The Midwest Slavic Association and CSEES hosted a virtual keynote and plenary panel from the cancelled April 2020 Midwest Slavic Conference. The keynote and plenary panel was focused around the theme of "Science and Fiction(s)." This video features the plenary panel and includes three Ohio State faculty members, Drs Nicholas Breyfogle, Andrei Cretu, and Alisa Ballard Lin. The Q&A session following this panel was moderated by our keynote speaker, Dr. Anindita Banerjee (Cornell U.).
“Reflexology, Mind-Cures, and Biomechanics: (Pseudo)-Science in the Avant-Garde Russian Theater”
Presented by Dr. Alisa Ballard
The Russian theater of the early-twentieth century blossomed in dialogue with scientific and pseudoscientific developments, from Stanislavsky’s interest in reflexology to Evreinov’s fascination with the notion of the mind cure. The reliance on scientific ideas not only lent an air of validity to acting methodologies and theories of reception but drove a sense that the theater itself was an experimental laboratory to understand the human body and mind. This talk will analyze some of these points of contact between the theatrical and the scientific to understand why and how the Russian theater of this era was so scientifically driven.
"Explaining Earthquakes: The 1861-62 Lake Baikal Disaster and the Meaning of Nature in Imperial Russia"
Presented by Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle
This presentation will tell the story of the massive 1861-62 Lake Baikal earthquakes as a window onto the role of natural disasters in the social and cultural lives of the Imperial Russian population and as a way to understand the environmental sensibilities and approaches of the people around Lake Baikal. It will examine the competing efforts and discourses used to explain and understand the earthquakes. Representatives of different religious faiths (Orthodox, Buddhist, and Shamanist, in particular) each attempted to explain the events within the context of their religious worldviews. At the same time, members of the scientific community in Russia sent out multiple teams in an effort to find some “rational, scientific” explanation for the events.
"Russia Back to the Final Frontier: Reviving the Space Age in a Complex Globalized World"
Presented by Dr. Andrei Cretu
The Space Age is widely considered to have begun with the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, but there is no agreement as to when it ended, or what followed it. In the U.S., according to a widely held opinion, the Space Age ended in the early 70’s (with the last Apollo flight) or, at the latest, in 2011 (with the last Shuttle flight) and was replaced by the Digital Age, in which societal change is driven primarily by information technologies. However, there are thinkers, such as Frederic Neyrat, who claim that the grand narrative that has replaced the Space Age and is shaping society and culture today is that of the Anthropocene - an era characterized by profound changes in the biosphere caused by human activity. The post-Soviet development of Russia does not neatly fit into either of these scenarios (although it definitely includes features of both). Rather, societal trends suggest that after a period of crisis and uncertainty, the legacy of the Soviet Space Age has once again become central to Russian identity. This presentation explores some of the technological, cultural, economic and political facets of this development.