In this talk, Professor Scott Kenworthy will discuss his new book (co-authored with Alexander Agadjanian), Understanding World Christianity: Russia (Fortress Press, 2021), with NYU Professor Yanni Kotsonis.  The Russian Orthodox Church is currently playing a very prominent role in Russian society and politics, and it is not possible to fully understand Russia today without it. The current role of Russian Orthodoxy is…

Please join us for a presentation by author and literary historian Maya Kucherskaya, a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute, moderated by Mark Lipovetksy (Slavic Department). Literary historian Maya Kucherskaya presents her work on the creative assignments Joseph Brodsky gave to his students at Mount Holyoke College as a part of his poetry course. Drawing on archival documents from Yale University’s Beinecke Library,…

Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a presentation by cultural studies scholar Ludmiła Janion (University of Warsaw), moderated by Małgorzata Mazurek, Associate Professor of Polish Studies, Columbia University. In this talk, Ludmiła Janion will investigate scientific and journalistic discourses around differences in gender ratio among trans persons. The disparity between Poland and several Western countries, first noted in…

Please join the Harriman Institute and East Central European Center for a book talk with Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi, co-editors of the new volume Experimental Cinemas in State-Socialist Eastern Europe, and series editor Greg de Cuir Jr. Moderated by Aleksandar Bošković and Christopher Caes, co-directors of the East Central European Center. Was there experimental cinema behind the Iron Curtain? What forms did experiments with film take in state socialist…

The Russian Film Club at the Harriman Institute presents a screening of Deeper! (2020), followed by a discussion with Mark Lipovetsky (Slavic Department) and Daria Ezerova (Harriman Institute). This event is part of our Contemporary Culture Series. The adult film industry meets high theater in Mikhail Segal’s quirky new comedy. Running time: 104 minutes.

Professor Cadiot will present findings from her book, in which she explores the construction of socialist property as a juridical category, the economic landscape and practices in the Soviet Union, especially after the Second World War, and the work of law enforcement agencies. The book is based on archives from the Soviet State, Communist Party, Procuracy and Supreme court in…

Please join the Harriman Institute for a book talk with Lynn Garafola, author of La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern (Oxford University Press, 2022), moderated by Valentina Izmirlieva, Director of the Harriman Institute. La Nijinska is the first biography of twentieth-century ballet’s premier female choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska. Overshadowed in life and legend by her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska had a far longer and more productive…

Join us for another 19v seminar! In fin-de-siècle Western Europe, the so-called “Russian nihilist” was a continual object of fear and fascination in an atmosphere of rapidly proliferating mass media. The roots of this talk come from ongoing research that began in French archives and with French newspapers: why were there so many highly gendered references to “nihilism” in documents from…

The Harriman Institute is pleased to sponsor First Look 2022, the Museum of the Moving Image’s acclaimed festival of innovative new international cinema. Join us for the festival’s opening night event, the New York City premiere of Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s 2021 film Murina. Dir. Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović. Croatia/Brazil/United States/Slovenia. 2021, 92 mins. Winner of the Camera d’Or (Best First Feature) at the 2021…

The Harriman Institute is pleased to sponsor First Look 2022, the Museum of the Moving Image’s acclaimed festival of innovative new international cinema. Join us for a showcase screening, the United States premiere of Kirill Serebrennikov’s 2021 film Petrov’s Flu. Dir. Kirill Serebrennikov. Russia. 2021, 145 mins. In Russian with English subtitles. DCP. Russian cause celebré Kirill Serebrennikov’s third feature is a hallucinatory,…

For most of the last three decades, the US has sought to promote democracy in most of the countries that once constituted the Soviet Union. The results can charitably be described as mixed. The “other than the Baltic States” mantra notwithstanding, in the rest of the region these efforts have led to a handful of democratic breakthroughs, no meaningful democratic…

**This event will take place in English** In-person event: NYU community ONLY, current ID and daily screener required to enter RSVP HERE  Winner of the Audience Award for Best Short at the Camden International Film Festival, the 2021 documentary film, The Intersection (Le Carrefour), co-directed by Daniel Quintanilla and Jessamine Irwin, focuses on past and present Maine immigrant communities who…

Join us for a special meeting of the New York-Russia Public Policy Series, co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West rapidly adopted unprecedented sanctions on Russia. These included a series of export controls and the sanctioning of the Russian Central Bank, major institutions in the financial…

Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a discussion with Lasse Skytt, author of Orbanland: Why Viktor Orbán’s Hungary Matters (New Europe Books, 2022). Moderated by Aleksandar Bošković and Christopher Caes, co-directors of the East Central European Center. From Europe to America, political landscapes have shifted in recent years in a way summed up in microcosm no better than by the…

Despite growing concern about disinformation, lack of knowledge about how the term originated, or how uses of that term change over time and across different languages and cultures, is seriously hampering our ability to counter it. This presentation, based on a new collaborative project initiated by Vera Tolz and Stephen Hutchings at the University of Manchester, will tell part of…

**The event will take place in French** Open to all on Zoom, registration HERE Bruno Clément présentera son livre Henri Bergson, prix Nobel de littérature, à l’occasion d’une conversation sur le rôle du langage en philosophie, et en particulier chez Bergson. Dans son livre, Bruno Clément se penche sur les relations entre fond et forme dans l'écriture philosophique: Bergson, Camus,…

Dr. Frank Shovlin will be in conversation with Dr. Kelly Sullivan about the recently published Letters of John McGahern available from Faber and Faber. About Letters of John McGahern: "I AM NO GOOD AT LETTERS." - JOHN MCGAHERN, 1963 John McGahern is consistently hailed as one of the finest Irish writers since James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. This volume collects some of the witty,…

Does preventive repression bolster, or does that dissent despite obstruction? While a large literature recognizes the importance of preventive repression for authoritarian stability, we know very little about its effects on public opinion. To gain traction on this question Professor Katerina Tertychnaya draws on evidence from unusually detailed data on unauthorized and authorized protest from Russia and an original survey…

Uzbek-British writer and journalist Hamid Ismailov’s work spans the end of the Soviet period and the entry of the former Soviet republics into a globalized, post-Cold War world. In this talk, Ismailov will speak about these themes in his own work, which tracks Central Asia’s role in a changing global political and literary scene. The talk will also touch on…

Please join the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University and the Harriman Institute for a screening of director Ivan Tymchenko’s 2019 film Beshoot. Introduction and discussion led by Yuri I. Shevchuk. The soldiers of the Donbas Volunteer Battalion are at the center of this war drama inspired by real-life events. Two Ukrainian fighters volunteered with thousands of others to repel the Russian aggression against their…

Join us March 31 with Icelandic author Bergur Ebbi as he reads passages from Screenshot, an exploration of the human condition in a digital world, now in new translation by Larissa Kyzer! Tonight’s event will also showcase a clip from a TV-series built around the book’s themes and a talk about Screenshot‘s subjects, based on a lecture on the book which ran in The Reykjavík…

The Harriman Institute, together with the North American Dostoevsky Society and Academic Studies Press, will host a roundtable discussion to celebrate the publication of Deborah Martinsen’s Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Reader’s Guide (2022). With speakers Katherine Bowers (University of British Columbia), Erica Drennan (Barnard College), Kate Holland (University of Toronto), Greta Matzner-Gore (University of Southern California), Ronald Meyer (Harriman Institute), and Marcia Morris (Georgetown University).