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Carolina Seminar: Russia and its Empires, East and West
February 25, 2016 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Marina Mogilner (University of Illinois at Chicago) will present on “Defining the Racial Self: Russian Contexts of the Anti-Imperial Nationalism of Vladimir Jabotinsky.”
‣ Paper abstract
This is a chapter in progress for the book focusing on Russian-Jewish engagements with the concept of “race” in the late imperial and early Soviet period. The chapter specifically focuses on Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the best known Russian Zionist, who left an influential ideological and political legacy and a long textual trail in a number of languages. Dr. Mogilner’s study is a close and contextualized reading of hundreds of little known or completely unknown texts by Jabotnsky from the period, when he wrote and thought almost exclusively in Russian. This period coincides with his emergence as a Jew, a Zionist and a radical post-colonial thinker. By placing Jabotinsly’s polemical writings back into their proper Russian imperial contexts of debates about race, nation and empire, Dr. Mogilner seeks to explore the meaning and function of “race” in his emerging nationalist post-imperial vision of sociopolitical reality, hegemony, and identity.
‣ About the speaker
Marina Mogilner is Associate Professor of History and Edward and Marianna Thaden Chair in Russian and East European Intellectual History at University of Illinois – Chicago. Prior to her arrival at UIC, she taught at Kazan University, the European University in St. Petersburg, and a number of European academic institutions. Since 1999, she has been a co-founder and co-editor of the Ab Imperio Quarterly, an international, bilingual (Russian and English) humanities and social sciences journal dedicated to the studies in new imperial history, and interdisciplinary and comparative study of nationalism and nationalities in the post-Soviet space. Her last book discusses the development of race science and racialized discourses in the Russian empire: Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press) [Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series], 2013.
Free parking available after 5 PM in the GEC garage and the nearby Nash Lot – Click here for directions.