Lensing Rus', Muscovite, and Early Imperial Russian Hierarchies through Memory Studies

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

"Lensing Rus', Muscovite, and Early Imperial Russian Hierarchies" intends to discard anachronisms and to elevate contemporaneous terminology as the sole means of interpreting hierarchies from eleventh-century Kievan Rus' through the eighteenth-century Russian Empire. “Lensing” is meant as a gerund. Our panelists bring to bear several disciplines, pivoting around history of memory studies: literature, literary criticism, ethnic anthropology, language, comparative documentation. Re-evaluating standard terms, even tropes, and prying under the covers for new approaches are major aims that come down to questioning how historians visualize hierarchies. Our panelists’ chosen perspectives will tackle the “lensing issue” in unexpectedly productive ways, and will pointedly engage history of memory issues.

Sub Unit

• Early Slavic Studies

Chair

• Carol Kira Belkin Stevens, Colgate U

Papers

• Textual Emendation and the Potential of Translation in Rus’ian Narrative Texts - Ines Garcia de la Puente, Boston U

• Hierarchies of the Frontier: Power Practices in the Colonized Urals and Trans-Urals (16th - 18th Century) - Aleksey Kamenskikh, Johannes Gutenberg-U of Mainz (Germany)

• Peeking at Russian and Chinese Hierarchies via Slaphappy Satire, Pithy Poetry, and Frothy Fiction - David Goldfrank, Georgetown U

Discussant

• Peter B. Brown, Rhode Island College