THURSDAY
September 24
International Affairs Building, 12th floor, Harriman Institute’s Atrium
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm. Discussion of the book Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology (Stanford University Press, 2026) by Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev.
Nancy Condee (University of Pittsburgh) in conversation with Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev (via Zoom).
7:30 - OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY
September 25
Calder Lounge, Uris Hall 107, Columbia University, 3022 Broadway
9:00 - 9:30 am. Breakfast
9:30 - 9:45 am. Opening remarks. Daria Ezerova (Cambridge)
9:45 am - 11:45 pm. Panel 1: Late Socialism
Chair: Yana Skorobogatov (Columbia)
Kevin M.F. Platt (Penn). On Making Literature, Making Waves, and Making Money: Soviet Authors between Non-Conformism and Capitalism.
Zachary Hicks (Princeton). Objective Form and the Time of Late Socialism: Late Soviet Cinema and the Making of the Neoliberal Present.
Jinyi Chu (Yale). Startup, Soviet Style: Reimagining Cooperatives During Perestroika.
Juliane Fürst (CEU/ZZF, Potsdam). When Homo Sovieticus Became Adventurous: The Perestroika Press and its Creation of the Delovoi Chelovek.
11:45-12:00 Coffee break
12:00-1:30 pm. Panel 2: Institutions
Chair: Hringur Asgeir Sigurdarson (Columbia)
Eva Ivanilova (University of Pittsburgh). Indigeneity and Capital in Post-Soviet Russia.
Margarita Kuleva (NYU). Building a Stateless Oasis: Workers of Russian Private Cultural Institutions Between Grassroots Neoliberalism and Governmental Control.
Vlad Strukov (University of Leeds). Neoliberal Utopia: Museums (of Contemporary Art) as Ideologues of Extractivism and Militarism.
1:30-2:45 pm. Lunch at the Harriman Institute’s Atrium
2:45 - 4:45 pm. Panel 3: Gender and Care
Chair: Tatiana Krasilnikova (Columbia)
Alexey Golubev (University of Houston). Before Neoliberalism: Medical Literacy and the Technocratic Turn in Late Soviet Society.
Victoria Buyanovskaya (Dickinson College). Learned Helplessness: Neoliberalism, the Crisis of Care, and Caring Narratives in Oksana Vasyakina's Steppe.
Elena Gapova (Western Michigan University). The Feminism of Our Discontent: On Sex, (mis)Trust, and Contract.
Lilya Kaganovsky (UCLA). Post-Soviet Feminism Between State Socialism and Global Neoliberalism.
4:45-5:00 pm. Coffee break
5:00 - 6:30 pm. Keynote address
Masha Salazkina (Concordia University). “A Band from the Caribbean Islands”: Boney M and the Global Popular Imagination of Late Socialism.
Moderated by Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia).
7:30 pm. DINNER
SATURDAY
September 26
9:00-9:30 am. Breakfast
9:30 - 11:00 am. Panel 4: Patriotic Culture Industry
Chair: Aleksandar Momcilovic (Columbia)
Eliot Borenstein (NYU). Even Neoliberals Get the Blues: Post-Soviet Melancholy for the Masses.
Oleg Kashirskikh (Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin); Jeremy Morris (Aarhus University). The Cultural Production of Wartime Normality: Authoritarian Neoliberalism as a Regime of Truth in Contemporary Russia.
Michał Murawski (University College London). From Culture Tree to Culture Z: Russian architecture in the age of authoritarian neoliberalism.
11:00 – 11:15 am. Coffee break
11:15 am - 12:45 pm. Panel 5: Literature and Theatre
Chair: Konstantin Mitroshenkov (Columbia)
Bradley Gorski (Georgetown University). Neoliberal Irreality.
Edward Tyerman (UC-Berkeley). Eternal Crisis of the Peripheral Empire: Vladimir Sorokin’s World System.
Natalia Plagmann (Middlebury College). Stages of Labor: Dreamworlds, Struggles, and Experiments of Russian Theatre in Neoliberal Times.
12:45 - 1:30 pm. Lunch
1:30 - 3:00 pm. Panel 6: Contemporary Art
Chair: Liza Senatorova (Columbia)
Klavdia Smola (Technische Universität Dresden). The Double Bind of Dissent: Reimagining the Soviet Left under Russian Authoritarian Neoliberalism.
Maksim Hanukai (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Curing Capitalism: The Conceptualist Pharmacy in the Time of Transition.
Nora Furlong (Oxford). Ultranationalist Art and an Ostensibly Ironic Audience: Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt and the Politics of Post-Soviet Aesthetics.
3:00-3:15 pm. Coffee break
3:15 - 5:15 pm. Panel 7: Popular Culture
Chair: Nathan Goldstone (Columbia)
Ilya Kalinin (Humboldt University, Berlin). The Neoliberal Time Loop: From the Privatization of the Past to the Monopolization of the Future.
Zachary Murphy King (Bilkent University). In Media Res: Santa Barbara and the Cultural Translation of Neoliberalism in the Post-Soviet World.
Tatiana Efremova (The George Washington University). Shortparis and the Post-Soviet (Re)Creative Class.
Marijeta Bozovic (Yale). Hacking Democracy: Russian Hackers as Myth and Machine.
5:15-5:30 pm. Coffee break
5:30 - 7:00 pm. Panel 8: Neoliberal Dialectics
Chair: Adam Leeds (Columbia)
Marina F. Bykova (North Carolina State University). Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Russian Philosophical Culture.
Artemi Magun (Bard College). Neoliberalism? Really?
Keti Chukhrov (Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart). Can Post-Socialist Techno-Feudalism Be Neoliberal?
PROGRAM
