Russian History through the Senses

Russian History through the Senses PDF

Author: Matthew P. Romaniello

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-09-22

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1474263151

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Bringing together an impressive cast of well-respected scholars in the field of modern Russian studies, Russian History through the Senses investigates life in Russia from 1700 to the present day via the senses. It examines past experiences of taste, touch, smell, sight and sound to capture a vivid impression of what it was to have lived in the Russian world, so uniquely placed as it is between East and West, during the last three hundred years. The book discusses the significance of sensory history in relation to modern Russia and covers a range of exciting case studies, rich with primary source material, that provide a stimulating way of understanding modern Russia at a visceral level. Russian History through the Senses is a novel text that is of great value to scholars and students interested in modern Russian studies.

Socialist Senses

Socialist Senses PDF

Author: Emma Widdis

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0253027071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“Widdis’s rich and fascinating book has opened a new perspective from which to think about the Soviet cinema.” —Kritika This major reimagining of the history of Soviet film and its cultural impact explores the fundamental transformations in how film, through the senses, remade the Soviet self in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a shared ambition for a ‘sensory revolution’ to accompany political and social change: Soviet men and women were to be reborn into a revitalized relationship with the material world. Cinema was seen as a privileged site for the creation of this sensory revolution: Film could both discover the world anew, and model a way of inhabiting it. Drawing upon an extraordinary array of films, noted scholar Emma Widdis shows how Soviet cinema, as it evolved from the revolutionary avant-garde to Socialist Realism, gradually shifted its materialist agenda from emphasizing the external senses to instilling the appropriate internal senses (consciousness, emotions) in the new Soviet subject.

Smoking under the Tsars

Smoking under the Tsars PDF

Author: Tricia Starks

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-15

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1501722077

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Approaching tobacco from the perspective of users, producers, and objectors, Smoking under the Tsars provides an unparalleled view of Russia’s early adoption of smoking. Tricia Starks introduces us to the addictive, nicotine-soaked Russian version of the cigarette—the papirosa—and the sensory, medical, social, cultural, and gendered consequences of this unique style of tobacco use. Starting with the papirosa’s introduction in the nineteenth century and its foundation as a cultural and imperial construct, Starks situates the cigarette’s emergence as a mass-use product of revolutionary potential. She discusses the papirosa as a moral and medical problem, tracks the ways in which it was marketed as a liberating object, and concludes that it has become a point of increasing conflict for users, reformers, and purveyors. The heavily illustrated Smoking under the Tsars taps into bountiful material in newspapers, industry publications, etiquette manuals, propaganda posters, popular literature, memoirs, cartoons, poetry, and advertising. Starks frames her history within the latest scholarship in imperial and early Soviet history and public health, anthropology and addiction studies. The result is an ambitious social and cultural exploration of the interaction of institutions, ideas, practice, policy, consumption, identity, and the body. Starks has reconstructed how Russian smokers experienced, understood, and presented their habit in all its biological, psychological, social, and sensory inflections, providing the reader with incredible images and a unique application of anthropology and sensory analysis to the experience of tobacco dependency.

The Life Cycle of Russian Things

The Life Cycle of Russian Things PDF

Author: Matthew P. Romaniello

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 135018604X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Life Cycle of Russian Things re-orients commodity studies using interdisciplinary and comparative methods to foreground unique Russian and Soviet materials as varied as apothecary wares, isinglass, limestone and tanks. It also transforms modernist and Western interpretations of the material by emphasizing the commonalities of the Russian experience. Expert contributors from across the United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany come together to situate Russian material culture studies at an interdisciplinary crossroads. Drawing upon theory from anthropology, history, and literary and museum studies, the volume presents a complex narrative, not only in terms of material consumption but also in terms of production and the secondary life of inheritance, preservation, or even destruction. In doing so, the book reconceptualises material culture as a lived experience of sensory interaction. The Life Cycle of Russian Things sheds new light on economic history and consumption studies by reflecting the diversity of Russia's experiences over the last 400 years.

A History of Russian Cinema

A History of Russian Cinema PDF

Author: Birgit Beumers

Publisher: Berg Publishers

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Film emerged in pre-Revolutionary Russia to become the 'most important of all arts' for the new Bolshevik regime and its propaganda machine. This text is a complete history from the beginning of film onwards and presents an engaging narrative of both the industry and its key films in the context of Russia's social and political history.

Embodied Differences

Embodied Differences PDF

Author: Henrietta Mondry

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1644694875

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew’s body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to contemporary Russian-Jewish women’s writing, broadening the scope to examining the role of objects, museum displays and the politics of heritage food, the book argues that materiality can embody fictional constructions that should be approached on a culture-specific basis.

Sensory Anthropology

Sensory Anthropology PDF

Author: Kelvin E. Y. Low

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-03-09

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1009240811

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From constructions of rasa (taste) in pre-colonial India and Indonesia, children and sensory discipline within the monastic orders of the Edo period of Japan, to sound expressives among the Semai in Peninsular Malaysia, the sensory soteriology of Tibetan Buddhism, and sensory warscapes of WWII, this book analyses how sensory cultures in Asia frame social order and disorder. Illustrated with a wide range of fascinating examples, it explores key anthropological themes, such as culture and language, food and foodways, morality, transnationalism and violence, and provides granular analyses on sensory relations, sensory pairings, and intersensoriality. By offering rich ethnographic perspectives on inter- and intra-regional sense relations, the book engages with a variety of sensory models, and moves beyond narrower sensory regimes bounded by group, nation or temporality. A pioneering exploration of the senses in and out of Asia, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in social and cultural anthropology.

Seasoned Socialism

Seasoned Socialism PDF

Author: Anastasia Lakhtikova

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-04-04

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0253040981

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This essay anthology explores the intersection of gender, food and culture in post-1960s Soviet life from personal cookbooks to gulag survival. Seasoned Socialism considers the relationship between gender and food in late Soviet daily life, specifically between 1964 and 1985. Political and economic conditions heavily influenced Soviet life and foodways during this period and an exploration of Soviet women’s central role in the daily sustenance for their families as well as the obstacles they faced on this quest offers new insights into intergenerational and inter-gender power dynamics of that time. Seasoned Socialism considers gender construction and performance across a wide array of primary sources, including poetry, fiction, film, women’s journals, oral histories, and interviews. This collection provides fresh insight into how the Soviet government sought to influence both what citizens ate and how they thought about food.

The Limits of Partnership

The Limits of Partnership PDF

Author: Angela E. Stent

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-01-05

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0691152977

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership offers a riveting narrative on U.S.-Russian relations since the Soviet collapse and on the challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains close ties with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries.

Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc

Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc PDF

Author: Claire Shaw

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-11-16

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 1350271284

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The project to create a 'New Man' and 'New Woman' initiated in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc constituted one of the most extensive efforts to remake human psychophysiology in modern history. Playing on the different meanings of the word 'technology' - as practice, knowledge and artefact - this edited volume brings together scholarship from across a range of fields to shed light on the ways in which socialist regimes in the Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe sought to transform and revolutionise human capacities. From external, state-driven techniques of social control and bodily management, through institutional practices of transformation, to strategies of self-fashioning, Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc probes how individuals and collectives engaged with - or resisted - the transformative imperatives of the Soviet experiment. The volume's broad scope covers topics including the theory and practice of revolutionary embodiment; the practice of expert knowledge and disciplinary power in psychotherapy and criminology; the representation and transformation of ideal bodies through mass media and culture; and the place of disabled bodies in the context of socialist transformational experiments. The book brings the history of human 're-making' and the history of Soviet and Eastern Bloc socialism into conversation in a way that will have broad and lasting resonance.