Program
XXXVI International Conference of the Russian Society for American Culture Studies
Nature and Sustainability of Culture
Section 1. Journalism
Coordinators Dr. Yasen Zassoursky and Dr. Mikhail Makeyenko (MSU,
1.
Mediaecological Theme in Modern Communicativistics
Research of the information communications role for the preservation of the environment develops now in many countries when there appears a necessity of dealing with ecological threats. The present paper is focused on Communicativistics as a discipline with methodological experience, capable to make a valuable contribution to solving many mediaecological problems for the humankind in our time and in the future.
2. Rob Levy
Bing Crosby’s “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” as an Anthem of the Great Depression
3. Andrew Ruskin
The US President Barack Obama’s Communication Strategy: Mass-Media Coverage of Ecological Problems (on the example of
4. Nikolai Zykov
“Voice of
Travel notes are often used among other genres of the VOA Russian service’s materials. In the new, transforming to the audiovisual format they became more attractive for the audience. Possibilities of visual information, printed text, video and narrator’s voice are combined. Recent materials were telling about the
5. Natalya Golovanova
National TV and Radio Committee,
Owen Johnson and the Latest Trends in American Journalism. Free News and the Natural Craving to Know
For 10 years circulation of U.S. newspapers diminished by an average of 20%. Every fifth journalist lost a job, many newspapers and magazines were closed. There are different models for the survival of the press. In some countries there are programs of state support for newspapers. But due to the fact that the production of news in general regardless of the media is increasingly becoming a public and profitable business and demand is not decreasing American journalists are still actively looking for ways to produce quality news. Professor of the School of Journalism at Indiana University USA Owen Johnson is in the very midst of the process. In December, 2009, he spoke at the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State University and then our dialogue has continued and resulted in a series of interviews.
6. Svetlana Orekhova-Tibbits
Academy MNEPU,
Information Capsule of an American Consumer of Nature and Culture
Taxes and the market structure American consumers, developing the taste in the Culture and influencing relations with Nature. Pragmatism forces Americans to be informed and keep going in an information capsule, formed by everyday economic demands. An example is the Tibbits family (cf. catalogs of the Library of Congress, NY State Archive, Albany Institute of History and Art, Rensselaer Historical Society in Troy, NY, Tibbits Historical Foundation): 18th c. – artist William John Badger, 19th c. – Congressman George Tibbits, Union General William Tibbits, 20th c. - Tibbits Cadets, William Badger John Tibbits, Sr., Pentagon, 21st c. – Michael Lewis, Wall Street, Svetlana Orekhova-Tibbits, International Independent Ecologo-Politology University, Tibbits News Service… To diminish taxes the Tibbits family donated in 1953 to New York State 883 acres of land which had owned for 150 years. Now it is
Section 2. Nature in the Nineteenth Century American Culture
(The concept of Nature and its evolution from Romanticism to Naturalism.
Its reflection in literature and art)
Coordinators Dr. Elvira Osipova (
1. M.A. Filimonova
Kursk Institute of Social Education (branch of)
Natural and social in the image of
Initially image of
2. Alla Savchenko
Man and Сivilization in the Poetry of Henry W.Longfellow.
3. Tatiana Borovkova
“Nature is what we know”: Nature in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
4. Alexandra Stankevich
Nature in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
As many authors observe Emily Dickinson experienced the influence of transcendentalism that declared poetry to be a universal way of cognition of the world seeing the metaphysical concept of nature as its basis. Matching different spheres of human experience,
5. Elvira Osipova
Images of Nature in the Works of Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau and Edgar Poe
Thoreau’s book A Week on the
6. Maria Sirotinskaya
RAS Institute of World
Young Americans in the
Representation of young Americans - of urban children and adolescents, in particular of newsboys, vendors, bootblacks, of youths with newspapers - by genre painters in the antebellum period (H.Inman, F.Edmonds, W. Mount, R.C.Woodville, D.G. Blythe) is analyzed. Art, as some of the artists thought, was destined to reflect nature. It was connected with ideology.
7. Marina Pereverzeva
Tchaikovsky State Conservatory,
Songs of the Real Men or Music in the Cowboy Life
Cowboy folklore preserved a living experience of the hard herdsmen’s work and embodied historic events of a Frontier development. An original and exciting cowboy song narrates about the lives of Wild West explorers, the small handful of which contributed a great deal to the folk music of
Section 3. American Drama
Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva (Gorky Institute of World Literature,
1. Galina Kovalenko
Civilization Kills Nature (Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia?)
The play is a parable about losses to which civilization leads. This is a commentary of private life which reads as a projection of spiritual values. Destruction of nature destroys them. The central metaphor of the play is the absurd love of the protagonist to a goat. His love does not signify bestiality but a bankruptcy of matrimonial love as a result of social constraints on feelings.
2. Valentina Kotlyarova
Nature in Philosophy and-Art of Edward Albee
Nature in the dramatic art of E. Albee possesses not an earthly but cosmological character. Each of his plays is an extension of artistic chronotope, creation of original philosophic-and-aesthetic models of life. In the presentation special attention will be given to the abstract-and-fantastic dramas – Tiny Alice (1964), Seascape (1974), The Man With Three Arms (1983), Three Tall Women (1994), The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2001).
Section 4. Culture in
Coordinator Dr. Aleksandre Vaschenko (MSU,
1. Tatyana Alentieva
Indian Stereotypes in the 19th Century and President Andrew Jackson’s “Indian” Policy
Stable negative stereotypes of the Indians were formed from the beginning of European settlement in the
2. Liisa Steinby
Empiristic and Mythical Encountering of Nature in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks
Both in Silko’s and Erdrich’s novels, the Western (European-American) encountering with Nature and, along with it, with other human beings is opposed to the native American view of the Nature and man’s position in it. In Silko’s Ceremony, the protagonists’ seek in the ancient myths and rites a resort from the pressures caused by the “Western” way of thinking and acting, but this ultimately proves to be powerless means to save their integrity. In Erdrich’s Tracks, the Western rational-empirical thinking is depicted as being in a similar opposition to the Western, that means, Christian religion as to the Native American myths and religion. However, in both novels, the description of events as such follows the “normal” course of realistic representation which accords with the modern European-American empiricist and rational view of the world; the mythical elements appear only as part of the world view of some particular characters in the novels and are clearly separated from the narrator’s point of view. Therefore, despite myths and magic being an essential part of the topic, the world is not as such presented as mythical and magical, as it is the Latin American Magical Realism, but myths and magic are described “ethnographically” as a specific world view represented by some individuals and groups only.
3. Oksana Danchevskaya
Concept of Soul among North American Indians
Soul is probably the most vital notion in any religion, though ideas about it vary greatly. The concept of soul accepted by a particular people helps to understand its world view as it encompasses several cultural layers at the same time. The greatest attention is usually paid to the processes happening with soul after death, though the special features of its lifetime existence are no less interesting. Those aspects became the central research issue in our presentation on the example of several North American Indian tribes.
4. Irwin Weil
Northwestern University,
Cowboys and Cactus
How "the Wilderness Alliance", a recently formed group of citizens and politicians, are working together in the State of
5.
Peculiarity of Interpretation and Functions of Nature in the African American Slave Narratives
The author of the paper analyses the descriptions of nature in the slave narratives of the 18–19th centuries, their meaning, evolution and functions. Brilliance and abundance of African nature as a symbol of the fine historical Native land in the eighteenth-century slave narratives was replaced in the nineteenth-century slave narratives by the image of the American forest as a real danger to the fugitives, the nearly insurmountable barrier between slavery and freedom. The slave narratives’ authors reject the romantic image of nature as a symbol of freedom and contrast it with a space of city elevating hopes of liberation.
6. Elizaveta Maslova
The Magic of Nature in the Novel Sula by T. Morrison
The paper reviews the descriptions of nature and its function in the novel Sula (1973). The image of nature is many-sided. The author's use of mythological symbols reveals the mystical interconnection of nature and faith as an integral part of African American identity.
7. Natalia Vysotska
Nature Vs. Civilization in Tony Morrison’s A Mercy
The paper sets out to explore different textual levels where the opposition “Nature vs. Civilization” operates in Tony Morrison’s latest novel A Mercy (2008) (Russian translation – 2009). By setting the novel in late 17th c.
8. Yuri Stulov
In Search of the Road to the Jordan River: Sorrows of Young
The presentation deals with the novel Trouble the Water by the famous African American writer and literary critic Melvin Dixon. The central image of the novel is the
9. Boris Penkov
University for Tourism,
Educational Discourse: Multiculturalism
10. Marina Pereverzeva
Tchaikovsky State Conservatory,
To Contemplate and Imitate Nature: John Cage, Composer Who Imitated Nature
Nature served as a source of aesthetic beauty in the art of John Cage. Under the influence of Oriental philosophy and religion as well as American thinkers’ and poets’ ideas he stood a composer contemplating instead of a composer acting. Cage considered the purpose of music to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influence, whereas the responsibility of the artist is to imitate Nature in its manner of operation. Hence there are principles of unintention, randomness, all-variability, indeterminacy, mobility, all-unity, simultaneous multiplicity, interpenetration of life and art, musical realization of which will be discussed.
11. Marina K. Bronich
Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic
Nature and City in Saul Bellow’s Writing
Patently dominated by urban themes and cityscapes, Bellow’s prose brims with concealed and overt debate with the Rousseauist concept of Nature as the ultimate blessing and the only acceptable environment for human life. Bellow’s characters recognize that life, primitive or civilized, works as a complex interaction between order and disorder, and that order and disorder exist as two dimensions of the same thing offering us different perspectives of the world. An idea that the only natural soul-awakening environment can be found in ones “own” world, whether natural or urban, permeates Bellow’s writing.
12. Elena Makarova
Nature in Sh. Anderson’s Book Winesburg.
The narrative space of the book Winesburg.
Presentation
Georgia O `Keeffe: Flowers and Deserts
The concept of Nature is one of the most important in Georgia O `Keeffe`s аrt. The presentation focuses on the key images and motifs of the paintings of the “grand-dame of American Modernism”.
Section 5. Sustainability of Culture: Gender Perspective
Coordinators Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU,
(RAS Institute of
1. Larisa Mikhaylova
MSU,
1872 Presidential Campaign of Victoria Woodhull: Tilling the Turf for Gender Revolution
A little know historical fact of Victoria Woodhull running for President of the
2. Larissa Baibakova
MSU,
"The Bible" for Emancipated American Women: the Role of E.C.Stanton in Shaping of the
The presentation focuses on the views of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which is now called the "mother of feminism." As one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, she became the author of numerous policy documents of feminism, the main provisions of which remain relevant even today.
3. N.A. Shvedova
RAS Institute of
The 2010 Mid-term Elections in the
The Americans elected a new House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. The election campaign was characterized by the following features: visible intensity; high cost of campaign; growing electorate dissatisfaction about current politicians from the both parties; essential envolvement women, particularly Republicans. (Republicans lost control over the both chamber of the USA Congress in the result of the 2006 mid-term election).
There is a noticeable number of women-candidates among Republican nominees who tried to get a Congress seat and a Governor post. Women-candidates were in the focus of the Mass Media attention. But improving of the economic situation was in the midst of the voters’ attention.
4. D.V.Shvedova
RAS Institute of
Changes in Traditional American Family on the Boundary of Centuries
The number of marriages in the
progress, change of gender roles in family, change of values towards individualism. Different factors of changes of family’s functions and structure are analyzed in this report as well as social consequences and developing values orientations of the American society.
5. Lyudmila Tarasenko
RAS Institute of
A Portrait of Republican Women in the 2010
The paper analyses women – representatives of the Republican Party participation in the 2010
6. Tatyana Komarovskaya
Nature in the American Women's Novel (Jane Smiley, Jane Hamilton)
7. Luybov Pervushina
Nature as Reflection of the Personal Inner World in Contemporary American Women’s Writing (in works by S.Plath,
The reflection of images of nature in literature as always makes it possible to investigate into contemporary people’s feelings, emotions and aspirations. Nature, metaphors and symbols in literary works connect the inner world of the authors/characters with the real world and reflect the readiness of women to participate in the life of society. Repeated pictures of nature and metaphors in the works of different writers help to rethink the past events and to understand the role and place of women in contemporary society.
8. Natalya Denisenkova
Gender Equity in Higher Education in the
The presentation overviews key issues of gender equity in higher education system, laying out a number of contradictions and disjunctions in policy efforts. The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in educational sphere development. Vast access to higher school opportunities may become a moving force for democratization process.
Section 6. Culture as Second Nature: Models of Coexistence in Modern Science Fiction and Fantasy
Coordinator Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU,
1. Tatiana Gomozova
The Science-fiction Culture: Dragon Eating Its Tail
The key feature of the science-fiction culture is its links with our future. In SF products (which are based not just on author’s imagination but on scientific theories as well) the audience is given kind of development patterns, and often takes them not just as fiction, but as a program for the future reality in artistic form.
As a result, the science-fiction community becomes accustomed to the things that don’t really exist yet: blasters, androids and transgalaxy travels, for example.
However, some members of the SF community do exert real influence on the future: scientists, politicians etc. With their help, these fantastic scenarios seep into the real life. And then science-fiction authors have to run for dear life not to miss the future.
2. Larisa Mikhaylova
Human Culture on the Moon - Images from the
People just stepped on the Moon in the 20th century, now there is going multifold preparation for going there again and colonize it. But unless a long-lasting concept is adopted and takes root in the minds culturally, it might repeat the story of colonization on Earth. The images young generation writers do see and develop at present will be discussed on the material of NASA competition in April 2010 and Russian online competition “Zvezdy Vnezemelya” (“Stars of Beyond”).
3. Anne-Marie Corley
Massachusetts Institute of
E-readers: a Leap to the Future, or Simple Artefact?
Electronic books have charged out of the pages of science fiction novels and into our everyday lives. In
What do they reveal about human nature? Does their use spell the end of serious, deep reading? Does electronic reading shorten our attention span? Do we value electronic text and paper text equally? How important is the feel of holding a real book in our hands? The most important question to answer is whether we are seeing the next generation of reading culture--just as when humanity switched from earthen tablets, to vellum, to paper--or if electronic readers are simply new artefacts in an increasingly technological world. Can we even call them books?
4. Maria Ivanova
Nature and Civilization – Implacable Enemies (on Kurt Vonnegut’s non-fiction)
Philosophical concepts of ecological ethics insist that modern civilization puts a fatal harm to the nature. American writer and humanist Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t deny it, but at the same time he believes that the nature in its turn is inimical to the human beings. She answers with hurricanes, floods and incurable diseases to deforestation, draining of wetlands and nuclear waste burial. The Earth seems to be
5. Evgenia Ozerova
TV Channel
Tolerance as a Measure of Humanity: Mutants in Barrayar Saga of Lois M. Bujold
6. Anna Selkina
MSU,
Which Life We Spread?: Humans Inhabiting an Underwater World in a Carolyn Ives Gilman novel Arkfall (2008)
The action in the Carolyn Ives Gilman's novel Arkfall (
7. Anna Lavrova
MSU, Department of Journalism,
Transhuman and Superhero (Damien Broderick fiction’s case study)
Damien Broderick wouldn’t be surprised, if Star Trek, Terminator and The Matrix turn into reality of the 24th century. To be posthuman we have to be first a transhuman and develop our body and mind. As a human first was a simian, so before posthuman it will be transhuman – this is the main idea of transhumanists and an Australian writer Damien Broderick. Based on the ideas of an American futurologist Alvin Toffler and American computer scientist and science fiction author Vernor Vinge, who predicted to humanity technological singularity in 2030-2050 years, Damien Broderick names it «spike». Only after this moment transhuman will evolve into posthuman. And Damien Broderick in his science fiction presents our future. Superhero originating in American culture has a set of otherworldly facilities, used it to help people in difficult situations. Superhero and transhuman have some common features but whereas superhero fights evil, for a transhuman the ultimate goal is to become posthuman.
Section 7. Pre- and Postculture: the Natural and the Apocalyptic in the American Literature and Film
Coordinators: Ivan Delazari (
The conference panel will discuss the issues of interaction between the concepts of nature and apocalypse in the American culture are to be discussed. What did the natural landscape of the
Papers focusing on empirical texts, comparative discussions of literature and film, parallels drawn between texts of different eras (e.g. the 19th and 21st centuries), studies of popular culture are most welcomed by the panel organizers.
1. Irina Golovachova
Evolution, Revolution, Degeneration as Cultural Patterns in the American Apocalyptic Fiction
The paper speculates on American fictional representations of the three patters of biological and social development of the Earth all of which originated in the XIX century. Possible scenarios of apocalypse are analyzed; evolution - gradual progressive development; involution, regressive development or degeneration, and, finally, revolution, being the radical dramatic change, abrupt misbalance caused by alien invasion, global catastrophe causing various anomalies including biblical Armageddon and zombie incursion.
2. Mikhail Oshukov
“The
The paper focuses on the specifics of the realization on nature and apocalypse motifs in prose and poetic writings of R.W. Emerson. The analysis of Emerson's rhetoric, and in particular his use of Bible imagery, allows us, on the one hand, to better understand the Transcendentalist vision of the world and of the artist's position in the world, and on the other hand to trace the further development of nature and apocalypse motifs in the American literature of the XX century.
3. Irina Morozova
The perception of the social and cultural history of the Old South by white Southerners of that time in many ways represents the biblical pathway of the mankind from Eden, as a primordial paradise of perfection towards the Apocalypse, both an end and a new beginning. The secession and the formation of the Confederacy was viewed as the actualization of the biblical prophecy of the triumph of God over the sins of the old world – the Old republic with the “money-grubbing” , “hypocritical” abolitionists and Yankees who “were guilty of the deviation from God’s stern instructions” (B. Wyatt-Brown). Southern women of letters were effective proponents of this model. Their fiction and diaries of 1820-40’s portray the South as the
4. Douglas Robinson
The Mnemovorous Apocalypse in Steven Hall’s Raw Shark Texts: A Postmodern Moby Dick
Melville’s Moby-Dick is widely recognized as the classical 19th-century American novel that is most powerfully steeped in apocalyptic imagery: Ahab is a demonic god-figure; the whale is a white devil figure; the Pequod is a microcosm of the world, and when in the end the Pequod is destroyed, in some imagistic sense the world is destroyed. As I argued in American Apocalypses (1985), of course, the fact that Ishmael survives to tell the tale is a strong suggestion that Melville is not predicting (let alone hoping for) the apocalyptic destruction of the world; and indeed a close reading of the novel shows that Melville structures his plot so as to predict and celebrate the continuation of human history. Steven Hall’s 2007 novel The Raw Shark Texts is “apocalyptic” in many of the same imagistic ways, and in fact is saturated with allusions to Moby-Dick. What I will explore in this paper, however, are the ways in which the “world” that is destroyed in the novel is not so much the microcosmic whaling boat that Hall has his characters create, modelled explicitly on the Pequod, as it is the world as remembered—which is to say, the world in memory. The “mnemovorous apocalypse” in my title is intended to suggest that what Hall’s novel “destroys” is not so much the world as it is the memory’s ability to retain a composite working image of the world. Since the memory is also the human faculty on which story-telling (and thus novel-writing) is based, what makes Hall’s novel a postmodern apocalypse is that the apocalypse in it destroys (or at least radically undermines) our ability to tell or understand a story.
5. Yuri Stulov
Apocalyptic Vision of the World in Contemporary African American Fiction
The paper will examine the peculiarities of the apocalyptic vision of the world in the work of such diverse African American writers as J. Baldwin, M. Dixon and R. Kenan. The world of the black ghetto in which their protagonists are isolated is opposed to the world of Nature which lives according to its own laws.
6. Olga Panova
American Boom of the Dead: T. Morrison The Bluest Eye, D. Delillo White Noise
T. Morrison and Don Delillo create a nightmarish apocalyptic landscape of a small town. Both writers combine realism, social criticism with metaphysical quest and parable. The novels explore American subconscious, phobias and obsessions, fear of death and “Todestriebe”. Different scenarios and setting – a black ghetto and a prosperous middle-class community – help to define American image of apocalypse and death-in life.
6. Vladimir Prozorov
Paul Auster’s “Postapocalyptical” Novel In the Country of Last Things (1987)
The paper discusses the peculiarities of Paul Auster’s novel in comparison with the clichés of the mass culture postapocalyptical novels and films. Unlike them, In the Country of Last Things focuses not on the global catastrophe, but on the effect of the extreme conditions on psychology and morale of an individual human being. Instead of depicting the hypothetical future disaster, the novel turns to the historic past of the 20th century. The nameless city in the novel reflects the cruel reality of death-camps, ghettos, and the slums of an inner-city in a present-day American megapolis. In spite of the grim contents, the novel suggests the opposition to the total destruction which is based on traditional humanistic values of love, fortitude and hope.
7. Daria Dmitrieva
Apocalypse and Nostalgia in Alan Moore’s Graphic Novel Watchmen and Its Adaptation
The presentation deals with Watchmen, the most well-known graphic novel by Alan Moore. It is a story of good intentions, Armageddon, and the brave new post-apocalyptic world. It is a reflection both on World War II and the Cold War. The 2009 film adaptation has added new aspects to this work. The idea central to my argument is that the image of
8. Ivan Delazari
Culture’s Nostalgia vs. Postapocalyptic Sentiment: William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Cormac McCarthy’s late rise to public acclaim after The Border Trilogy has culminated in his Pulitzer Prize winning 2006 novel, The Road, being selected for Oprah’s Book Club, made into a film and listed as one of the ten best novels of the 21st century. In his very first TV interview in Oprah Winfrey’s show, McCarthy mentions William Faulkner in a manner that suggests his strong allegiance to and even deliberate self-modeling on that literary predecessor, from whom he inherited not only his editor Albert Erskine at Random House, but, as critics argue, many of his themes and techniques. Contrasting Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942) to The Road rather than drawing obvious parallels between them, I will argue in my paper that the end-of-the-world motif manifests itself in the former as Culture’s nostalgia about Nature gone/passing away, and in the latter as postapocalyptic sentiment aiming to overcome the totality of loss of both Nature and Culture. Fatherhood and (wo)manhood, technology and motion, God and man, regionalism and universalism, time and space in both novels will be subject to analysis to demonstrate somewhat peculiarly American visions of the awkward backward moves of mankind’s history. Written from before Pearl Harbor (Faulkner) to after 9/11 (McCarthy), the two novels are no less products of history itself than of their authors’ shared beliefs; read along each other, though, Go Down, Moses and The Road suggest that the timeline may in fact be a circle, just like the world is a globe, and that Ike McCaslin’s look into the past might well encounter the eyes of the boy on the road staring into the postapocalyptic future.
Section 8. Mutual Influence of American and World Culture
Coordinator Dr. Tatyana Belova (MSU,
1. Galina Alekseeva
The Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate at
Philosophy of Natural Life by Henry Thoreau in Tolstoy's Work and Life
2. Boris A. Rivchun
State Classical Academy,
Mutual Influence of Russian and American Musical Culture
3. Tatyana Belova
MSU, Department of
Vladimir Nabokov as Translator and Commentator of Alexander Pushkin’s Novel in Verse Evgeny Onegin: How to Preserve a “Kernel” of Culture in the Environment of Another Language
Dissatisfied with the lack of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin adequate translation (he was in a great need of it as a Russian literature lecturer in the USA) V. Nabokov within a fifteen years period (1949-1964) did his best to create its English version as well as his immense magnificent commentary to it. His concept and the main principles of poetic translation were reflected in a series of articles published in 1940-60s in American academic periodicals. According to it the translation of ''Eugene Onegin'' should not be paraphrastic, but very exact, accompanied by commentary giving an attentive reader only the precise information about the ''thing of beauty''. As a result V. Nabokov managed to have preserved the cultural essence of Pushkin's masterpiece and exposed its artistic and cultural value to the American audience. After that new paraphrastic translations came into being (e.g.,Ch. Johnston's, 1977) preserving its authenticity and taking Nabokov's commentary and some of his achievements into consideration. Thus Nabokov's translation of ''Eugene Onegin'' and his commentary have made a valuable contribution to American Pushkiniana.
4. E. A. Smirnov
Linguistic
Nature, Environment and Jack Kerouac’s Buddhist outlook in Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac’s profound fascination with Zen Buddhism and Eastern religious philosophy produced a sizeable impact on his fiction. The report is aimed at main concepts, motifs and scenes typical of Kerouac’s “Buddhist» novels. The peculiarities of the characters’ perception of nature and the effects of the paradigm shift towards Buddhism on author’s philosophy are shown.
5. Natalya Golovanova
Kyiv-Kharkiv, Ukraine
From Human Nature to the Culture of the USA-Ukrainian relations. Travelogue Love is Blooming Lilac
The theme "Women at War, a woman in extreme conditions" is very popular among contemporary American journalists and in cultural studies. In 1996 Producer Noel Denner, journalist Jan Sherbin and translator Alexander Ethlyn created a film Under Fire about Soviet Ukrainian female veterans and it turned out to become a revelation for American viewers. In Ukraine the film was presented for the first time in May 2010. Ukrainian tour with the film of the journalist Jen Sherbin turned into two weeks of her new acquaintance with Ukraine. Witnessing everyday life of people from different social strata, unprecedented changes in the appearance of Kiev in the past 10 years, anniversary Victory parade in the Ukrainian capital on the 9th of May 2010, interviews with veterans, acquaintance with the exhibits of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kyiv, getting to know Ukrainian journalists, political analysts and government officials, educators, students, visiting the regions of the country formed the basis of Jan Sherbin’s photocollections Ukraine-2010 and travelogue Love is Blooming Lilac by the author of this presentation. All that allows to make fresh observations concerning the interpenetration of American, Ukrainian and Soviet culture.
Section 9.
Coordinators Dr. Vadim Koleneko (RAS Institute of World
1. Evgenia Issraelyan
Institute for US and
Women's and Children's Rights;
2. Liudmila Nemova
Institute for the
How the Performance of the Canadian Health Care System Compares Internationally
Similarly to most economically advanced democracies (and in contrast to the
3. Valentina Kozhemyakina
RAS Institute of Linguistics,
Language Distribution in
Taking into consideration the multinational composition of
The model of multiculturalism was declared a national idea. It made building up of multicultural society a basic objective of the governmental policy.
4. Vasily Klokov
Nature of
The report covers the linguocultural model of adjustments in French-Canadian frame of mind and Canadian French to represent American environment. It displays the peculiarities of local vocabulary development in different periods of history when French Canadians were exposed to American realities: in pre-colonial times, in the epoch of
5. Anton Uchaev
Ecological Issues within a Frame of the Сanadian Federal Centre and Provinces Interaction
Interaction between the federal centre and provinces which is one of the major issues in Canadian society is examined in this lecture from an ecological perspective. The main goal of this research is the analysis of ecological policy in
6. Alina Porokh
The Russian-Сanadian Initiatives on Keeping Sustainable Development of the Arctic Region
The Arctic Region is a region of international value and special interests of the world community. Therefore, cooperation of the subarctic states should be directed to developing a uniform policy and integrated international programs based on ecological approaches priority, Russia and Canada should settle down to a course of assuming preventive measures on keeping sustainable development of the Arctic Region and biosphere as a whole.
7. Ekaterina Isayeva
8. Vadim Koleneko
RAS Institute of World
Person and Nature in Charles Roberts' Prose
Widely known in
9. Renata Kryukova
Mastering the Canadian North at the Beginning of the 20th century in the Works by Jack London: Truth or Fiction?
The history of developing the Canadian north at the beginning of twentieth century was mostly history of mining gold, connected with life of the gold-prospectors, forming by then the majority of population. One of them became later a famous American writer Jack London. On July 25 1897 he boarded of the nave “Umatilla” together with a hundred of other luck-hunters. He got the experience upon which he wrote his stories about Canadian North. In the paper we compare works of Jack London with diaries and memoirs of other gold-prospectors of this period since 1896 till 1906 to find out what is truth in them and what is it fiction.
10. Elena Ovcharenko
MSU,
Robert Falherty’s
Flaherty’s name is well known in the cinema world. He was the author of a large number of documentaries, the founder of non-fiction film’s genre (Nanook of the North, 1922). The eldest son of the mining engineer, he spent with his family many years in
11. Irina B. Arkhangelskaya,
Nizhny Novgorod Commercial Institute,
Civilizations and Technologies in the works of Arthur Kroker
The influence of information technologies and new media on society, nature and people – are the main problems in the works of the Canadian scholar, professor of Political Science from the University of Victoria, BC and Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture) Arthur Kroker (1945 - ).
A. Kroker, who is named «McLuhan of the nineties… the most interesting thinker about culture and technology that this country has produced since Marshall McLuhan» and «XXI century Marx» – is a rather controversial personality. In his youth he planned to become a clergyman, but later got interested in «leftist» radical ideas, which were popular with the young generation of the 60s.
As McLuhan, Kroker was not recognized in the academy but his works became popular far beyond university. Kroker’s style may be called McLuhanistic. Several Kroker’s projects are vivid examples of postmodernist culture.
Kroker has played a great role in developing media sociology studying the transformation of the people’s nature under the influence of new media technologies.
12. Konstantin Romanov
MSU Department of Foreign Languages and Region Studies,
Mankind and Nature in Ancient and Modern Culture of
The relationship of mankind and nature has become one of the hottest issues in the world today, due mainly to the environmental challenges of the new century. It is important in this respect that the relation of people to nature has been altering in course of time. This relation is varied in different cultures. The history of Canadian West populated by various ethnical groups shows a range of different models of human relation to nature.
13. Ilya Sokov
Volgograd State University, Russia
The Role of
The author of the article opens the little known pages of historical cooperation between the USSR and the United States in the Second World War, when Americans helped by supplies of heavy and military technical equipment through Alaska. Americans built
14. Olga Fedosyuk
English Lingua Centre,
Nature as a Source of Canadian Identity: from Howard O’Hagan to
Nature is one of the most important components of Canadian identity. Many 20th century English Canadian writers treated nature, contrasting it with urban civilization; it was nature that they identified
15. Evgeniya Timoshenko
MSU,
Jean Charron as a Researcher of Canadian Mass Media
Jean Charron is a Canadian Media researcher. In his studies Charron systematizes approaches of different scientific schools that developed theories of mass communication in the 20th century. Charron is a partisan of the integral approach, where the journalists’ sources of information in particular are regarded as the sources of impact. On the basis of the discourse analysis, the Canadian Media researcher arrives at his own conclusions about manipulation in the media environment.
16. L. Vedenina
Fauna in Lingvo-Cultural Space of Francocanadians
Round table Imprints: Image of
Coordinator Dr. Yassen Zassoursky (MSU,
Gretchen Simms
The Influence of American Culture on the Soviets during the Thaw:
MSU,
American Self Health Care Culture
Generally Americans are healthy. Usually it is explained by the young age of the nation. First colonists were mostly young and strong. However modern Americans do a lot for maintaining high level of their health. Today culture of self health care includes prevention from cold ( ice water and beverages; uncovered heads even in freezing weather; swimming). Americans drink a lot of water ("Water is life" – a popular billboard inscription). Sports is a significant part of most families’ lives. Russian immigrants found that they suffer from high blood pressure and heart diseases much more often than the locals. The reason is dieting and nourishing food. Americans’ overweights (obesity) are a separate topic.
Round table discussion: Anton Chekhov’s 150th Anniversary
Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva (Gorky Institute of World Literature,
Galina Kovalenko
Chekhov and American Theatre
Chekhov has influenced American Theatre on several levels. O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Miller, Albee, Mamet develop his traditions using subtext, undercurrent of the plot, musical structure of form and text. Chekhov has also influenced the staging and acting.
As a rule, formal parallels with Chekhov’s plays take place, adapted to the American model of a standard play.
Maya Tugusheva
Social Utopianism in the Work of Anton Chekhov
English
Русский