8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m., Monday - Friday
Aug. 30 through Sept. 24, 2004
Spiva Art Gallery on campus
Admission: free

The Letter, 1989 ©Christian Keesee Collection

New Russian Art: Paintings From the Christian Keesee Collection

Oklahoma businessman Christian Keesee began collecting contemporary Russian art after visiting the country for the first time in 1988. In a series of trips between 1991 and 1993, he and free-lance curator Jon Burris visited artists, curators, critics, and gallery owners. The paintings in this exhibit are the result. They reflect the blossoming art scene in a post-Soviet Union Russia unfettered by Communist Socialist Realism. Although there is a figurative tendency in many of the works, there is also present the influence of Constructivism, neo-Expressionism, Primitive Expressionism, Hyperrealism, Pop, Conceptual, and various Abstract art movements. Many images can be best described either as lyrical, fantastic, or ironic, often reflecting a subtle, subversive humor. Copies of New Russian Art will be for sale for $25.00 in the Spiva Art Gallery.

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 and
Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004

Dr. Yvonne Howell

9:00 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 1, Webster Hall 207,
Permission of instructor required

Dr. Yvonne Howell, an associate professor of Russian and International Studies at the University of Richmond, spoke to Dr. Conrad Gubera’s Introduction to International Studies class.

Dr. Howell gave a crash course in reading the Russian alphabet, an overview of Russian history, and an overview of the Soviet period, including the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalinism, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Other topics included how the vastness of this land and its extreme climate have shaped “the Russian character,” Russian civilization under the Tsars, and basic cultural/historical features that help “define” Russia.

Dr. Howell explored the totalitarian model of Soviet history, which provides evidence that Soviet scientists were persecuted and controlled by the powerful political mandates of an authoritarian ruler. She looked at the “islands of intellectual freedom” model of accommodation between the regime and its (much-needed!) scientists and discussed the degree to which politics and science were intertwined in ways that supercede the control or power of any one group.

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1981 with degrees in Russian and Biology, Dr. Yvonne Howell spent a year studying ornithology at Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg). She left biology to enter the graduate program in Slavic Literature and Linguistics at the University of Michigan. While in graduate school, she learned the Czech language and spent 15 months in Prague studying the literature of the Czech underground. In 1987 she returned to Dartmouth College as a visiting instructor teaching Russian language and literature. She joined the faculty at the University of Richmond in 1991. She is the author of a book on Soviet science fiction (Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky) as well as numerous articles. She is currently writing a biography of the Russian geneticist V. P. Efroimson and his controversial theory of the “Genetics of Genius and the Biosocial Mechanisms of Higher Intellectual Activity.”

12:00 p.m., Friday, Sept. 3
Billingsly Student Center Room 310
Admission: faculty and staff only

Dr. Joy Dworkin

“Visiting Reflections: From Leningrad 1980 to St. Petersburg 2004”

Dr. Joy Dworkin, professor of English at Missouri Southern, studied in Leningrad, USSR, in the summer of 1980; twenty-four years later, she returned to the same city, now St. Petersburg, Russia. In what ways is it the same city? Professor Dworkin shared personal impressions of her visits to one of the world’s great cultural capitals, certainly one of the most literary cities in the world. Yes, McDonald’s and Subway are there now, and the propaganda “Long Live Leninism” that once glared down from atop skyscrapers has become the kitsch of the trendy “Call of Lenin” restaurant. Will aesthetic values survive in the new capitalist climate?

"Learn the Russian Alphabet"

KGCS-TV featured a special television program, "Learn the Russian Alpahbet." The program featured Southern Russian Professor Dr. Tatiana Karmanova, as she teaches the basics of the Russian alphabet and language to students.

The program was seen on UHF channel 57, cable channel 7 on the Cable One system, and cable channel 77 on the Mediacom system. The station operates as a service of the Department of Communication at Missouri Southern State University.

Russian Film Festival

Prisoner of the Mountains, directed by Bodrov (1996)

9:00 a.m & 11:00 a.m.
Friday, Sept. 10, 2004
Taylor Hall 113
Admission: free

Dr. Tatiana Sildus

Dr. Tatiana Sildus, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at Pittsburg State University, gave an overview of the Russian educational system from kindergarten to college while focusing on similarities and differences between the educational systems of Russia and the United States.

11:00 a.m
"When in Russia, Do as the Russians Do: A Closer Look at Traditions, Customs, and Holidays"

Dr. Sildus introduced some of the cultural traditions and customs that are uniquely Russian and discusses everyday life in Russia.

Dr. Tatiana Sildus holds a Ph.D. in language acquisition from Kansas State University and an M.A. from Vladimir State Pedagogical Institute. She serves as president of the Kansas Foreign Language Association and was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student in Education and the Best of Kansas awards. Dr. Sildus taught German and her native Russian in a Kansas high school for several years.

The International Club presented an evening of popular Russian music and dancing with deejay Serguei Bedine. Refreshments provided.

Russian Film Festival

Circus, directed by Alexandrov (1936)

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004 and
Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004
Admission: free

Stanley Harrison

7:00 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 14, Bud Walton Theatre
“An Acting Workshop Based on the Teachings of the Great Russian Actor/Director Michael Chekhov”

New York acting teacher Stanley Harrison showed performers how to awaken their inner powers of will, feeling, and desire by use of the psychological gesture and using the gesture to create the archetype. The workshop is based on the innovative acting techniques of Michael Chekhov, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1891 and later emigrated to the United States where he taught many of Hollywood’s most famous actors in the 1940s and 1950s. Chekhov's influence is evident in such actors as Ingrid Bergman, Lloyd Bridges, Yul Brynner, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson, Jack Palance, and Anthony Quinn.

10:00 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 15, Webster Hall Auditorium
“The Teachings of the Great Russian Acting Teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky”

Stanley Harrison described how Stanislavsky inspired others to live their lives with love, joy, and beauty through a better understanding of self. Stanislavsky (1863-1938) co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre and earned international acclaim as an actor, director, and coach. His process of character development, the “Stanislavsky Method,” was the catalyst for method acting — arguably the most influential acting system on the modern stage and screen.

Stanley Harrison has been training and teaching actors for more than 40 years. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. In addition, he studied and worked with the directors of the national theatres of Denmark and Holland. As an actor, he has appeared in more than 30 roles. He has worked with Russian acting techniques both as an actor and teacher. His teacher, the late professor Constance Wech, studied with the great Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya, so he was exposed to the Russian approach early in his career.

Article from the Joplin Independent

Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004 and
Friday, Sept. 17, 2004
Admission: free

Dr. John T. Alexander

Dr. John T. Alexander, a professor of history at the University of Kansas, led a discussion with the Literary Lions book club.

9:00 a.m., Friday, Sept. 17, Webster Hall Auditorium
“Body and Soul: Peter the Great and Catherine the Great”

Dr. Alexander described the personalities and reigns of Peter the Great (1672-1725) and Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia, “world-historical” figures famous in their lifetimes. Both rulers had bodies, obviously, and led their lives with “soul,” i.e. a many-sided interest in life and society in Russia and Europe. Both also pursued policies of Europeanization that brought the Russian Empire into closer relationships with progressive European nations.

11:00 a.m., Friday, Sept. 17, Webster Hall Auditorium
“A Russian Celebrity: Aleksandr Pushkin”

Aleksandr Pushkin became a huge celebrity in his lifetime, 1799-1837. After his death in a dramatic duel, his fame mushroomed to near-deity status. It remains worldwide to the present, as indicated by widespread bicentenary celebrations in 1999, the film Onegin, and a statue in Washington, D.C. presented by the city of Moscow.

Dr. John T. (Jay) Alexander is professor of history and Russian and East European Studies at the University of Kansas since 1966. He is best known for his biograhy of Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (Oxford, 1980), which was selected by several book clubs and has been reprinted in paperback and luxury editions. He has also published three other original books, three book-length translations from Russian, many journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews. He was one of the commentators of the History Channel production, Russia, Land of the Tsars, which has been broadcast in many different countries.

Russian Film Festival

Commissar, directed by Askoldov (1967)

Thursday, Sept. 23, 2004
Admission: free

Dr. Nina L. Khrushcheva

The Gockel International Symposium: “After Tsars and Soviets: Russia's Future and Why It Matters”

9:30 a.m., Taylor Performing Arts Center
Dr. Nina L. Khrushcheva
“Russian Reality, American Perceptions: A Culture of Misunderstanding”

Over the last post-Cold-War decade, intellectual discourse between the Russian locals and the Western observers has been an exchange between “the blind and the deaf.” The difference between the Russian reality and the American perception lies in cultural misunderstanding of Russia’s domestic condition, i.e. the nature of its transition from communism to a form of “managed” democracy — Putinism. America, it seems, lacks the language to effectively talk about or to Russia, a country that retains a contrasting system of values from the West: Russian trust vs. Western responsibility, truth vs. rules, communalism vs. individualism, spirituality vs. interests, charity vs. justice, etc. While America unequivocally believes in “homo economicus” with its cultural motto of "keeping up with the Joneses," Russia, a sprawling cultural puzzle with 11 time zones, finds more satisfaction from "keeping the Ivanovs down.” Unfathomable and ineffable, a place with 99 percent literacy and 99 percent corruption, with the best physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists, but no computers or washing machines; a place where women are highly emancipated but highly subjugated; where nuclear/industrial society marches to a peasant mentality, Russia belies easy characterization.

7:00 p.m., Webster Hall Auditorium
Dr. Nina L. Khrushcheva
“Putin’s Russia: Democracy Postponed or Democracy Defeated?”

Last spring Russia chose her president for the next four years. The unsurprising results of the March presidential elections — 72 % support for Vladimir Putin — have given way to much speculation over the current state of political affairs in Russia. Since first taking office in 2000, Putin has introduced extensive reform in such areas as pensions, taxation, agriculture, and others. Moreover, he has taken the oligarchs to task. Is Putin’s decisive victory in 2004 a sign that his agenda and promise for a “stable Russia” resonate with the average voter, or is it a result of a state-monopolized media, voting irregularities and the lack of viable opposition? As of 1991, Russia has been undergoing two kinds of transition: from communism to capitalism and from autocracy to democracy. While there is no reason to believe that the first movement will be reversed, the second is far less certain. The enthusiasm for democratic participation palpable in the early 1990s has abated, leaving behind a sense of apathy and disillusionment. The standard defense of Russia’s current semi-autocratic condition is that democracy needs order to develop over time. But what if democracy postponed becomes democracy defeated?

Granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Dr. Nina L. Khrushcheva is a professor of media and culture in the graduate program of international affairs, senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at New School University, and adjunct associate professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is also senior editor of Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. After receiving her Ph.D. from Princeton University, she had a two-year appointment as a research fellow at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then served as deputy editor of the East European Constitutional Review at the NYU School of Law. Dr. Khrushcheva’s numerous articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Times Literary Supplement and other international publications. Her book Visiting Nabokov is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2005.

Thursday, Sept. 23, 2004
Admission: free

Dr. Robert H. Donaldson

The Gockel International Symposium: “After Tsars and Soviets: Russia's Future and Why It Matters”

7:00 p.m., Webster Hall Auditorium
Dr. Robert H. Donaldson
“ Democracy or Autocracy: Where is Putin Taking Russia, and Why Should We Care?”

Dr. Donaldson sumed up the Putin record through the first four and a half years of his presidency, noting that there are still many signs of ambivalence and even contradiction in Putin’s policies in the economic, political, and diplomatic spheres. He believes 2004 is a year of decision for this famously indecisive president. Dr. Donaldson also tackles the notion that Russia is too weak to matter anymore and that the United States doesn’t need to be terribly concerned about which direction it takes.

Dr. Robert H. Donaldson is a professor of political science at the University of Tulsa, where he served as president from 1990-96. Previously (1984-90) Dr. Donaldson was president of Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey's largest private university, and provost of Lehman College of the City University of New York (1981-84). He has also taught at Vanderbilt University and at Harvard University; the latter institution awarded his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science. Dr. Donaldson has authored or co-authored six books and monographs and more than two dozen articles and book chapters, mostly on the politics and foreign policy of the Soviet Union and Russia. His latest book, with Joseph Nogee, is The Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests, 2nd edition published in 2001 by M.E. Sharpe, Inc. He is currently writing a book on the politics of “cyber-terrorism” and is teaching a course with the same name as part of Tulsa’s new Ph.D. program in Information Assurance.

Russian Film Festival

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, directed by Menshikov (1980)

Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004
Admission: free

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

11:00 a.m., Webster Hall Auditorium
" Between the City of Yes and the City of No"

1:00 p.m., Spiva Libray Room 413
Question & Answer Session

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, born in 1933 in Zima Junction, Siberia, is a poet, novelist, filmmaker, and professor of literature and cinema. His first poem was published in 1949, and his first book in 1952. His early poems were praised by Boris Pasternak, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost. Yevtushenko’s poetry became the first lonely voice against Stalinism. In 1960 he was the first Russian to break the Iron Curtain and to recite his poetry in the West. In 1961 he published “Babi Yar,” a poem against anti-Semitism, which inspired the great Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich to write his Symphony No. 13. He raised his voice against dissidents’ trails, Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, and, together with the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, he became a co-founder of the first Russian anti-Stalinist association “Memorial.”

From 1988 to 1991 Mr. Yevtushenko served in the first freely elected Russian Parliament, where he fought against censorship and other restrictions. During the 1991 attempt of hard-liners to overthrow the fragile Russian democracy, Yevtushenko recited his poetry from the balcony of the Russian White House to two hundred thousand defenders of freedom.

Mr. Yevtushenko now divides his time between Russia and teaching poetry to American students at Queens College, New York, and the University of Tulsa. He has toured more than 90 countries and his works have been translated into 72 languages. He was elected Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. On March 17, 2004, Mr. Yevtushenko was awarded the highest medal of Russia “For the Great Achievements for Motherland” for his literary works.

Russian Film Festival

My Name Is Ivan, directed by Tarkkovsky (1962)

Oct. 7-8, 2004
Phinney Recital Hall
Admission: free

Dr. David Kushner

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004, 8:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
“Modest Mussorgsky: Nationalist, Realist, ‘Barbaric’ Genius”

A group of 19th century Russian composers known to the world as “The Mighty Handful” changed the character of Russian music forever. One of the five composers was Modest Mussorgsky, who marched to his own beat and joined a commune influenced by the theories of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, who proposed that art must be subordinated to life. Dr. David Kushner, professor and head of musicology/music history at the University of Florida, explored how Mussorgsky dealt with his personal demons in the context of his creative life. Attention also was focused on the “barbaric” genius’s efforts at producing a musical representation of human speech, his treatment of Russian folksong, and his gift for satire.

Friday, Oct. 8, 2004, 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.
“Aleksandr Borodin: Chemist and Composer”

One of the most versatile and enigmatic figures among the Russian Nationalist School of composers, Aleksandr Borodin achieved excellence in both science and music. The scientific side of Borodin’s life emphasized lecturing on chemistry, supervising student work, and advocating medical courses for women, activities that were impediments to uninterrupted musical achievement. Nevertheless, both inside Russia and beyond (Liszt was a strong supporter of his musical efforts), however, Borodin became known as a significant artistic personality. Dr. David Kushner explained how the worldwide success of the musical Kismet, which opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York in 1953, has led to a revival of interest in Borodin’s works, which have been increasingly performed and recorded.

Dr. David Kushner directs graduate seminars in American music, nationalism in music, music criticism, 19th century music, 20th century music, piano literature, chamber music literature, and opera history at the University of Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in music from the University of Michigan and has lectured and performed throughout the United States and in Canada, Israel, Kenya, Australia, and in eastern and western Europe. In 1998, he was a visiting professor of musicology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Professor Kushner also has been recognized for his “Recitals in the Schools” program, which brings art music to students in the elementary, middle, and high schools.

12:00 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 8, 2004
Billingsly Student Center Room 310
Brown bag presentation, faculty and staff only

Carolyn Trout

“Pysanky: The Art of the Ukrainian Easter Egg”

Carolyn Trout, director of the Joplin Public Library, has been creating Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky) for 25 years. This ancient art form uses egg shells, beeswax, and water-soluble dyes to create masterpieces in miniature. The wax-resist process is a complicated version of the method used by children to dye eggs for Easter egg hunts. Pysanky have both social and spiritual significance in Ukrainian culture, where both the creation and giving of the completed eggs is an integral part of the traditions of Easter. Pysanky have been discovered in Ukrainian graves that date back thousands of years. Prior to the Christianization of the Ukraine near the end of the first millennium A.D., the designs and colors had different symbolic meaning. For example, the triangle — a standard design element on many pysanky — now represents the Holy Trinity, but in pre-Christian Ukraine it stood for either the elements (fire, earth, water) or for the family (father, mother, child.) The most common design element is the eight-pointed star, or rose, which symbolizes life. Designs from the Ukrainian steppes tend to use more floral and animal imagery, while designs from the Carpathian mountains tend to be more geometric.

Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2004

Dr. Sidney Monas

Dr. Sidney Monas, emeritus professor at the University of Texas, described how Russian culture has a powerful tendency to turn its outstanding figures into icons, which in turn encourages the formation of cults. Under the old regime, all Russian rulers were depicted symbolically as saints, though not necessarily officially recognized as such. Outstanding cultural figures from Pushkin to Sakharov also were depicted iconically. This is a dangerous, though sometimes quite touching phenomenon.

1:00 p.m., Hearnes Hall 322B, Permission of instructor required

Dr. Monas spoke to Dr. Joy Dworkin’s World Humanities class.

Born in New York to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Dr. Sidney Monas grew up in rural eastern Pennsylvania. After his first year at Princeton, the U.S. Army sent him to Europe, where he was captured and spent several months as a German prisoner of war. His Harvard dissertation, published as his first book in 1961, addressed Russian society and police under Nicholas I. After spending most of his early career teaching at Rochester University, he came to the University of Texas in 1969. Throughout his life, Dr. Monas has maintained an interest in literature, history, and world affairs.

Russian Film Festival

Window To Paris, directed by Mamin (1995)

7:30 p.m
Tues.-Sat., Oct. 12-16, 2004
Black Box Theatre (Bud Walton Theatre)
Admission: free to students, faculty, staff

Anton Chekhov

Southern Theatre presents:
“An Evening of Chekhov: The Celebration, The Marriage Proposal and The Brute”

Southern Theatre presented three one-act farces by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in the late 1880s, the plays, which were originally performed as curtain raisers to his more famous plays, The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Sea Gull, examine the foibles and foolishness of the Russian landowning class. The Celebration was directed by Dr. James Lile, and Dr. Jay Fields directed The Marriage Proposal and The Brute.

9:30 a.m & 11:00 a.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004

Dr. Elena Osokina

Dr. Osokina explored a historically new form of everyday life that can be called “Soviet socialism.” She argued that two things worked together to shape Soviet everyday life, the state’s claim for total control and the population’s responses to it. The Soviet Union was the first state in the modern world to attempt to completely control not only production but also the distribution of goods within a country over an extended period of time. Dr. Osokina also focused on the creation of special stores to drain the Soviet people of their wealth, showing how the state’s economic interventions led the people to create a new set of strategies for survival and enrichment. These two things — state interventions and grassroots responses — worked together to create a new form of everyday life.

11:00 a.m., Webster Hall Auditorium, Admission: free
“Women in a Totalitarian Society: Soviet Union, Late 1920s-Early 1940s”

Dr. Osokina explored the changes that “Stalin’s revolution from above” brought into women’s life. She looked at the central political decisions and actions that changed women’s positions in the society and then focused on women’s everyday duties to provide food and goods for their families under the conditions of permanent shortages and famine caused by Stalin’s destruction of the peasant markets. Dr. Osokina also described women’s resistance to the regime and the impact that Stalin’s Great Terror had on them.

Dr. Elena Osokina received her Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1998. She has been a visiting scholar at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris, a senior research associate in the Institute of Russian History at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a post-doctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, and a visiting lecturer at Donaueschingen Academy in Germany. She has given presentations at the Russian and East-European Centers of Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Indiana, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Princeton, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Library of Congress, University of Aberdeen (Great Britain), University of Helsinki (Finland), and University of Toronto. Her book, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927-1941, was published in 2001.

Russian Film Festival

The Cranes Are Flying, directed by Kalatozov (1957)

10:00 a.m.
Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2004
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Sergi Rachmaninoff and Nina Koshetz circa 1916

Charles Brough

“The Last Love Song”

Joplin author/journalist Charles Brough presented the story of the dramatic love affair between Rachmaninoff and Diva Nina Koshetz, an affair which began in Imperial Russia during its Golden Age of the Arts. Brough describes the dramatic moment when Rachmaninoff first took Koshetz in his arms, the difficulties and separation that ultimately ensued, and her harrowing escape from Russia at the time of the Revolution. She hid all her jewels in her baby daughter’s diapers, and eventually reached exile in the U.S. Once here, she went on to build a new singing career in opera, performing at Carnegie Hall eight times, at the White House for President Harding, and in several Hollywood movies. Brough also painted a riveting word picture of Rachmaninoff and Koshetz’s final meeting, called “the encounter on the bridge.” Her daughter, Marina, also became an opera singer, appearing at the Hollywood Bowl with Stowkowski and in numerous Hollywood MGM musicals with Mario Lanza. The presentation included photographs, short musical clips, and movie and video segments.

Charles Brough took on the task of editing Nina Koshetz’s Memoirs for Marina. The task appealed to him not only because it involved a love story but also because it wove around so many of the great Russian artists. The job involved assembling and editing 1,000 pages of translated diary notes that were undated and in no consecutive order. Following his book, The Cycle of Civilization, he is now working with his literary agent on his culminating work explaining why civilizations rise and fall. A one-time member and public speaker of the UCLA Plato Society, Brough is married to Joanne Walker Brough, a prominent CBS and Lorimar television executive and producer of “Falcon Crest.” Joanne Brough is an adjunct professor of communication at Missouri Southern.

9:00 a.m & 11:00 a.m.
Monday, Oct. 25, 2004

Dr. Jennifer Wynot

Dr. Jennifer Wynot, assistant professor of history at Metropolitan State College of Denver, discussed the current status of the Orthodox Church in Russia as well as its relations with other religions and its attempts to have its status protected in Russia by the government.

11:00 a.m., Hearnes Hall 311, Permission of instructor required

Dr. Wynot spoke to Dr. Barry Brown’s Introduction to Philosophy class.

Russian Film Festival

Burnt By The Sun, directed by Mikhalkov (1994)

7:00 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004
Taylor Performing Arts Center
Admission: free

Barynya

Russian folk dance and music ensemble Barynya

“Barynya,” a New York-based Russian folk dance and music ensemble, presented a 90-minute show of traditional Russian folk dances and songs. Over 15 authentic musical instruments are utilized by professional musicians dressed in colorful stage costumes. All musicians and dancers are professional entertainers from the former USSR. Traditional instruments including the balalaika, garmoshka, lozhki, kugikly, treshotki, and vertushki are showcased.

Photos from October 28, 2004 concert.

10:00 a.m & 11:00 a.m.
Monday, Nov. 1, 2004
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Dr. Maxim Matusevich

Dr. Maxim Matusevich, assistant professor of history at Drury University, outlined the history of the dissent movement in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. Close attention was paid to the strategies and structures of political and cultural resistance in the general context of a totalitarian society. Even though the Soviet regime always sought to project the image of uniformity and general consensus, not everybody “went with the flow.” People resisted the ideological impositions in a variety of fashions — through dissident political activities, nationalist and religious movements, countercultural expressions, alternative lifestyles, or subtle violation of social dogmas and taboos. In the final analysis, the Soviet Union perished in large part because so many of its citizens refused or failed to function within the parameters established by the Communist regime.

11:00 a.m.
“Rituals of Everyday Life in the Soviet Union”

Dr. Matusevich went beyond the purely political aspect of Soviet life and looked at the everyday reality of a Soviet citizen. The experience of living in the totalitarian Soviet Union was a sum total of little and mundane occurrences: how people shopped, how they studied and worked, what kind of living conditions they could hope for, how they dated and married each other, how they resolved interpersonal conflicts, and how they negotiated their relationships with state authorities. It is useful to remember that even the “evil empires” are inhabited by ordinary people. The citizens of the Soviet Union were probably far more concerned with their personal problems than with the momentous struggle their increasingly senile leaders were waging against the West.

Dr. Maxim Matusevich teaches courses on Africa, Cold War, and Russian/Soviet cultural history at Drury University. He is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, where he worked and published extensively as a journalist. He taught on the college level in Russia, Nigeria, and the United States. Dr. Matusevich is the author of No Easy Row for a Russian Hoe: Ideology and Pragmatism in Nigerian-Soviet Relations (2003) as well as dozens of articles and book chapters. His second scholarly book, Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: 300 Years of Encounters, is due for release later this year. Dr. Matusevich has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.

Postponed

Rostyslav Lukach

Postponed

11:00 a.m., Wednesday, Nov. 3
Cornell Auditorium in Matthews Hall
Admission: free
“ Transition from Command to Market Economy”

Rostyslav Lukach, chairman of the board of directors of the Odessa Stock Market Group in the Ukraine, discusses the economic and political reforms that were required in the Ukraine’s transition as well as the pros and cons of a market economy.

9:30 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 4, Matthews Hall 109
Permission of instructor required

Mr. Lukach speaks to Dr. John Lewis’s International Business class. To attend, please call Dr. Lewis at 417-625-9602.

9:00 a.m., Friday., Nov. 5, Matthews Hall 103
Permission of instructor required

Mr. Lukach speaks to Dr. William Huffman’s Auditing class. To attend, please call Dr. Huffman at 417-625-9778.

11:00 a.m., Friday, Nov. 5, Matthews Hall 213
Permission of instructor required

Mr. Lukach speaks to Dr. Richard Rawlins’ Financial Management class. To attend, please call Dr. Rawlins at 417-625-9716.

10:00 a.m., Monday, Nov. 8, Matthews Hall 213
Permission of instructor required

Mr. Lukach speaks to Dr. Richard Rawlins’ Financial Management class. To attend, please call Dr. Rawlins at 417-625-9716.

12:00 p.m., Monday, Nov. 8, Matthews Hall 213
Permission of instructor required

Mr. Lukach speaks to Chris Moos’s International Financial Management class. To attend, please call Mr. Moos at 417-625-9703.

Warsaw Philharmonic with Olga Kern, Pianist

The Warsaw Philharmonic returned to Joplin, this time with 2001 VanCliburn Gold Medalist Olga Kern. They performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3. The Philharmonic also performed Brahm's Symphony #1. This concert was presented in cooperation with Curtains Up! Joplin Concert Series.

10:00 a.m.
Monday, Nov. 8, 2004
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Dr. Charles Timberlake

Dr. Charles Timberlake, professor emeritus of Russia history at the University of Missouri, began with an analysis of the Constitution of 1993 that created the current governmental structure (the “prize” for the winner of elections) and the results of parliamentary and presidential elections from 1993 to 2004. He described the antidemocratic acts of the Putin presidency: revision of the constitution to consolidate 89 regions into 7, whose “Presidential representatives” he has appointed from his former KGB buddies; recentralization of power in the hands of the executive by administrative reforms; use of the compliant legal institutions to punish severely all people outside the “family circle” that he inherited from Yeltsin; and widespread attacks on all media that have been critical of him. Professor Timberlake ended with the question of a third four-year term for Putin, beginning in 2008.

Dr. Charles Timberlake was chair of the History Department at the University of Missouri from 1996-2000. He has taught such courses as “Russia from Peter the Great to Lenin,” “Russia and the Soviet Union Since 1917,” “The Russian Revolution, 1885 1921,” “U.S. Soviet Relations since the 1970s,” “The Soviet Union Under Stalin,” “The Soviet Union Since Stalin,” and “Soviet Union & Russia Since Gorbachev.” Dr. Timberlake received the University of Missouri Provost Award for Leadership in International Education in 2002 and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the University of Missouri Alumni Association in 2000. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Russia, Finland, England, China, and the Republic of Georgia.

Russian Film Festival

Alexander Nevsky, directed by Eisenstein (1938)

“Doing Business in Russia and Eastern Europe”

Russian and Eastern Europe experts and local professionals discussed the demographic, political, religious, and economic outlooks of Eastern Europe; important differences in business language usage in various Eastern European countries; the “do’s and don’ts” related to cultural and professional aspects; if terrorism is preventing U.S. companies from doing business in Eastern Europe; the success factors in differentiating, pricing, distributing, promoting and labeling your product or service; E-commerce — Eastern Europe’s ability to support electronic commerce; and much more. Sponsored by the Missouri Southern International Trade and Quality Center, the seminar included a networking luncheon.

Nov. 10-11, 2004
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Dr. Michael Makin

9:00 a.m.,Wednesday, Nov. 10
“New Moscow, Old Heartland — Contrasts of Russia Today”

According to Dr. Michael Makin, an associate professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Michigan, Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world apart from New York, boasts some of the most lavish and expensive restaurants and night clubs anywhere, and is building urban highways that will be the envy of every other city in Europe. Provincial Russia, outside of the major centers of oil production, is, by many standards, less prosperous than almost any other part of the continent. To understand Russia today, it is essential to grasp the nature and meaning of the striking contrasts between the country’s center of power and wealth and its vast, largely impoverished, but remarkably robust (and, it should be recalled, relatively well-educated) hinterland.

1:00 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10
“Poet and Power: The story of Nikolai Klyuev"

Dr. Michael Makin introduced Nikolai Klyuev (1884-1937), one of the most intriguing figures in the pantheon of Russian modernism. Klyuev was born and grew up in villages near Lake Onega in the Russian north, and wrote extensively about the life and culture of the Russian peasantry; but he became a major figure in the elite urban culture of St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the beginning of the Soviet period he sympathized with Bolshevism, but soon became its enemy, and was arrested, exiled, and finally executed in the 1930s. The story of his life, his work, and his “return” to Russian culture in the late 20th century is both exemplary and extraordinary.

11:00 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 11
“The Literature of St. Petersburg”

St. Petersburg, which celebrated its tercentenary in 2003, is one of the world’s most remarkable cities, and one of the most literary — as Dostoevsky put it, the most abstract and “invented” city in the world. Rational and fantastic, beautiful and oppressive, it has been portrayed in all of its contradictions by generations of Russian writers (among them Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok, Belyi, and Brodsky, to name but a few). Dr. Michael Makin explored the story of the literary mythologization of St. Petersburg and the transformation of the city’s myth in Russia today revealing many of the paradoxes of modern Russian culture.

Dr. Michael Makin teaches Russian literature and culture at the University of Michigan. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford. Makin is the author of Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetics of Appropriation (Oxford University Press, 1993; Russian edition, Moscow, 1997), the editor of two volumes of scholarly essays, and has published academic articles in America, England, and Russia. He has just completed a book on Nikolai Klyuev, who like Tsvetaeva, is one of the great and tragic Russian poets of the first half of the 20th century. He travels to Russia regularly, visiting many parts of the country, especially the Russian north.

Nov. 10-11, 2004
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

Alina Makin

11:00 a.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10
“Culture of the Russian Table”

Alina Makin, head of the Intensive Russian Program at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, says “We are what we eat” — food is fundamental and instrumental in our lives. For the traveler and ethnographer the table is one of the principal arenas for encounters with other cultures. But we are also how we eat, and the rituals, habits, economies, folklore, and cultural images of the table, the practices of food selection and preparation, the depiction of table in high (and popular) culture are all significant elements in the creation of personal, regional, and national identity. This lecture examined the foodways of Russia, from the development of the Russian table to the practices and rituals of food preparation and consumption in Russia today, and looked at contemporary attitudes to food and eating. Students learned what to expect when they eat and drink in Russia (and why) and developed basic understanding of semiotics of the table in Russian literature, folklore, film, and journalism.

9:30 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 11
“Russian Women Today”

Alina Makin told how the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought sweeping changes to Russian society, its economy, politics, and way of life. Naturally, the lives of Russian women, who traditionally stand at the core of everyday life and family, have also changed. How drastic were these changes? What is life like today for Russian women of various backgrounds, education, and income brackets? Are women better or worse off than they were in the Soviet era? Has the move toward democratization and Westernization of society also changed the way women live? In this lecture Makin examined these and other issues through tracing the lives of several Russian women in contemporary society.

Alina Makin is a faculty member in the Slavic Department at the University of Michigan. A native Muscovite, she was educated at the Moscow Linguistics University. At the University of Michigan, where she has worked for over a decade, she directs the Intensive Russian Program and teaches beginning through advanced levels of Russian, as well as advanced Russian seminars on the history and culture of the Russian table and other aspects of Russian culture. Her research interests include several areas of applied linguistics, especially second-language acquisition and pedagogy, and the history and culture of food and cooking.

8:00 p.m.
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004
Music Hall in downtown Kansas City
Admission: $22 and $52 tickets

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra

Missouri Southern’s Campus Activities Board provided tickets to the first 35 students who sign up with a student I.D. in Room 222 of the Billingsly Student Center. The concert was sponsored by William Jewell College’s Harriman Arts Program. Yuri Temirkanov conducted the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, “one of the great virtuoso orchestras of the world,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Considered one of the best in the world, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic is the oldest orchestra in Russia.

Russian Film Festival

Brother, directed by Balabanov (1997)

2:00 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 19, 2004
Bud Walton Theatre
Admission: free

Dr. Carla Stalling Huntington

Carla Stalling Huntington, an assistant professor of marketing and management at Missouri Southern, discusses the advent of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes formed in the early 1900s and its ultimate demise by the late 1920s. Diaghilev’s company, which originated in Russia although it never performed there, has been called “the progenitor of modern ballet.” Many ballet companies of the first half of the 20th century — in England, France, Argentina, and elsewhere — were either founded by veterans of the Ballets Russes or were rejuvenated by Ballets Russes alumni. In the United States, the Ballets Russes was instrumental in helping to form the New York City Ballet (and therefore later companies in the U.S. that recruited dancers from the New York City Ballet). Professor Huntington will also discuss the founder of the New York City Ballet, George Balanchine, who had been a dancer in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and a choreographer for the Ballet Russe and for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. The presentation will include information about the economics of the dance companies as well as a demonstration of the dance methodology.

Dr. Huntington’s research emphasizes the history, marketing, economics and management of professional ballet. Her goal in focusing on these areas of research is to influence the formulation of effective policy and increasing demand in the professional ballet industry. She has published “Ninette de Valois, Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes, III: Economics and Ballet in London 1932 – 1942” in the 2003 Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars. Aside from her research interests, Professor Huntington continues to dance and has done so for more than 25 years. She also launched and led a small performing professional ballet company in southern California.

Institute of International Studies
Missouri Southern State University - Joplin
3950 E Newman Rd. · Joplin, MO 64801-1595
Voice: 417.659.4442 · Fax: 417.659.4445
Updated November 18, 2004
Page Maintained by Sharen Brown
Copyright©; Missouri Southern State University, 2003, all rights reserved.