XXXV International Conference of the Russian Society of American Culture Studies Program by Sections

1. Journalism and Cultural Pluralism in the USA
Coordinators Dr. Yasen Zassoursky and Dr. Mikhail Makeyenko (MSU, Russia)
 
Lydia Zemlyanova
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Discussion on Cultural Pluralism in the Modern Communicativistics
 
Elena Radko
Moscow Institute of Humanitarian Sciences & Economics, Kaluga Branch, Russia
Beginning of the World War I on Pages of The New York Times: pluralism of opinions
 
In the end of 2008 world celebrated the end of a Great War, although its history still has several black spots which to this day attract attention of many scholars from all over the world. One of them - rather controversial – is the United States foreign policy, more specifically country staying neutral up to the spring of 1917 and the fact that even after it had officially entered the war on April 6 of 1917, United States took part in hostilities only in summer of 1918. To this day the motives of this "friendly neutrality" remain a sacrosanct secret. It's not impossible that one of the reasons was dissent amongst American establishment.
 
Andrei Ruskin
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Obama First Presidential Year: Realization of Communication Strategies and Electoral Process
 
Both Russian and world mass media, including American, has paid attention to the important "psychological" barrier passed by the US president Barack Obama, on the 4th of November 2009, exactly a year after his Election Day. Right after the 4th of November 2009 the original preparation for 2010 midterm elections and 2012 presidential election campaign of 2012 has started. Communication strategies have been concentrated into three directions: first, relations with ordinary Americans concerning support to small and average business, programs of preservation old and creations of new job places, participation in military operations outside the country and others. But the project to reform the health care system, in particular, supporting to an accessible insurance became the most important theme turned to an internal audience. Secondly, relations with an external audience in different regions of the World. And thirdly, Obama's communication strategy has been connected with interaction with the American and World financial, business and political elite.The main Obama's achievements during his first year were connected with the preservation of a high approval rating among Americans even despite falling of business activity, unemployment increase, and inflationary expectations. That became the basic result of realization of communication strategy in three designated directions. In general Obama in 2009 has managed to present himself as a person quite ready to combine interests of large business and requirements of ordinary Americans. His policy has not changed Bush's former republican course too much, which also prevented generation of a strong opposition to Obama in 2009 yet. It has allowed many American political commentators to start to estimate rather seriously Obama's chances to win the second term in 2012.
 
Irina B. Arkhangelskaya,
Nizhny Novgorod Commercial Institute, Russia 
American Print Media in the Age of Globalization and Cultural Pluralism:
Analysis of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,and USA Today Online Versions (Aug. 03 – 09, 2009)
 
In the information age of the “fourth wave”, mass media is turning into a «global developing cultural pluralism village»: the main newspapers and journals offer itheir readers not only the paper but also online versions. That allows daily media monitoring from any part of the world.
In the spirit of cultural pluralism all American newspapers try to show diversity of the US life taking into consideration WASP, Afro- and Latin American traditions.
Analysis of online materials (news, reports, analytical articles, journalists’ blogs) of the three leading American newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,and USA Today, - on international and domestic issues for the period Aug. 03 - 09, 2009 will be presented.
 
Pavel Koshkin
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Peculiarities in the American Coverage of Events in China before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics (The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post)
 
The article deals with the image of China in the United States and some journalistic community after 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The author compares peculiarities of American coverage of China before and after Olympics and tries to figure out whether the games have made significant shift in the US-Chinese collaboration within the context of the US National Security Strategy and “Yellow peril”.  A number of American journalists, professors and US Embassy officials who studying and covering American-Chinese partnership have been interviewed.  The article also contains an in-depth content analysis of Olympics coverage in major American newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post.   
 
Nikolay Zykov
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia 
Multiculturalism in The Voice of America Materials 
 
 Cultural pluralism of the United States of America is fully reflected in the materials of the Voice of America, the oldest international broadcaster. And what is more, necessity of the presentation of different national cultures written down in the charter of the radio station stimulated the modern culture of Americans: Anglo-Saxon, Afroamerican, Spanish, Irish, Indian and, of course, Russian cultures are presented in the VOA broadcasts equally without distinguishing any of them. Concrete samples of multicultural activities in broadcasts will be presented . Also the support of the government  and society to different cultural communities is covered, as well as activities of private funds supporting culture and arts. Contacts and exchanges in the cultural sphere with different counties are widely presented. 
 
Ekaterina Bylkina
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia 
Research of cultural-ideological Bases of the American Entertaining Television
 
The objective of the research is revealing of cultural-ideological bases of the American one host shows. It is known that in various spheres of American society there compete the ideas of multicultural pluralism and philosophy of "the melting pot". In the present research signs both concepts as bases for  the entertaining shows format  are singed out by means of content-analytical method: choice of heroes, communicative style of conducting etc.
 
Natalia Golovanova
National Ukranian Committee of TV and Radio Broadcasting, Ukraine
Communication Bridge Cincinnati-Kharkov-Kiev-Moscow
 
Sister-cities and professional contacts of Kharkov Region, Ukraine and Cincinnati, Ohio, the USA, are demonstrated on the example of the journalist from Cincinnati Jan Sherbin who writes articles specially for the newspaper Ukrainian Format  and magazine Journalist of Ukraine and prepares materials for the Moscow magazine "Journalist". Jan Sherbin solicits materials from the Ukrainian journalists for the newspaper Cincinnati Enquirer. Journalistic cooperation has also a practical side, anyhow influencing formation of the information-cultural environment both in Kharkov and Kiev, and in Cincinnati.
 
 
 
 
2. Pluralism in the Making in American Culture of the 17-19th Centuries
Coordinator Dr. Tatyana Alentyeva (Kursk State University)
 
M. N. Pavlova
Ivanovo State University, Russia
Sonnet – to Science (1829) by Edgar Poe in the Context of American and European Science of the late 18th – early 19th centuries
 
In his Sonnet – to Science (1829) Edgar Poe sharply criticizes the mechanicism of Enlightenment science. It is with this work that the future author of famous science fiction stories and of the cosmological treatise Eureka (1848) began his aesthetic interpretation of the theme of science. The present article is aimed at defining the place of the sonnet in the sum of Edgar Poe’s works and in the literature of Romanticism. This calls for tracing the sources of the revolt against mechanicism in European Romanticism and for the analysis of a wider cultural context, namely the history of European and American science of the late 18th – early 19th centuries.
 
Marianne Berger Woods
University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA
Westward Ho and the Pioneer Madonna
 
In the 19th century America's Western landscape was as virginal as the Madonna. By mid-century when westward migration was at its height, images of women and children in Renaissance-style Madonna poses began to appear in American art. They proliferated throughout the century into the twentieth century. The Virgin would seem an unlikely image on the frontier, but Catholicism was spreading with the population.
 
Concomitantly Pius IX exulted Mary's authority by establishing the Immaculate Conception as an article of faith. Thereafter, artists in several Christian countries looked to the Italian Renaissance for inspiration in depicting their women. Images of the Madonna were used as metaphors for the virgin wilderness and American artists were provided with the opportunity to link image with landscape.
 
The images I will discuss include lithographs, murals, paintings, and sculpture. In the nineteenth century the images were not identified by title with the Madonna and Child, but by the second decade of the twentieth century titles were given specific reference such as: Madonna of the Prairie, Pioneer Madonna, and Madonna of the Trail. There were also two national competitions that generated a number of sculpted Madonnas. In this paper I juxtapose "Old Master" paintings with their New World look-alikes including images of Native and African Americans whose recognition as Madonnas came rather later in the nineteenth century. Prior to this some Native women were depicted as wild and out-of-control. Often images reinforce stereotypes. I will offer and discuss some consequences of depicting women negatively in the little-known images I have unearthed.
 
Maria. Sirotinskaya 
RAS Institute of World History, Russia
“Young America”: View of the Urban Society in the mid-19th Century
 
An attempt is made in the presentation to pay special attention to the perception of the urban society in 1840-s by the Democratic Review (edited by J. O’Sullivan), the organ of “Young America”, and by a writer, an editor and a poet C. Mathews. His novel Big Abel and the Little Manhattan (1845), where two true “owners” of New York – a young White lad and an Indian – come to an agreement, and where sincere friendship ties a white and a black boy, seems to point to the diversity of the author’s views. But some of the essays of Mathews, his speeches, as well as the articles in the Democratic Review, do not confirm “Young Americans’” “pluralism”.
 
T.V. Alentyeva
Kursk State University, Russia
 
The Dissidence in the American Literature in 19-th Century
(on the example of George Lippard, 1822-1854)
 
George Lippard was a very strange and disputable writer in the first half of the 19-th century. Was he a puritan or erotic man; madman or mass messiah; hack writer or literary genius? In any case Lippard rejected dominant imperatives of his society in culture and public conduct. He became a dissident to the political and cultural establishment. Lippard condemned bourgeois civilization. He wrote about the future collapse of capitalism in his novels The Quaker City and The Nazarene. He called the workers to unite and organize a Brotherhood Society. In his two novels The Empire City; or, New York by Night (1853) and New York: its Upper Ten and Lower Million (1854) he showed social contrasts.
He was a supporter of different social reforms such as emancipation of industrial workers, Fourierism, abolitionism, feminism etc. He defended the rights of American Indians. Some American literary critics call him a predecessor of surrealism.    
 
 
3. Development of Pluralism in the USA of the 20th Century
Coordinator Dr. Natalia Vysotska (Kiev National Linguistic University, Ukraine)
 
 
Natalia Vysotska
Kiev National Linguistic University, Ukraine
Cultural Pluralism as a Problem of Aesthetics
 
The paper discusses complicated relations between the tenets of classical aesthetic theory (Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, David Hume) and the realities of cultural diversity. The following issues seem to elicit the greatest controversy within this context: artistic value and aesthetic judgments that are inevitably (consciously or unconsciously) determined, at least, in part, by the evaluator’s ideological stand, as well as the correlation between the universal and the particular and between the objective and the subjective. The paper examines ways out of this epistemological impasse suggested by Western (in particular, Anglo-American) scholars (Emory Elliott, Terry Eagleton, Satya Mohanty, John Guillory, Barbara H.Smith). These have to do with the revision of the category of the universal towards its greater inclusiveness with regard to formerly marginalized human populations; and the task of enlarging contemporary teachers’ and researchers’ cultural thesaurus.   
 
E. A. Smirnov
Linguistic University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
A Sociocultural Portrait of a Beat Generation American: Mythology of "Beatniks", Sterotypes in Beat-Culture
 
In the fifties of the 20th century works and ideas of a group of writers commonly referred to as "Beat Generation" led to the formation of a new subculture — "the beatniks". The paper explores a vast complex of media stereotypes related to this subculture and shows the views of the famous proper "Beat" writers — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs — on beatniks and beatnik lifestyle. Through the analysis of both fiction and non-fiction works the distinction and correlation between the terms "beatnik", "beat-writer" and beat-character" is defined and shown. 
 
Louisa P. Bashmakova
Kuban SU, Krasnodar, Russia 
William H. Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck: The Art of Storytelling Revived 
 
Among highly notable masterpieces of American postmodernist literature Omensetter’s Luck(1966) excels in the original performance of a “Writing Vs. History” opposition, as well as in a harmonious synthesis of metafiction with story-telling.
There are three stories incorporated into the novel, told by the three characters in different times of their lives and – what is important - through the mediation of a narrator who is above the events of the plot; the stories are pieced together by the shared action and the presence of the fourth person – a stranger with a “foolish” name Brackett Omensetter. This silent man is just the one to have appeared as the central  figure and to function as a “reflector” for the other people “to project their hopes and fears” (Gass). 
Deeply personal and most intimate sufferings of the three story-tellers intermingle into a Generic History of a small town in the Mid-West frontier. The town’s name is Gilean, which is a phonetically distorted substitute for the Biblical Gilead named in the Book of Amos.
Gass’s reliance on traditional literary themes and story-telling models does not set Omensetter’s Luck into any definite trend of genre or style, for it is the memory of words and linguistic meaning that the writer is guided by, not the establishedl literary practice; Gass’s novel belongs more evidently to the “History of Writing” (R.Barthe), than to the literary tradition.
 
M.A. Petrukhina
Diplomatic Academy, Moscow, Russia
The Issue of Canon in Contemporary American Literature
(based on Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind)
 
 
Igor Alenin
Russian-American Institute, Moscow, Russia 
The Puritan Legacy in American Literature
 
A fundamental difference exists between American literature and nearly all the other major literary traditions of the world: it is essentially a modern, recent and international literature. In the present paper we consider the Puritan literary tradition which started the whole American literature an actual tradition shaping new forms of religiosity in works of notoriously secular writers and poets (H. Miller, R. Frost, E. Hemingway etc.)   
 
Irina Kudriavtseva
Minsk State Linguistics University, Belarus 
The Civil War as a Thematic Aspect in the 20th Century Southern Short Story
 
The 20th century Southern writers turned to the events of the Civil War in an attempt to reflect upon the peculiarities of political and economic life in the American South, to critically reassess the key notions of “the Southern myth” (a part of the national, not only regional consciousness), and to investigate ow values are preserved in historical and cultural memory. The paper sets out to explore the functions of the Civil War as a thematic aspect in several representative stories by Southern writers (William Faulkner’s Mountain Victory (1932), My Grandmother Millard and General Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek (1943), Thomas Wolfe’s Chickamauga (1938), Peter Taylor’s Rain in the Heart (1944), Bobby Ann Mason’s Shiloh (1982)) considering also the peculiarities of the short story genre. 

Rimma Savicheva
MSU Department of Journalism, Russia
Ontological Pluralism of Richard Bach's Story-parable Jonathan Livingston Seagull 
 
This research examines Richard Bach's story-parable Jonathan Livingston Seagull from a position of ontological pluralism. In this composition various cultures and intellectual theories consider each other and start to interact. The parable reflects philosophy of the movement «New Age» which has got many followers in the USA in the second half of te 20th century. The author shows, how different cognitive paradigms can coexist. Jonathan Livingston Seagull personifies the thesis of «New Age» philosophy according to which every individual personifies the God. One of Richard Bach's main ideas is constant development, continuous self-improvement. This author's position finds reinforcement in Buddhism and in neurolinguistic programming. In the story, filled by ideas of Zen-Buddhism, Richard Bach strives to bring people to love each other, to instill belief in boundless opportunities and aspiration for constantl selfimprovement. 
 
 
 
Round Table discussion: American Literature and the University Education in the US
Coordinator Dr. Olga Antsyferova (Ivanovo State University, Russia)
 
Recently there has been much debate about complex, contradictory connections and mutual influences of literature and universities in the US. It resulted, among other things, in the formation of a new literary genre of the academic novel (and -- consequently -- a range of movies based on campus life). All prominent writers of the last decades of the 20th century gave tribute to this genre, Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Francine Prose, James Hynes, Tom Wolfe -- to name only some. The discussion is supposed to be focused upon different problems and varieties of the university prose (varsity and campus novels, intellectual and mass culture components in the university prose). The other aspect of the problem refers to the new trends in teaching literature and literary theory in American universities as influenced by poststructuralist (postmodernist) paradigm, New Criticism giving place to a whole variety of new methodologies.
 
Olga Polovinkina
Vladimir, Russia
Under Stranger’s Eyes: the USA, American Academic World and Literary Theoryin David Lodge’s University Novels 
 
The university trilogy by David Lodge (Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses, 1975, Small World: An Academic Romance, 1984, Nice Work, 1988) is partly devoted to the total change of ways of thinking in literary criticism known as the literary theory. The literary theory is seen in the novels as an important part of American cultural expansionism. Lodge treats the USA as the Promised Land for the modern world, a kind of postindustrial paradise where everything including the literary theory and education is commercialized, being phenomena of world as supermarket. No wonder that freedom and diversity of opinions turn out to be just a fake and the literary theory - a display of Americanism as it was defined in Europe since the end of the 19th century.
 
Anastasia Nogovitsyna
Ivanovo State University, Russia
The Problem of Social Identity in Academic Novel I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe (2004) 
 
Grotesque image of the university world in Tom Wolfe’s novel is accompanied by exaggerated demonstration of social stratification. The author represents a life of several social groups (students, sportsmen, Afro-Americans, young intellectuals, teachers, provincials, etc.), each substantially isolated from the others. Most brightly subcultural substratum declares itself at the language level - youth, sports slang in a mix with an Afro-American dialect becomes not only a language material, but also the major theme of the book. Against this background the female protagonist's actions are perceived as an attempt of social self-determination.
 
Alexandre Kozlov
Yalta Management University, Ukraine
Myth Interpretations in American Literary Studies
 
Tatyana Pinchukova
Minsk, Belarus
The Realization of Pluralistic Approach in American Phenomenological Literary Studies
 
 
4. American Drama
Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva (Gorky Institute of World Literature RAS, Moscow, Russia)
 
Marina Zaitzeva,
Saratov State University, Russia
The Formation of Maxwell Anderson’s Outlook: places, events, people
 
 James Maxwell Anderson was one of the most prominent playwrights in the USA. He was an author of 32 plays, among those were 13 which he wrote in the 1930s, period of Great Depression. He was a playwright who tried to restore poetic tragedy on the stage; a popular author who was not inclined to opening his life to public; a man whose opinions were considered to be radical, anarchistic by his friends and relatives. This paper is an attempt to analyze what events, people and places asserted the most pronounced influence on Maxwell Anderson’s life and works. 
 
V.Kotlyarova
Chelyabinsk, Russia
Arts Synthesis in Tennessee Williams Plastic Theatre
 
Svetlana Sigida
Moscow Conservatory, Russia
Integration of a Historical Document into American Music (Lincoln Portrait,1942 by Aaron Copland)
 
Yekaterina Yefimenko
Tavrida National University, Simferopol, Ukraine
Comparative Analysis of Feminine Originality in English and American Drama of B.Shaw, P.Brute, Busiko, Belasko and L.Mitchel
 
Jekaterina Sadovska
Belarusian State University, Belarus 
Anna Karenina, Cuban Immigration, and a Pulitzer for Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Kruz    
The paper is devoted to creative work of the well-known contemporary American playwright Nilo Kruz and his play Anna in the Tropics, based on the novel Anna Karenina. Cuban origin of the author can be traced in all his works while in Anna in the Tropics it is combined with Russian passions and human values. Eternal truths are common among different peoples in the world despite their being on different sides of the ocean, separated by centuries and cultures.  
 
5. American Poetry
Coordinator Dr. Olga Polovinkina (Vladimir State University, Russia)
 
Tatyana Potnitseva
Dniepropetrovsk National University, Ukraine 
The First War Mythology in the American Poetry of the Beginning of the 20th century 
 
The image of the world massacre – the First World War – embodied in the works of “the lost generation” and “the trench poets” – is only one of the truths which didn’t reflect the whole landscape of opinions and feelings. There were some other “plots” in the interpretation of the Event, such as perception of the War as struggle for national and human freedom. The paper focuses on the sources of this pathos and on the factors which provided its consolidation in people’s consciousness and literature. 
 
Svetlana Bodrunova
St.Petersburg State University, Russia 
Time of Synthesis: New Formalism in American Poetry
 
Dominance of free verse in the US poetry of late 1950s to 1970s has brought to life a new movement in American versification. This movement, or, rather, a trend which is sometimes referred to in liberal-oriented critique as conservative and even regressive comprises two distinct poetic currents, namely New Formalism and New Narrative poetry. Poetic practices of New Formalist and New Narrative poets build upon the experience of syllabics and syllabo-tonics: they use musical rhythms, rhyming, traditional poetic forms and other versification features characteristic of poetic traditions born before contemporary free verse. Quest for renovation of poetic form is parallel (or even subject to) the social quest: to draw contemporary poetry out of academic circles of creative writing industry and to provoke a rebirth of mnemonic functions of poetic texts, to reintroduce up-to-date political, civic, historic debate to poetic discourse, and to bring good poetry back to non-writing-but-reading community. 
 
 
6. Ethnic Components in Cultural Pluralism
Coordinator Dr. Alexander Vashchenko (MSU, Russia)
 
Udler I. M.
Chelyabinsk State University, Russia
From Slave Narrative to Neo-Slave Narrative
 
Formation and evolution of slave narrative, the archetype of all African American literature, is analysed. Now the term "neo-slave narrative" with reference to the modern African American literature is receiving wider and wider use.
 
Tunde Adeleke
Iowa State University, USA
Black Essentialism and the Challenges of Cultural Pluralism/Multiculturalism 
 
The dominance of whites, coupled with the deepening crises of black alienation, has bolstered separatist consciousness among blacks in the United States. Preserving and safeguarding black cultural identity and heritage has become a critical component of discourses on the black experience. This entailed privileging racial/cultural essentialism. Black cultural nationalists depict America as a nation of irreconcilable conflict between opposed cultures. They advocate cultural isolation and vigilance, and object to any move toward greater cultural interactions with whites. Such interactions, in their judgment, could potentially erode black cultural identity. They opt instead for what seems like a cultural pluralistic paradigm within a context that privileges isolation in antagonistic cultural zones.
 
This paper examines the implications of a racialized and essentialist construction of the black experience in the context of discourses on cultural pluralism, multiculturalism, and the prospects of a post-ethnic/racial America. The analysis centers around the following critical questions: Is multiculturalism truly detrimental to the cultural survival of blacks? Should blacks welcome and embrace multiculturalism and deemphasize racial essentialism and identity politics? What is the difference between multiculturalism and cultural pluralism? What about the inter-cultural perspective? Or, is intra-culturalism more desirable? Would a cultural pluralistic and multicultural America truly accommodate and represent multiple cultures and facilitate a healthy context for cultural interactions and coexistence?  
 
 
David Ayers
University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom
Literature of the Americas : Identity and Cultural Administration
 
 This paper outlines the creation of a new, concise history of the Literature of the Americas being developed by a team of scholars led by the author. In the first part I briefly outline the book and explain how it attempts to intervene in U.S. cultural debates. In the second part, with detailed reference to contemporary debates in Native American literary theory, I argue that the very long perspectives suggested by the geographic narrative of Literature of the Americas reveal that questions of identity and cultural administration are more closely involved than is generally recognised.
 
 
Marianne Berger Woods
University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA
Sex, Lies, and Silhouettes: Kara Walker's "Titillations and Repulsions" in Black and White
 
African American artist Kara Walker explores issues of race, gender and subjugation in room-sized installations with cut paper affixed to the walls. Occasionally the viewer is projected onto the scene thus conflating issues related to objectification and otherness.
 
Among other subjects, Walker investigates the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gone with the Wind. Until the late nineteen-sixties in the United States, the novel was deemed a triumph and, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, was required reading in most high school programs. White scholars considered the book a triumph of good over evil (white vs. black) although the acclaimed African American intellectual Alain Locke noted the book was "contrary to fact." Critical appraisal of Gone with the Wind only took place with the advent of the Civil Rights Movement of the late sixties when the book was all but banned from the canon.
This paper will examine Walker's My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love within the context of the aforementioned issues.
 
Oksana Danchevskaya,
MSPU, Moscow, Russia
Comparative Analysis of the Conception of Soul among American Indians
 
Marina Pereverzeva
Moscow Conservatory, Russia
Multiculturalism in American Music of the 20th Century
 
America became a nation of the nations, the country which connected set of different cultures and closely co-operated with the international community under historical and political circumstances. Art of the USA safely entered into dialogue with artistic traditions of Europe, Asia and Africa and these traditions, continuing to develop together, formed qualitatively new whole. The openness to the world, characteristic for the American culture in general, was especially brightly expressed in creative works of the 20th century composers of the USA. Multiculturalism became some kind of a national sign of the American music and served as the main key point on a way of national composer school development for many composers.
 
Yulia Barkova
MSU Department of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies, Russia
Ethnocultural Identity ExpressionPeculiarities in Works of Buffy Sainte-Marie
 
Yana Sorokina
MSU Department of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies, Russia
La Llorona in Сontemporary Сhicano Сulture
 
La Llorona is one of the most famous figures in Mexican-American culture. A haunting figure of Chicano oral and literary traditions, La Llorona permeates the consciousness of her folk community. The legend of La Lloronais as dynamic as it is old. In recent years, La Lloronahas wandered out of the oral stories onto pages, canvasses, films, celluloid and cyberspace. La Llorona enjoys her popularity in all aspects of Chicano`s life. The murals in the barrios of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, songs, films and bumper stickers are the contemporary interpretations of the powerful folkloric figure, who articulates profound issues of Chicano concern.
 
Yulia Dubatovka
Nikolayev State University, Ukraine
Hybridity and its Forms in the Context of Chicano Literature (on the basis of the novel Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya) 
 
“Magic realism” comprises a lot of features of postcolonial literature however hybridity is the first and the major one. Аlongside with the hybridity, Chicano writers introduce the notion of mestisaje, which is fundamental for Сhicanos. Rudolfo Anaya in his novel Bless me, Ultima claims that the hybrid consciousness assimilates and transforms different cultural experiences without denying them. The author creates the whole paradigm of the binary oppositions, which helps to form the hybrid consciousness of the main character, Antonio Juan Marez y Luna.
 
Firdes Dimitrova
Vоronezh State University, Russia 
Perception of White People Culture through their Gardens (Leslie Silko's Gardens in the Dunes) 
 
The Authoress of Ceremony (1977) Leslie Marmon Silko (1948) delves into a difficult question of multicultural interaction between white and Native Americans. Silko is questioning the potential of a true dialog between them for achieving cultural harmony and concord. In her novel Gardens in the Dunes (1999) a little American Indian girl investigates the white people world through their gardens.  
 
Irwin Weil
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL, USA
Jewish Culture in the USA
 
In the middle of the 19th Century the first tens of thousands of Jews immigrated to the USA, almost entirely from German speaking areas. They came from a well educated group of people, with a largely commercial background. It was not hard for them to play an active role in a growingly urban society. Later in the 19th Century, and through the first two decades of the 20th, large numbers of Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe and the Tsarist Russian Empire.
To a great extent, they came from small townlets, where they had experience in small scale enterprises of widely various natures. It took them a somewhat longer time to integrate themselves into American Society. But by the middle of the 20th Century, Jews felt they had a reasonably secure and creative place in one of the world's most advanced multi-cultural societies. Not only American Commerce, but also fields of medicine, science and general scholarship, music, visual arts, film, and many others have been enriched by the contributions, sometimes outstanding, of Jewish Americans, many of them from Russia. It will be very interesting to see how this phenomenon develops in future generations.
 
 
Yuri Stulov
Minsk State Linguistics University, Belarus 
Pushkin, The Queen of Spades, and Reconsidering the Past in the Work of Alice Randall 
 
The paper analyzes the novel Pushkin and the Queen of Spades by Alice Randall, a Prize-winning contemporary African American writer. In the novel, the writer plays with the images of Russia showing the life of her protagonist – a professor of Russian literature at a prestigious university. She is trying hard to find points of intersection with her son who has chosen a path in life that his mother refuses to accept. The Russian background is of primary importance in the process of self-identification of both mother and son.  
 
 
Section 7. Gender Studies
Coordinators Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU, Russia) Dr. Nadezhda Shvedova (RAS Institute of the US and Canada, Russia)
 
Marina Kizima
Moscow Institute of International Relations (University), Russia
Margaret Fuller and the New Urban Reality of the US in the Middle of the 19th Century
 
Larisa Mikhaylova
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
TV Series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998) Reflecting the End of the 19th Century Change in Gender Roles
 
Anna Lavrova
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Building a Hearth: Ways to Overcome Gender Stereotypes in TV Series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998)  
 
 
Marianne Berger Woods
University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA
Wallace Nutting’s Interiority Complex
Shooting Women Close to Home and Hearth
 
In the early twentieth century women were moving out of the home to work for pay and enroll in colleges and universities in record numbers and the New Woman movement was flourishing, but photographer Wallace Nutting staged vignettes with women dressed in “Colonial” costumes, sitting close to home and hearth. Nutting was the quintessential Colonial Revivalist who imbued his constructed images with a sense of morality frequently seen in Dutch genre paintings.  
 
In this paper I present a vast number of Nutting’s pseudo-colonial images that reinforce my thesis, and thus link him with a conservative stance regarding the place of women in early twentieth century North American culture and society. Although women were moving out of the home to work for pay in manufacturing, teaching, consumer sales, and secretarial work, Nutting pulled them back into the home in his mass-produced, hand-tinted photographs to reinforce his and other anti-modernists’ views on women’s proper place. 
 
Nadedzda Shvedova
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
Double Jubilee of The Bill of Rights for Women: What Is Ahead?
 
2009 is the Year of the Double Jubilee: The 30 Anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women – CEDAW, known as “The bill of rights for women” (adopted by the UN in 1979), and the 10-th Anniversary of The Optional Protocol (1999) later added to the CEDAW. The Adoption by the UN these International Documents meant the Great Success of the World’s Women Movement in Achieving the Goal of gender equality. Currently, 185 countries - over ninety percent of the members of the United Nations - are party to the Convention. An additional State has signed, but not ratified the treaty, therefore it is not bound to put the provisions of the Convention into practice.
The US State Secretary H.R.Clinton is focusing on issue of women’s and girls’ rights as human rights and as important priority of the USA Foreign Policy. She raises the issue on women’s rights violation.  
 
L. Tarasenkova
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
The American Government Policy on Gender Equality at the Regional Level
 
 Stability and the high level of life in the USA and in the European Countries made them some kind of  model of achieving affective results including in the field of gender relations. The American Government Policy on Gender Equality at the regional level and decision of the women’s issues, especially in the political representation, promotes development of strong democracy, supports stability, and in the whole, prosperity of the American Society.
 
Darya Shvedova
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
American Family: Gender Roles in the Beginning of the 21st Century
 
Family as the social community is the keystone of the Global development. Family in the USA is highly appreciated as a human value: 74% of Americans is married believing in family’s support, psychological and emotional comfort and sense of protection. At the same time the rate of diverse is almost 50% of the total numbers of marriages. The American generation of the second part of the XX Century is faced with the paradox:  formally declared equality between men and women are contradicting Attitudes and Beliefs about the Place of Women in American Family Life- traditional gender roles. 
 
Tatyana Komarovskaya
Minsk , Belarus
The Boundaries of Good and Evil: Two Books by Jane Hamilton
 
Jane Hamilton is at present the most prominent inheritor of puritan tradition in
US literature, following Hawthorne and Henry James in their close analysis of human soul and its mysteries and their interest to moral problems. What is Good and Evil, how does Evil get into human soul- these are the main issues she works out in her first book “The Book of Ruth”(1988).
If her first book is devoted to the estimation of the boundaries of Evil and its consequence,
the second one, “When Madeline Was Young” ponders on the boundaries of Good and its effect on the life and souls of people. The aim of the report is to discover the author’s moral ideal and to bring out the poignant beauty of her literary art.
 
Galina Kovalenko
St.Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, Russia
Pluralism of American Theatre (Eve Ensler’s Play The Vagina Monologues)
 
Multiculturalism is a specific character of American theatre with pluralism. Besides main line it absorbs black theatre, feminist, ethnic, gay theatre, portraying artistic, social and political aspect of American society.
 
Before 1996 feminist theatre occupied a very modest spot. When the opening night of Eve Ensler first play The Vagina Monologues took place at Arts Centre in New York City everything changes. This documentary play includes 200 interviews about views on sex and violence against women. Eve Ensler interviewed women of different social levels. The play is very erotic and naive at the same time. It has not only scandalous success, but reinforces feminist movement. Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep who played in this play promoted popularity play and movement.
 
For Eve Ensler the purpose of the play is “change from a celebration of vaginas and feminism to a movement to stop violence against women.” On February 2004 the movement V-DAY until the Violence Stop begins. Its participants stage benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues worldwide each year.
 
The American critic appreciated modest artistic qualities of play too much, soaring Rabelaisian heights, poetry, polemics and reflections of american cultural history.
 
Eve Ensler wrote some plays. Her last play The Good body (2004) had success. But she is author of one play The Vagina monologues. It stages worldwide, including Russia.
 
Lyubov Pervushina
Minsk State Linguistic University, Minsk, Belarus 
Woman as a Subject in History and Literature of the Last Decades of the 20th – the Beginning of the 21st Century 

 American literature of the last decades of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century reflects the peculiarities of the cultural development and contradictions of contemporary society through the problem of the place and role of a woman in society. The topic “woman as an active subject of cultural, historical and social changes” is one of the most important issues of scientific research. The image of a woman as a creative personality is at the center of attention of literary studies. A wide variety of poets, novelists, essayists and theorists (B. Friedan, K. Millett, E. Moers, A. Rich, E. Jong, K. Heilbrun and others) analyze cultural and aesthetic experience of women in order to describe the processes which take place in contemporary society.  
 
Vladimir Prozorov
Karelian State Pedagogical Academy, Petrozavodsk, Russia
 Jeffrey Eugenidis's Novel "Middlesex" (2002)  in the Context of Gender Pluralism  
of Postmodern Culture 
The culture of modernism is characterized by rigid binary oppositions according to either/or principle which includes the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity. On the contrary, the culture of postmodernism “crosses the border and bridges the gap” (L. Fidler) in accordance with both/and slogan. It covers the relations between sexes, where various forms of non-traditional orientation have recently been legitimized.  Thus a novel about a hermaphrodite is more than natural, it's essential for postmodern sensibility. The Pulitzer-prize-winning novel “Middlesex” (2002) by the American writer of Greek descent J. Eugenidis combines the features of a family saga and Bildungsroman. The history of three generations of Stefanides family is supposed to demonstrate that the binary opposition of nature – nurture is gradually replaced by the postmodern plurality and variability, which offer a chance of the free choice of both ethnic and gender component of human identity. 
 
Natalia Koliadko
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus 
Three Centuries of American History through the Prismatic Lens of the Gothic Narrative in Joyce Carol Oates’ Novel Bellefleur 
The Gothic novel Bellefleur (1980) by the contemporary US writer Joyce Carol Oates is a literary retrospection. It enables us to view this work as a symbolic representation of the peculiarities of the US cultural and historical development during the course of the late 17th – early 20th centuries. The context of experimental Gothic narrative in which the key events of American history are rethought and reevaluated contributes to the emphasis on their dark, dramatic, and controversial aspects. In particular, these are issues of chauvinism, self-centeredness, racism, and violence against the destitute, women, and children.
 
Maria Popova 
Voronezh State University, Russia
Immigration as a Forming Factor of Diversity in US Society in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine
 
The paper analyzes different variants of acculturation represented in Bukherjee’s novel Jasmine (1989). The contemporary American writer of Indian origin believes that not only immigrants have to adjust to the new culture but  the society they join should also change under the influence of the newcomers intensifying the diversity of US society. In  Jasmine  the problem is considered through family relations. B. Mukherjee describes different types of relations between spouses and between parents and children  ranging from traditional ones based on Indian caste moral to those of New York intellectuals. 

 
 
N. Denisenkova
Smolensk Branch of the Russian State Open Technical University of Transportation, Russia
Higher School in Russia and the USA from Gender Perspective
 
A right to education belongs to inalienable human rights and fundamental freedoms. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. Non-discriminated education is a crucial importance to the strengthening democracy of any states. Never the less the gender discrimination was and still remains acute. What are the reasons of inequality in the Higher School? The point is about feminization of the low paid positions, gender context of education, gender aspect of communications. 

 
 
Section 8. Fantastic in the Arts: Ways to Create Tolerance
Coordinator Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU, Russia)
 
Larisa Mikhaylova
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Overcoming the Opposition of The Other in Science Fiction: Evolution and Present State
 
Alexander Hedges Steinberg
USA 
To Boldly Go Where?: Mythologies, Pluralism, and Translation in Star Trek
 
The science fiction imaginary is a worthwhile object of study precisely because it is where mass commercial tastes, scientific fantasies, and cultural mythologies intersect and become visible. The most recent, broadly successful science fiction phenomenon was the Star Trek movie, released in the summer of 2009, just a few months ago. According to its producer J. J. Abrams, Star Trek’s historic idealism has found renewed relevance after the Obama election’s popularization of “cultural pluralism”.  
This paper, however, will critically interrogate Abrams’ assertion, and suggest—through a close reading of the revisionist changes made to the Star Trek universe—that the real appeal of the film was not its pluralistic utopia but its ability to transform that utopia (the brave new utopia of Gene Rodenberry’s historic Star Trek TV programs) into something much more familiar and much less pluralistic.
 
Tatyana Gomozova
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Star Trek (1966-2005) Audience Pro-Active Attitude and Tolerance Promoting Factors (Russian Trekkers Case Study )
 
Konstantin Rychkov
Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Russia
Renewal of Musical Rhetoric in John Williams Film Music
 
Irina Lyulina
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Temptation of Technocratism: Virtual Body and Live Soul in Cyberpunk (William Gibson У. Гибсона Sprawl trilogy (1984-1988) and Synners (1991) by Pat Cadigan)
 
Evgenia Ozerova
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Gattaka (1997): Freedom and Responsibility
 
 
M.A. Filimonova
Kursk Institute of Social Education (branch of) Russian State Social University, Russia
The Problem of Political Correctness in American Fantasy Fiction
 
We/Others is one of the most ancient dichotomies in the human thought. Fantasy worlds construct otherness using supernatural creatures borrowed from folklore or the author’s own imagination. At the same time some characteristics of fantasy genre give opportunity to raise the question of interracial and intercultural relations more sharply. Modern city fantasy is especially apt to transfer stereotypes of political correctness, tolerance and multiculturalism on fantasy races.
 
Nataliya Krinitskaya
Poltava National Pedagogical University, Ukraine
George Slusser vs. Ursula Le Guin: Two Approaches to the Classic American SF in the Context of the Problem of Multiculturalism
 
Andrew McKernan 
Moscow Architectural Institute
Feminism in the Time of Zombie Plague: Gender Binaries and Resident Evil
 Current science fiction film productions attempt to break out of the misogynist strategies of earlier “sci-fi” avatars, instead focusing on the roles women play as powerful, well-developed characters, both as protagonists and as antagonists. However, the prominence of these women’s roles does not challenge traditional gender binaries. The female characters of the sci-fi/horror series Resident Evil constitute an example of these pervasive binaries. Despite its apparent feminism, and the prominent roles played by Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez, Resident Evil serves only to reaffirm gender stereotypes. This paper argues that popular entertainment must confront and ultimately refute the stereotypical boundaries that it currently upholds.
 
Konstantin Rychkov
Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Russia
Renewal of Musical Rhetoric in John Williams’s Film Music
 
The modern film-making industry tends to be standardized in images, plots and scriptwriters, directors and composers methods of work. Analysis of work of the most popular film composer nowadays John Williams provides evidences that American film music, unlike any other, is close to a baroque principle of codification relationships between music and words. In film music, similarly to baroque opera, there is a constant search of musical means which enable a composer “to catch” the souls and touch the right emotion (affect) of the audience. In the beginning of the 21st century it has become possible to say that a “new vocabulary of musical rhetorical figures” has been formed and accepted by Hollywood music.
 
 
 
Section 9. Interaction of American and World Culture
Coordinator Dr. Tatyana Belova (MSU, Russia)
 
Andrei Levitsky
Kiev Taras Shevchenko National University, Ukraine 
Names of the US Cities: Is It a Case of Pluralism or Globalization? 
The names of cities on in USA map reflect connection of migrants with their motherlands, thus proving to be an indicator of tolerance among people of different ethnic backgrounds. Desire to minimize the new settlers’ nostalgia for their birthplaces led to the creation of the atmosphere of pluralism to their surroundings. Besides, inter-cultural activity in times of the US state building contributed both to the formation of a new American nation based upon the ideas of pluralism and tolerance as well as appeared to be significant for shaping its readiness for globalization. That is why the USA can be treated as the founder of the present-day globalization philosophy, which influences substantially modern literature, fine arts and other spheres of life.
 
Olga Y. Kazakova
Orel State University, Orel, Russia
Culture of the Democratic People: a view on the USA from Europe (on an example of France of the Second Empire, 1852-1870)
 
In France during te reign of Napoleon III the imperial ambitions have revived, including representation of Paris as a cultural capital of the world, as source of cultural norm. Therefore in the USA Frenchmen were attracted to the difference of the American culture from domestic, which was estimated critically. Notion of American civilization as a cultural desert was deduced from egalitarian myth (the equality principle destroys cultural elite, the American people do not have requirement for high art). At the same time the French observers tried to comprehend mass culture of the USA as the fact and possible prospect for Europe, also connecting it with democracy.
 
Nina Bochkareva
Perm State University, Russia
Postmodern Transformation of F.M. Dostoevsky's Idea «Beauty will save the world»  in Ch.Palahniuk's novel Diary
 
Genre peculiarities of Chuck Palahniuk's novels, their dialogical nature in particular, are analysed. Works of the contemporary American writer continue the European tradition of intellectual-philosophical novel in an original way, presupposing the plot constructed on the «idea proving» principle. In Chuck Palahniuk's Diary  Dostoevsky's idea «Beauty will save the world», expressed in the novel Idiot  and other works by the Russian classic, is played with in a postmodern way. The transformation of the novel of an artist Romantic and post-Romantic clichés allows Ch.Palahniuk to represent the theme of art and its place in the society at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries.
 
Tamara Selitrina
Akmulla Bashkir State Pedagogical University, Ufa, Russia
H.James and O. Wilde (the aim of life from the pluralistic point of
view)
 
According to the opinion of the modern Russian philosophers the word “pluralism” has become the synonym of the useless arguments under condition of freedom of opinion. The famous philosopher W.James supposes that “the pluralism” is inseparably linked with the “bettering Universe”. He wrote: “Do not be afraid of life but believe that the life is worth living”. This phrase will be almost literally pronounced by the main character of the novel “The Ambassodors” by H.James. The writer enters into a controversy with the theory of new hedonism which is upheld by O. Wilde. H.James’ conception is that there is no common definition of the aim of human life and this definition is actually ambiguous and profound.
 
Elena Yushkova
Vologda branch of Metropolitan Academy of Finance and Arts, Russia
Cultural Dialogue in the Creative Work of Isadora Duncan 
 
Free dance, which was invented at the beginning of the 20th century by an American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), was a kind of presentiment of cosmopolitan and eclectic modern culture, a variety of a cultural dialogue. Although contemporaries considered her dance as Greek, its relation to the Ancient Greece was questionable – the dancer has never aspired to reconstruct the archaic movements. Even borrowing poses and costumes from vases and another antique artifacts from the European museums, Duncan refracted the dance through the prism of Italian Renaissance and German Romanticism, combined it with “serious” symphonic music by Beethoven, Gluck, Wagner, Chopin and other composers which had never been used for the dance before. This article deals with huge and underestimated contribution of Isadora Duncan into the Russian culture, which at the same time enriched the innovative creative work of the dancer. 

 
Ekaterina Chernetsova
N. P. Ogarev's Mordovian State University, Saransk, Russia
J.W. Goethe and T. Mann Traditions in Norman Mailer The Castle in the Forest 
 
The report will cover the realization of Faustian motives in the novel of an American writer Norman Mailer The Castle in the Forest. The author notes some parallels with J.W. Goethe and T. Mann as well as with some other works of fiction and non-fiction that were pointed out by N. Mailer as important for understanding his novel poetics. Special attention is given to the writer’s narrative strategies marked by combination fact/fiction/myth
 
Natalia Kuznetsova
Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Veliky Novgorod, Russia
“Double-accenting” in V. Nabokov’s American Novels
 
V. Nabokov, after his emigration to America at the age of 41, gradually realized his project of becoming a successful American writer but he did it on his own terms, without the complete integration with the American culture. He often occupied his own position on some important matters which originated from his strong connections with the Russian culture and his own stable system of values. His views did not always coincide with the views of some famous and influential American intellectuals (E. Wilson). This article deals with the comparison of the implied author/narrator and the characters’ “value horizons” (M. Bakhtin’s term) in some American texts by V. Nabokov where he depicted the realms of the American life and culture keeping the position of the “other”. The narratological analysis reveals the degree of “double-accenting” (Schmid) that is the interference of narrator’s and character’s texts within the ironical mode of fictional presentation. The mode of “double-accented” evaluation helped V. Nabokov to modify readers’ critical perception of some stereotypes of the American culture.
 
Ekaterina Dubravskaya,
Tchajkovsky Moscow State Conservatory, Russia
Luigi Dallapiccola in the USA.
 
Luigi Dallapiccola - pianist, conductor, teacher, critic, one of the most important Italian composers of the XX century.His life has a close connection to the USA. His music was performed often and he taught there. Among many others, conductor Lorin Maazel and composer Luciano Berio studied in his class. By commission of American musical institutions he composed among others Goethe-Lieder (1953), Cinque canti (1956-57), Preghiere (1962), Three Questions with two Answers (1962-63).
 
 
Section 10. Canadian Cultural Mozaic
Coordinators Dr. Elena Ovcharenko (MSU, Russia) and Dr. Vasily Sokolov (RAS Institute of the USA and Canada, Russia)
 
Evgenia Israelyan
RAS Institute of the USA and Canada, Russia
Canadian Values: History and Present State
 
National values should be examined historically, they are affected by the cultural baggage of groups with different values and moulded  by the formative events a society undergoes in the course of its modernization, such as revolution, major war, or other cataclysmic activity. They are conditioned by such structural underpinnings as economic and social relations, trade patterns, communications, shifting political identities and affiliations, and major developments in education and religion, etc. Canadian values were listed in the British North American Act 1867 .There is a great debate in Canada about whether this country has distinctive national values and whether the Canadian values converge with the American.
 
Alexandre Vashchenko
MSU, Department of Foreign Languages and Regional Cultures, Russia
Queen Charlotte Islands: Haida Land, History and Present
 
Konstantin Romanov
MSU, Department of Foreign Languages and Regional Cultures, Russia
The Personality of E. Pauline Johnson in Canadian Culture
 
Canadian poetess and story-writer E. Pauline Johnson who lived at the turn of the XIX-XX century is a unique historical and cultural phenomenon. Her life and creative activity reflect basic milestones of Canadian culture formation. Her dual personality developed under both aboriginal and European influences due to her mixed blood origin. This determined her creativity and expressed the complexity of that historical period.
 
 
Ilya Sokov
Volgograd State University, Volgograd, Russia
The Policy of Multiculturalism as The Historical Neccessity of Canadian Society’s Development In the Second Half of the 20th Century
 
The crisis of Canadian liberalism promoted the wide discussion on search of further Canadian society development in the middle of the 20th century. Theoretical justification of multicultural policy by Ch. Taylor and its acceptance by P. Trudeau’s government permitted to continue the nation-building successfully, to overcome internal and external challenges, and pointed the way to the Western liberal democracy in the globalization’s epoch iof the 1970s. Thus the Canadian multiculturalism became not only the phenomenon of cultural self-consciousness, but the ideological justification of each individual’s comprehensive facilities in liberal social order.     
 
Nemova Liudmila
Institute for the USA and Canada Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
Canada in Search of a Proper Niche in the Changing Global Economy and Politics
 
The global economic and financial turmoil has been a major test of comparative strengths and weaknesses of all important players in the world economy and politics. In the case of Canada, the results of this test are quite ambiguous. On the one hand, Canada fares much better in economic terms than other leading industrial nations. Recession was shorter here and the forecast for GDP growth rate in 2010 is higher. Canada’s banking and financial system was repeatedly praised by international experts as the most sustainable. In the recently published UN Human Development Report Canada retained its position in the top five “best countries to live” (4th place in the rating while USA were rated 13th). On the other hand, the negative implications of Canada’s close economic and political ties with the United States are now much stronger than they were in “better times”. The pace and sustainability of economic recovery in Canada are largely dependent on improvements to the south of the border. With G-20 summits becoming the main international mechanism for economic strategies co-ordination, Canada may become “a smaller fish in a big pond” and loose in its relative significance. Canada’s participation in the military operations in Afghanistan has been damaging its reputation of a “peacekeeper" and “honest broker” in international conflicts. Due to all these developments Canada’s changing international role and image is now a hot issue in the internal political debate. 
 
Olga Fedosyuk
“English Lingua Centre”, Moscow, Russia
Ethno-cultural Pluralism in the English Canadian Prose over the Last Decades: Discussing Cultural Identity
 
English Canadian writing of the last decades is a number of sub-literatures representing the country’s ethno-cultural mosaic. Authors of different ethnic origin including native-born Anglo-Saxons, immigrants and Aboriginal people who began writing fiction recently contribute to creating a multicultural literary panorama.
 
The multicultural “explosion” that English Canadian fiction experienced during the 1990s-the early 21st century posed some crucial problems, cultural identity being one of them. Discussing it within the contemporary English Canadian literary context, we can’t help asking the following questions: what culture characters identify with – their ethnic culture or Canadian; what cultural norms and behavioral patterns they follow; in what way shape their ego, taking into account Canadian cultural conventions; what their value orientation and linguistic preferences are.
 
In this paper, we’ll try to address these issues analyzing some works of contemporary English Canadian prose. 
 
Svetlana Korobova
MSU Department of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies, Russia 
Canadian Culture of the Beginning of the 20th Century: Imitation of European Traditions or Search of Its Own Way 
 
Canada was founded by two nations, and this allows thinking that the national culture developed under the influence of the Old World. The essential question is whether the culture of Canada is just a repeating imitation of the western tradition, or it is possible to speak about a new self-sufficient culture, unique in its aboriginal influences and the so called Northern factor?
At the same time a review of the national identity shape out as a result of cultural uniqueness and permanent opposition to other cultures is presented.
 
Elena Ovcharenko
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Russian View at Canadian Mosaic (about the novel Canada. Paperboy by Yuri Kondratiev)
 
In general opinion, Canada conducts successful policy of Immigrant Adaptation. However the novel Canada. Paperboy  by Y.Kondratiev (2004) gives us a different view at "Canadian Paradise". The hero, a highly skilled engineer, found himself on a lower level of Canadian social structure. In spite of his desperate efforts he receives only the position of "paperboy", side by side with immigrants from India, Africa and Pakistan. So, sometimes "Canadian mosaic" has a bitter taste for "non-Canadians".
 
Irina Zhukova
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia 
Flourishing Contemporary “Japanese Women Literature & Culture” in Canada and Japan 
 
Nowadays the Japanese-Canadian women literature (both for adults and children) and  culture are considered by Canadian press and specialists to flourish and being a considerable contribution into Canadian, Japanese and World Literature & Culture. The Japanese-Canadian women writers and the fascinating visual artists are compared in Canada  with the Hean period (794-1192) ones in Japan. The Japanese mention the same process in modern Japan.The paper shows a wide range of the Japanese Canadian women activity but gives the different reasons for the same tendencies in Japan and Canada today. 
 
Anastasiya Zhukova
N. Nesterova Moscow  Academy of Education , Russia 
The Japanese Dance as the Image in Contemporary Literature and Culture of Canada and Japan 
 
The special feature of Japanese Traditional Performance Arts is the unity of three elements - dance, music and song. Therefore the Japanese dance became the major image of the Japanese origin literature and Japanese Canadians community contemporary literature and culture. Besides it is the constant image of  modern Canadian culture and partly of such intrinsic Canadian area  as  ethnic heritage among those professional multinationals who are interested in Japan.
 
Round Table Discussion
 Imprints: Image of Russia and Image of America
Coordinator Dr. Yassen Zassoursky (MSU, Russia)
 
Nikolay Kubanev
Volgo-Vyatskaya Civil Service Academy, Russia
Larisa Nabilkina
Arzamas Pedagogical Institute, Russia
Russia and the USA: National Idea as a way of nation unification in multicultural and polyconfessional society
 
 
Irina Bystrova
The Institute of Russian History RAS, Moscow, Russia 
Russians and Americans during the World War II: the personal side of cooperation
 
In the core of the article is the problem of personal contacts between Soviet and American leaders, military representatives and soldiers, industrial and cultural visitors from the USA to the Soviet Union during the war in 1941-1945 (their forms, peculiarities, evolution). The main sources are the documents from I.V.Stalin’s personal archive, V.M.Molotov, I.Maiskii files, Narkomat inostrannyh del’ agents in Vladivostok, Murmansk and Archangelsk, documents of the Communist Party of the USSR and NKVD. Some archival documents from the American side, namely from Joint Chiefs of Staff records, stored in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., are also involved.  
 
 
Jess V. Frost 
Valery Chkalov Committee, Seattle, USA
The Value of People-To-People Diplomacy

Unfortunately, too many Americans still believe Ronald Reagan won the Cold War with belligerence and a huge defense budget.  It’s my opinion that the extent to which Reagan influenced the Cold War’s end, was the extent to which Mikhail Gorbachev convinced Reagan of his, and by logical extension, of Russian good will and humanity. 
I can’t speak to the degree person-to-person contact improves the view of Russians toward Americans, but I can testify to the positive effects friendly contact with Russians have on Americans. 
As a young teacher of Russian in 1974, I joined a group of friends and businessmen in Vancouver, Washington, USA, to begin planning a monument to three Russians, who just happened to run out of gas on their way to San Francisco and had to land in our small community.  Over the course of the next 35 years, I’ve discovered how valuable and effective it is to introduce Russians to Americans.   
 
Tatiana Zabelina 
Moscow, Russia
Multicultural Cooperation Russia-USA: Developing “People’s Diplomacy” 
 
The Society for Cultural, Scientific, and Business Cooperation with the USA is defined as nongovernmental and noncommercial one. It was founded in 1992 by public representatives of Moscow; prominent figures in science, culture, diplomacy, and education were among them. The organization was created on the foundation of a society for Soviet-American friendship, which goes back to the Institute of Soviet-American Relations, a social organization founded in 1962. The Society always saw its task in creating as many points of contact as possible in the two nations’ relations, aspiring for contacts to develop not only on the “big politics” level, but also to run from heart to heart, home to home.
 
Ada Baskina
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Skills of Resilience: Education and Upbringing principles in  American  Family 
 
Over 12 years I have been working in America. And almost all that time I stayed  in American  homes,watching domestic life “ from inside”.
How to resist  stressful and competitive  life?  There are at least three aims.
First aim is physical strength  and good health. All kids,  from baby to teenager, are hardened  by cold bathing, drinks with ice and open heads even in the frost. Sports is a mandatory almost for each youngster. Second aim is independence from the parents. Max  Lerner, well- known American  sociologist, wrote: “ A youngster, if he wants to survive in a hard life struggle should be resourceful, purposeful, adjustable, quick of mind. All these traits come with independence from parent family.”Third aim is optimism, or  as Americans say, “ positivism”, “ emotional balance”, “ emotional  comfort”.
In short, striving for these three aims creates real American character.
 
Valentina Zhuravleva
Russian University for Humanities, Moscow, Russia
Ivan Kurilla
Vilgograd State University, Russia
Results and Perspectives of Kennan Institute Project “Russia and the USA on Textbooks Pages: Experience of Reciprocal Representations”
 
Round Table Discussion:
Translating from the American: Cultural Aspects of Translation and Establishing of a Reciprocal Contemporary American Culture Book Series
Coordinators: Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova, Dr. Alexander Vashchenko (MSU, Russia), Dr. Olga Fedosyuk (IUC, Russia)
 
Participants are invited to exchange their opinions on the necessity of establishing a publishing program in the sphere of contemporary American Culture and on the ways of its implementation. All interested parties - scholars, translators, students, art practitioners are welcome to share their thoughts which may help to delineate a working proposal.