Gulag Studies 1: New Sources and Approaches

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The field of Gulag Studies was fundamentally transformed more than 25 years ago with the partial opening of the Soviet archives. Since then, many academic studies have been based primarily on state-produced sources. This panel features papers that rethink the kinds of non-state sources that scholars can use, and even more importantly, how such sources can be analyzed, using both "traditional" and digital approaches.

Sub Unit

• History: Russian and Eurasian, since 1924

Chair

• Wilson Tharpa Bell, Thompson Rivers U (Canada)

Papers

• 'The Life [and works] of Engineer Kipreev': Demidov, Shalamov, and the Fate of Camp Fiction and Friendship in the 1960s - Alan Joseph Barenberg, Texas Tech U

• Writing Repression: Letters and Memoirs from Stalin’s Gulag - Sean Kinnear, McMaster U (Canada)

• Text Mining the Gulag - Sarah Jean Young, U College London (UK)

Discussant

• Emily D Johnson, U of Oklahoma