WILL HEALTH AND SOCIAL STABILITY FOLLOW SUSTAINED ECONOMIC GROWTH?

This panel is devoted to analysis of the changes in demographic behaviors - health, life expectancy, marriage, divorce, fertility, migration (and possibly educational attainment) - in Russia. The panel will seek to identify what has happened in the recovery decade (1999-2008) relative to the Soviet era and post-Soviet shock, and will examine the likely impact of continued economic growth on future outcomes.

Suggested Topics:
* Life expectancy recovery 1999-2008; their determinants and forecasts
* Patterns of disease-related mortality: declining infectious diseases and persistent degenerative mortality
* External cause mortality: accidents, homicide, and suicide
* Disability and health status: is Russian health improving even in the absence of life expectancy gains?
* Marriage and its consequences (births and divorces) - response to economic boom
* Is Russia undergoing a transition to Western European patterns of cohabitation and non-marital fertility?
* Internal migration within Russia: will the remote areas cease depopulating?
* When will the Russian population stop shrinking?
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PANEL: VISUAL AND INFORMATION LITERACY IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA

This panel discusses the proliferation of information, and its consequences, for scholars of Russia, as well as for the Russians themselves. We plan to discuss the need for visual and information literacy, that is, for a systematic approach to understanding the post-Soviet structure of information and the nature of Russian visuality itself.

Suggested topics:
* The Role of Visual Culture in Post-Soviet Political Discourse and Identity-Formation
* Information Overload: How researchers and Russians themselves deal with the proliferation of resources (in analog and digital formats) both inside and about Russia
* The Goals of Slavic Information Literacy
* New Copyright Regimes, Old Problems
* The End of the Archival Gold Rush: The dilemmas of access to archival materials in Post-Soviet Russia