Left Perspectives on Narrative II: Processing the Revolution in Media and History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

One of the promises of the socialist revolutions of the 20th century was to give the masses a voice in the sphere of cultural production. The capacity of new revolutionary states' citizens to reflect critically on their actions' contributions to shaping historical processes and new political communities ultimately depended on the fulfillment of this promise. This session would discuss the attempts of socialist artists and political thinkers to use their access to the means of media representation to make local histories and popular experiences comprehensible to the populations as parts of grander revolutionary histories.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Semyon Leonenko, UC Berkeley

Papers

• Comrades That Shook the World: Oral Storytelling and the Making of Sergei Eisenstein’s October - Stanislav Khudzik, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Socialist Realism with a Human Face: History and Mediation in Andrei Platonov’s 'Immortality' - Konstantin Mitroshenkov, Columbia University in the City of New York

• Živojin Pavlović's Media Theory: Truncated Messages, Interrupted Dispatches, and History in Hajka (1977) - Lora Maslenitsyna, Yale U

• Sultan-Galiyev and the Press: From Djadid Educator to Communist Revolutionary - Anna Yegorova, UC Santa Cruz

Discussants

• Julia Alekseyeva, U of Pennsylvania

• Semyon Leonenko, UC Berkeley