Carolina Seminar • The Musical Teahouse: Yalla and the ‘East’ as Performance in Soviet Central Asia

Claire Roosien is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her work focuses on cultural politics in Eurasia in the context of the Russian and Soviet empire. She is currently completing her first book, Socialism Mediated: The Making of Soviet Mass Culture in Uzbekistan.

Claire Roosien will present her paper, The Musical Teahouse: Yalla and the ‘East’ as Performance in Soviet Central Asia. She argues that closely engaging with Yalla’s practice sheds broader light on the understanding of the “East” in the Soviet and post-Soviet context. Consequently, it has potential to illuminate bigger questions about the relationship between nation-building, Sovietness, and socialist internationalism, as well as problems of race, gender, and ethnicity in late Soviet culture. Access the PowerPoint with illustrations here.

The seminar series is co-sponsored by the Carolina Seminar Program and the UNC Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies. Please note that the participants will give an overview of their projects, but will not read a formal paper. Instead, papers or book chapters will be circulated ahead of time to those who are interested in attending and participating in the discussion. Please contact Dr. Eren Tasar for more information (etasar@email.unc.edu).