Äîêóìåíò âçÿò èç êýøà ïîèñêîâîé ìàøèíû. Àäðåñ îðèãèíàëüíîãî äîêóìåíòà : http://www.journ.msu.ru/eng/conferences/2010/program2010engl.doc Äàòà èçìåíåíèÿ: Fri Nov 26 14:17:05 2010 Äàòà èíäåêñèðîâàíèÿ: Mon Oct 1 22:17:23 2012 Êîäèðîâêà:

Program
XXXVI International Conference of the Russian Society for American Culture
Studies
Nature and Sustainability of Culture
Moscow, December 3-10, 2010

Section 1. Journalism
Coordinators Dr. Yasen Zassoursky and Dr. Mikhail Makeyenko (MSU, Russia)

1. Lydia Zemlyanova
MSU Journalism Department, Russia
Mediaecological Theme in Modern Communicativistics

Research of the information communications role for the preservation of the
environment develops now in many countries when there appears a necessity
of dealing with ecological threats. The present paper is focused on
Communicativistics as a discipline with methodological experience, capable
to make a valuable contribution to solving many mediaecological problems
for the humankind in our time and in the future.

2. Rob Levy
St. Louis, USA
Bing Crosby's "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" as an Anthem of the Great
Depression

3. Andrew Ruskin
MSU Journalism Department, Russia
The US President Barack Obama's Communication Strategy: Mass-Media
Coverage of Ecological Problems (on the example of Mexican Gulf Oil Spill)

4. Nikolai Zykov
MSU Journalism Department, Russia
"Voice of America": Genre of Travel Notes in the New Multimedian Culture

Travel notes are often used among other genres of the VOA Russian service's
materials. In
the new, transforming to the audiovisual format they became more attractive
for the audience.
Possibilities of visual information, printed text, video and narrator's
voice are combined. Recent
materials were telling about the Yellowstone National Park and California.
Modern form of travel notes combines traditions and new media from authors'
original perspective.

5. Natalya Golovanova
National TV and Radio Committee, Kiyev, Ukraine
Natalya Golovanova, journalist, Kyiv-Kharkiv
Owen Johnson and the Latest Trends in American Journalism. Free news and
the Natural Craving to Know

For 10 years circulation of U.S. newspapers diminished by an average of
20%. Every fifth journalist lost a job, many newspapers and magazines were
closed. There are different models for the survival of the press. In some
countries there are programs of state support for newspapers. But due to
the fact that the production of news in general regardless of the media is
increasingly becoming a public and profitable business and demand is not
decreasing American journalists are still actively looking for ways to
produce quality news. Professor of the School of Journalism at Indiana
University USA Owen Johnson is in the very midst of the process. In
December, 2009, he spoke at the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State
University and then our dialogue has continued and resulted in a series of
interviews.


6. Svetlana Orekhova-Tibbits
Academy MNEPU, Moscow, Russia; Tibbits Historical Foundation, USA
Information Capsule of an American Consumer of Nature and Culture

Taxes and the market structure American consumers, developing the taste in
the Culture and influencing relations with Nature. Pragmatism forces
Americans to be informed and keep going in an information capsule, formed
by everyday economic demands. An example is the Tibbits family (cf.
catalogs of the Library of Congress, NY State Archive, Albany Institute of
History and Art, Rensselaer Historical Society in Troy, NY, Tibbits
Historical Foundation): 18th c. - artist William John Badger, 19th c. -
Congressman George Tibbits, Union General William Tibbits, 20th c. -
Tibbits Cadets, William Badger John Tibbits, Sr., Pentagon, 21st c. -
Michael Lewis, Wall Street, Svetlana Orekhova-Tibbits, International
Independent Ecologo-Politology University, Tibbits News Service. To
diminish taxes the Tibbits family donated in 1953 to New York State 883
acres of land which had owned for 150 years. Now it is Tibbits Forest.

Section 2. Nature in the nineteen-century American culture
(The concept of Nature and its evolution from Romanticism to Naturalism.
Its reflection in literature and art)
Coordinators Dr. Elvira Osipova (St. Petersburg State University, Russia)
and Dr. Tatyana Alentyeva (Kursk State University, Russia)

1. M.A. Filimonova
Kursk Institute of Social Education (branch of) Russian State Social
University, Kursk, Russia
Natural and social in the image of America of the late 18th century

Initially image of America in the European consciousness includes such
concepts as "Golden Age", "state of nature". For Europeans, no less than
for Americans of the end of 18th century opposition of America and Europe
as embodiments of the natural and the social is characteristic. Innocence,
naivetÈ, equality are considered characteristic for America, depravity and
luxury are peculiar to Europe. Revolutions of the late 18th century give
new measurement to the problem. The American revolution in perception of
contemporaries becomes some harmonious continuation of motives of "Golden
Age", the French one is perceived as a courageous and risky experiment in
returning of the "old", "corrupted" country to a naturalness ideal.

2. Alla Savchenko
Voronezh State University, Russia
Man and Ñivilization in the Poetry of Henry W.Longfellow.

3. Tatiana Borovkova
Voronezh State University, Russia
"Nature is what we know": Nature in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

4. Alexandra Stankevich
Vladimir State Humanitarian University, Russia
Nature in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

As many authors observe Emily Dickinson experienced the influence of
transcendentalism that declared poetry to be a universal way of cognition
of the world seeing the metaphysical concept of nature as its basis.
Matching different spheres of human experience, Dickinson's metaphorical
"learning" mentality synthesizes the imagination and intellectual effort
like they did in the European baroque poetry. The human and natural worlds
are autonomous, because of the purely religious character of the poetic
thought. The Image of nature in Dickinson's poetry testifies her being not
a romantic poet but rather a poet following the way of the English
religious poetry of 17th century.


5. Elvira Osipova
St.Petersburg State University, Russia
Images of Nature in the Works of Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau and Edgar
Poe

Thoreau's book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, his early
essays, Fuller's book Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and Poe's landscape
tales of the 1840s testify to the fact that there were two distinct
concepts of nature, namely, Romantic and "anti-Romantic". The images of
nature in the writings of Thoreau and M.Fuller were created in accordance
with the Romantic aesthetic, whereas Poe's landscape tales signify his
breaking up with the canons of Romanticism.

6. Maria Sirotinskaya
RAS Institute of World History, Russia
Young Americans in the U.S. Urban Genre Painting of mid-19th Century

Representation of young Americans - of urban children and adolescents, in
particular of newsboys, vendors, bootblacks, of youths with newspapers - by
genre painters in the antebellum period (H. Inman, F.Edmonds, W. Mount,
R.C.Woodville, D.G. Blythe) is analyzed. Art, as some of the artists
thought, was destined to reflect nature. It was connected with ideology.


7. Marina Pereverzeva
Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia
Songs of the Real Men or Music in the Cowboy Life

Cowboy folklore preserved a living experience of the hard herdsmen's work
and embodied historic events of a Frontier development. An original and
exciting cowboy song narrates about the lives of Wild West explorers, the
small handful of which contributed a great deal to the folk music of
America. It was widespread in the second half of 19th century mainly in the
South-West states. Folk songs sounded till the middle of the 20th century,
served as a basis of the country style in music and continued developing in
this musical culture. The presentation sets out to explore the main genre
and stylistic features of the cowboy song in the end of the 19th and
beginning of the 20th centuries, springing from its emergence out of
cowboys milieu.




Section 3. American Drama
Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva (Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow,
Russia)

1. Galina Kovalenko
St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy
Civilization Kills Nature (Edward Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia?)

The play is a parable about losses to which civilization leads. This is a
commentary of private life which reads as a projection of spiritual values.
Destruction of nature destroys them. The central metaphor of the play is
the absurd love of the protagonist to a goat. His love does not signify
bestiality but a bankruptcy of matrimonial love as a result of social
constraints on feelings.

2. Valentina Kotlyarova
Chelyabinsk, Russia
Nature in philosophic-and-artistic intellection of Edward Albee

Nature in the dramatic art of E. Albee has not an earthly but cosmological
character.
Each of his plays is an extension of artistic chronotope, creation of
original
philosophic-and-aesthetic models of life. In the presentation special
attention
will be given to the abstract-and-fantastic dramas - Tiny Alice (1964),
Seascape (1974),
The Man With Three Arms (1983), Three Tall Women (1994), The Goat, or Who
Is Sylvia? (2001).

Section 4. Culture in Union with Nature: Multicultural Perspective
Coordinator Dr. Aleksandre Vaschenko (MSU, Moscow, Russia)

1. Tatyana Alentieva
Kursk State University, Russia
Indian stereotypes in the 19th century and President Andrew Jackson's
"Indian" policy

Stable negative stereotypes of the Indians were formed from the beginning
of European settlement in the North America. European conception about
"good savage" living in the harmony with nature in the American cultural
interpretation expressed the form of the historical cultural discussion
about civilization and savagery. There was a projection of deep ethno-
cultural and racial differences between the Old and New World in the
dichotomy our/another. The attempts creating the image of the "noble
savage" made by such writers as F. Cooper, H. Longfellow, W.G. Simms and
painters of the "school of Hudson River" were not in sympathy with public
opinion. Indians were stereotyped negatively as savage antagonists,
ignorant pagans, deceitful and crafty men. The attempts of the Indian
tribes as the Cherokees to accept the European civilization: commercial
agriculture, Afro-American slavery, republican government, English
education and culture, Christianity, didn't give them an opportunity of
adaptation into the American ethno-cultural space. President Andrew Jackson
based on negative Indian stereotypes when he proclaimed the policy of the
removal of the Indian tribes behind the Mississippi River. This policy was
one phase of the whites' westward expansion, frontier movement, ultimate
conquest and extermination of the Indian tribes, occupation of their lands
under the slogan "Manifest destiny" to the end of the 19th century.

2. Liisa Steinby
Turku University, Finland
Empiristic and mythical encountering of Nature in Leslie Marmon Silko's
Ceremony and Louise Erdrich's Tracks

Both in Silko's and Erdrich's novels, the Western (European-American)
encountering with Nature and, along with it, with other human beings is
opposed to the native American view of the Nature and man's position in it.
In Silko's Ceremony, the protagonists' seek in the ancient myths and rites
a resort from the pressures caused by the "Western" way of thinking and
acting, but this ultimately proves to be powerless means to save their
integrity. In Erdrich's Tracks, the Western rational-empirical thinking is
depicted as being in a similar opposition to the Western, that means,
Christian religion as to the Native American myths and religion. However,
in both novels, the description of events as such follows the "normal"
course of realistic representation which accords with the modern European-
American empiricist and rational view of the world; the mythical elements
appear only as part of the world view of some particular characters in the
novels and are clearly separated from the narrator's point of view.
Therefore, despite myths and magic being an essential part of the topic,
the world is not as such presented as mythical and magical, as it is the
Latin American Magical Realism, but myths and magic are described
"ethnographically" as a specific world view represented by some individuals
and groups only.

3. O.Y. Danchevskaya
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow, Russia
Concept of Soul among North American Indians

Soul is probably the most vital notion in any religion, though ideas about
it vary greatly. The concept of soul accepted by a particular people helps
to understand its world view as it encompasses several cultural layers at
the same time. The greatest attention is usually paid to the processes
happening with soul after death, though the special features of its
lifetime existence are no less interesting. Those aspects became the
central research issue in our presentation on the example of several North
American Indian tribes.


4. Irwin Weil
Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
Cowboys and Cactus

How "the Wilderness Alliance", a recently formed group of citizens and
politicians, are working together in the State of New Mexico to preserve
some of nature's beauties and gifts in what what used to be called
"America's Wild West" .


5. I. M. Udler
Chelyabinsk State University, Russia
Peculiarity of Interpretation and Functions of Nature in the African
American Slave Narratives

The author of the paper analyses the descriptions of nature in the slave
narratives of the 18-19th centuries, their meaning, evolution and
functions. Brilliance and abundance of African nature as a symbol of the
fine historical Native land in the eighteenth-century slave narratives was
replaced in the nineteenth-century slave narratives by the image of the
American forest as a real danger to the fugitives, the nearly
insurmountable barrier between slavery and freedom. The slave narratives'
authors reject the romantic image of nature as a symbol of freedom and
contrast it with a space of city elevating hopes of liberation.

6. Elizaveta Maslova
Evsevyev State Pedagogical Institute of Mordovia, Saransk, Russia
The Magic of Nature in the Novel Sula by T. Morrison

The paper reviews the descriptions of nature and its function in the novel
Sula (1973). The image of nature is many-sided. The author's use of
mythological symbols reveals the mystical interconnection of nature and
faith as an integral part of African American identity.

7. Natalia Vysotska
Kiev National Linguistic University, Ukraine

Nature Vs. Civilization in Tony Morrison's A Mercy

The paper sets out to explore different textual levels where the opposition
"Nature vs.
Civilization" operates in Tony Morrison's latest novel A Mercy (2008)
(Russian translation -
2009). By setting the novel in late 17th c. America, the renowned author
legitimizes her decision
to write a parabolic work voicing her critique of American civilization's
beginnings. The
opposition of nature and civilization common for Western culture of the
Modern Period and
originally treated in American discourse, plays a substantial part in the
novel's strategies aimed
at generating its meanings. This topos unfolds on various levels - the
book's plot, characters,
narrative, architectonics, and style. The category of "natural" in the
novel is correlated not solely
with allegedly virgin scenery of the new continent, but also with
"primitive" Others, primarily two
females - African American Florens ("blooming") and Native American Lina,
as well as with every
character's inner essence.

8. Yuri Stulov
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus
In Search of the Road to the Jordan River: Sorrows of Young Jordan

The presentation deals with the novel "Trouble the Water" by the famous
African American writer and literary critic Melvin Dixon. The central image
of the novel is the Pee Dee River in North Carolina that arouses
associations with the Biblical Jordan River. It acquires a metaphorical
meaning combining the past and the present, transcendence and deliverance.

9. Boris Penkov
University for Tourism, Moscow, Russia
Educational Discourse: Multiculturalism

10. Marina Pereverzeva
Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia
To Contemplate and Imitate Nature: John Cage, Composer Who Imitated Nature

Nature served as a source of aesthetic beauty in the art of John Cage.
Under the influence of Oriental philosophy and religion as well as American
thinkers' and poets' ideas he stood a composer contemplating instead of a
composer acting. Cage considered the purpose of music to sober and quiet
the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influence, whereas the
responsibility of the artist is to imitate Nature in its manner of
operation. Hence there are principles of unintention, randomness, all-
variability, indeterminacy, mobility, all-unity, simultaneous multiplicity,
interpenetration of life and art, musical realization of which will be
discussed.

11. Marina K. Bronich
Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, Russia
Nature and City in Saul Bellow's Writing

Patently dominated by urban themes and cityscapes, Bellow's prose brims
with concealed and overt debate with the Rousseauist concept of Nature as
the ultimate blessing and the only acceptable environment for human life.
Bellow's characters recognize that life, primitive or civilized, works as a
complex interaction between order and disorder, and that order and disorder
exist as two dimensions of the same thing offering us different
perspectives of the world. An idea that the only natural soul-awakening
environment can be found in ones "own" world, whether natural or urban,
permeates Bellow's writing.

12. Elena Makarova
Vladimir State University of the Humanities, Russia
Nature in Sh. Anderson's Book Winesburg. Ohio

The narrative space of the book Winesburg. Ohio (1919) located in two
images
archetypal for the Middle West: a small provincial town and corn fields
that
surround it. The author depicts nature in the colorful impressionistic
style
emphasizing it contrast with the town. In the moment of mental breakdown
heroes
are moved by some mysterious internal force from the enclosed area of
Winesburg
to the open spaces of nature. The 'peaks' of hopelessness coincide with
weather
phenomena.

Presentation
Yana Sorokina,

Moscow State University, Russia

Georgia O `Keeffe: Flowers and Deserts

The concept of Nature is one of the most important in Georgia O `Keeffe`s
àrt. The presentation focuses on the key images and motifs of the paintings
of the "grand -dame of American Modernism".

Section 5. Sustainability of Culture: Gender Perspective
Coordinators Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU, Russia) and Dr. Nadezhda Shvedova
(RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia)


1. Larisa Mikhaylova
MSU, History Department, Russia
1872 Presidential Campaign of Victoria Woodhull: Tilling the Turf for
Gender Revolution

A little know historical fact of Victoria Woodhull running for President of
the United States from the Equal Rights Party. Her candidacy attracted an
unusual coalition of people, which included laborers, female suffragists,
Spiritualists, and communists, among others. The one thing that they all
agreed upon was that the government needed reform. She was definitely
proclaiming a statement which became a source of support for the American
female suffragist activists working further for achieving the adoption of
the 19th Amendment granting women their right to vote at last in 1920.
Woodhull's platform and her views on gender balance are analyzed in the
paper.

2. Larissa Baibakova
MSU, History Department, Russia
"The Bible" for Emancipated American Women: the Role of E.C.Stanton in
Shaping of the US Feminist Ideology

The presentation focuses on the views of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which is
now called the "mother of feminism." As one of the leaders of the civil
rights
movement, she became the author of numerous policy documents of feminism,
the
main provisions of which remain relevant even today.


3. N.A. Shvedova
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
The 2010 Mid-term Elections in the USA: Gender Tendencies

The Americans elected a new House of Representatives and a third of the
Senate. The election campaign was characterized by the following features:
visible intensity; high cost of campaign; growing electorate
dissatisfaction about current politicians from the both parties; essential
envolvement women, particularly Republicans. (Republicans lost control over
the both chamber of the USA Congress in the result of the 2006 mid-term
election).
There is a noticeable number of women-candidates among Republican nominees
who tried to get a Congress seat and a Governor post. Women-candidates were
in the focus of the Mass Media attention. But improving of the economic
situation was in the midst of the voters' attention.

4. D.V.Shvedova
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
Changes in Traditional American Family on the Boundary of Centuries

The number of marriages in the USA still remains the greatest among
industrial countries. Still there were huge changes in this respect for the
last 40 years. Since 1960s cardinal change of the situation in the USA
concerning family and children has forced scientists of different
ideological directions to consider this fact as important and deep one. Now
there are several points of view on the further development of the
institution of family in the USA. The reasons of change include
acceleration of civilization development, employment of women in labor
activities, technological
progress, change of gender roles in family, change of values towards
individualism. Different factors of changes of family's functions and
structure are analyzed in this report as well as social consequences and
developing values orientations of the American society.

5. Lyudmila Tarasenko
RAS Institute of USA and Canada Studies, Russia
A Portrait of Republican Women in the 2010 US Elections

The paper analyses women - representatives of the Republican Party
participation in the 2010 US elections. A record number of Republican women
was running for the House and the Senate in November 2010. Republican women
actively participated in state elections. A wave of running Republican
women might have been inspired by Sarah Palin's aggressive campaign in
2008. Despite the fact that 2010 hasn't become a Year of Republican Woman,
"mama grizzlies" claimed more influence in American political life in
future.

6. Tatyana Komarovskaya
Minsk State Pedagogical University, Belarus
Nature in the American Women's Novel (Jane Smiley, Jane Hamilton)

7. Luybov Pervushina
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus
Nature as Reflection of the Personal Inner World in Contemporary American
Women's Writing (in works by S.Plath, E. Jong and A. Rich)

The reflection of images of nature in literature as always makes it
possible to investigate into contemporary people's feelings, emotions and
aspirations. Nature, metaphors and symbols in literary works connect the
inner world of the authors/characters with the real world and reflect the
readiness of women to participate in the life of society. Repeated pictures
of nature and metaphors in the works of different writers help to rethink
the past events and to understand the role and place of women in
contemporary society.

8. Natalya Denisenkova
Moscow State University of Railway Engineering, Smolensk, Russia
Gender Equity in Higher Education in the USA

The presentation overviews key issues of gender equity in higher education
system, laying out a number of contradictions and disjunctions in policy
efforts. The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in
educational sphere development. Vast access to higher school opportunities
may become a moving force for democratization process.



Section 6. Culture as Second Nature: Models of Coexistence in Modern
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Coordinator Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova (MSU, Journalism Department, Russia)

1. Tatiana Gomozova
MSU Journalism Department, Russia
The Science-fiction Culture: Dragon Eating Its Tail

The key feature of the science-fiction culture is its links with our
future. In SF products (which are based not just on author's imagination
but on scientific theories as well) the audience is given kind of
development patterns, and often takes them not just as fiction, but as a
program for the future reality in artistic form.
As a result, the science-fiction community becomes accustomed to the things
that don't really exist yet: blasters, androids and transgalaxy travels,
for example.
However, some members of the SF community do exert real influence on the
future: scientists, politicians etc. With their help, these fantastic
scenarios seep into the real life. And then science-fiction authors have to
run for dear life not to miss the future.


2. Larisa Mikhaylova
MSU Journalism Department, Russia
Human Culture on the Moon - Images from the USA and Russia of 2010

People just stepped on the Moon in the 20th century, now there is going
multifold preparation for going there again and colonize it. But unless a
long-lasting concept is adopted and takes root in the minds culturally, it
might repeat the story of colonization on Earth. The images young
generation writers do see and develop at present will be discussed on the
material of NASA competition in April 2010 and Russian online competition
"Zvezdy Vnezemelya" ("Stars of Beyond").

3. Anne-Marie Corley
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
E-readers: a Leap to the Future, or Simple Artefact?

Electronic books have charged out of the pages of science fiction novels
and into our everyday lives. In America, as in Russia, they have become
commonplace items in our daily routines: used on planes, in trains and
cars, even at home.
What do they reveal about human nature? Does their use spell the end of
serious, deep reading? Does electronic reading shorten our attention span?
Do we value electronic text and paper text equally? How important is the
feel of holding a real book in our hands? The most important question to
answer is whether we are seeing the next generation of reading culture--
just as when humanity switched from earthen tablets, to vellum, to paper--
or if electronic readers are simply new artefacts in an increasingly
technological world. Can we even call them books?


4. Maria Ivanova
Moscow State University
Nature and civilization - implacable enemies (on Kurt Vonnegut's non-
fiction)

Philosophical concepts of ecological ethics insist that modern civilization
puts a fatal harm to
the nature. American writer and humanist Kurt Vonnegut doesn't deny it, but
at the same time
he believes that the nature in its turn is inimical to the human beings.
She answers with hurricanes,
floods and incurable diseases to deforestation, draining of wetlands and
nuclear waste burial. The Earth seems to be Eden from a plane window - or
from the board of a flying saucer; actually a
continuous struggle between Nature and human beings goes on there. The
paper sets
out to explore the theme in Kurt Vonnegut's non-fiction and ways he offers
to solve the problem.

5. Evgenia Ozerova
TV Channel Moscow Region, Russia
Tolerance as a Measure of Humanity: Mutants in Barrayar Saga of Lois M.
Bujold

6. Anna Selkina
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Which Life We Spread?: Humans Inhabiting an Underwater World in a Carolyn
Ives Gilman novel Arkfall (2008)

The action in the Carolyn Ives Gilman's novel Arkfall (USA, 2008) occurs on
the planet, which is completely under water coverage. Development of such a
world Gilman based on biology. For example, coexistence with the nature
side by side allowed creation of a vehicle called ark, which is in fact a
giant mobile cell and based on autopoiesis. In this work particular
properties of society organization and life originality under the
overhanging sea are considered.

7. Anna Lavrova
MSU, Department of Journalism, Russia
Transhuman and Superhero (Damien Broderick fiction's case study)

Damien Broderick wouldn't be surprised, if Star Trek, Terminator and The
Matrix turn into reality of the 24th century. To be posthuman we have to be
first a transhuman and develop our body and mind. As a human first was a
simian, so before posthuman it will be transhuman - this is the main idea
of transhumanists and an Australian writer Damien Broderick. Based on the
ideas of an American futurologist Alvin Toffler and American computer
scientist and science fiction author Vernor Vinge, who predicted to
humanity technological singularity in 2030-2050 years, Damien Broderick
names it «spike». Only after this moment transhuman will evolve into
posthuman. And Damien Broderick in his science fiction presents our future.
Superhero originating in American culture has a set of otherworldly
facilities, used it to help people in difficult situations. Superhero and
transhuman have some common features but whereas superhero fights evil, for
a transhuman the ultimate goal is to become posthuman.



Section 7. Pre- and Postculture: the Natural and the Apocalyptic in the
American Literature and Film

Coordinators: Ivan Delazari (St. Petersburg State University, Russia) and
Mikhail Oshukov (Petrozavodsk State University, Russia)

America's fictional history in literature and film is permeated by themes
that link the temporal boundaries of the American civilization. The Wild
West, the Frontier, the New Eden and/or Adam are the most famous mythical
signifiers for the beginning of history as a meeting of the virginal nature
and multiple versions of culture transplanted from Europe. Either a clash
between or a harmonious unity of the two is inherent in all those mythical
patterns. The 19th century US literature, from Irving and Cooper to
Melville and Thoreau, is particularly rich in speculative variations of
such themes. By no means less attractive for the American mind are plots of
the end of the world and postapocalyptic motifs complicated by a strong
belief in the special role of the United Stated in global history. Widely
spread in the 20th century, this belief was backed up by the world wars,
proxy wars of the Cold War (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), and other
military activities of the US (Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, Iraq), as well as
by numerous natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.). It adds a
global dimension to the apocalyptic vision in the American literature and
film and allows for the transformation of the local into the universal;
thus, the end of the American civilization appears as the end of the world.
This development is also supported by the scale of the American popular
culture export. Such movies as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979,
based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Michael Herr's Dispatches)
and Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005, based on Orson Welles'
radio show, which is based on the Herbert Wells' novel), or the postmodern
World War II novels (Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William
H. Gass, William T. Vollman), books about Vietnam (Michael Herr, Norman
Mailer, Tim O'Brien, Leslie Marmon Silko), catastrophe narratives (Don
DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy), etc., may well provide unique material for
research into modes of artistic interpretation of the "before" and the
"after" of history, culture, and civilization.
The conference panel will discuss the issues of interaction between the
concepts of nature and apocalypse in the American culture are to be
discussed. What did the natural landscape of the USA use to look like, and
what does it look like at the imaginary end of civilization? What is the
relation and/or proportion between Nature and Culture in the
intersubjectively shared beliefs as rendered in literature and film? Is
there succession or conflict involved here? What are the patterns of cause-
and-effect relationship between the present, the past and the future, as
highlighted by fictional discourse, if the American letters once
naturalized the case of "the beheaded" time (Sartre), i.e., no sequel and
no future, while the Apocalypse also implies the end of time? What
religious and philosophical terms should be used to adequately reveal and
describe such phenomena in the American texts? What can the post-theories
(Postmodernism, Postindustrialism, Postcolonialism, etc.), as well as the
history of ideologies and minority discourses tell us about that?
Papers focusing on empirical texts, comparative discussions of literature
and film, parallels drawn between texts of different eras (e.g. the 19th
and 21st centuries), studies of popular culture are most welcomed by the
panel organizers.

1. Irina Golovachova
St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Evolution, Revolution, Degeneration as Cultural Patterns in the American
Apocalyptic Fiction

The paper speculates on American fictional representations of the three
patters of biological and social development of the Earth all of which
originated in the XIX century. Possible scenarios of apocalypse are
analyzed; evolution - gradual progressive development; involution,
regressive development or degeneration, and, finally, revolution, being the
radical dramatic change, abrupt misbalance caused by alien invasion, global
catastrophe causing various anomalies including biblical Armageddon and
zombie incursion.


2. Mikhail Oshukov
Petrozavodsk State University, Russia - Turku University, Finland
"The Patmos of Thought": R.W. Emerson's Apocalyptic Rhetoric

The paper focuses on the specifics of the realization on nature and
apocalypse motifs in prose and poetic writings of R.W. Emerson. The
analysis of Emerson's rhetoric, and in particular his use of Bible imagery,
allows us, on the one hand, to better understand the Transcendentalist
vision of the world and of the artist's position in the world, and on the
other hand to trace the further development of nature and apocalypse motifs
in the American literature of the XX century.

3. Irina Morozova
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
Eden and Apocalypse in Women's Fiction of the Old South

The perception of the social and cultural history of the Old South by
white Southerners of that time in many ways represents the biblical
pathway of the mankind from Eden, as a primordial paradise of perfection
towards the Apocalypse, both an end and a new beginning. The secession
and the formation of the Confederacy was viewed as the actualization of
the biblical prophecy of the triumph of God over the sins of the old world
- the Old republic with the "money-grubbing" , "hypocritical"
abolitionists and Yankees who "were guilty of the deviation from God's
stern instructions" (B. Wyatt-Brown). Southern women of letters were
effective proponents of this model. Their fiction and diaries of 1820-40's
portray the South as the Land of Eden with shady trees and its happy
people, while the women's writings of 1850-60's contain the apocalyptical
versions of the struggle of a new civilization launched by the secession.
Women writers' depiction of the Southern society demonstrates the
significant dichotomy of the Southern mind, whose sympathies had always
been divided between Christianity and Ancient world ethics.


4. Douglas Robinson
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
The Mnemovorous Apocalypse in Steven Hall's Raw Shark Texts: A Postmodern
Moby Dick

Melville's Moby-Dick is widely recognized as the classical 19th-century
American novel that is most powerfully steeped in apocalyptic imagery: Ahab
is a demonic god-figure; the whale is a white devil figure; the Pequod is a
microcosm of the world, and when in the end the Pequod is destroyed, in
some imagistic sense the world is destroyed. As I argued in American
Apocalypses (1985), of course, the fact that Ishmael survives to tell the
tale is a strong suggestion that Melville is not predicting (let alone
hoping for) the apocalyptic destruction of the world; and indeed a close
reading of the novel shows that Melville structures his plot so as to
predict and celebrate the continuation of human history. Steven Hall's 2007
novel The Raw Shark Texts is "apocalyptic" in many of the same imagistic
ways, and in fact is saturated with allusions to Moby-Dick. What I will
explore in this paper, however, are the ways in which the "world" that is
destroyed in the novel is not so much the microcosmic whaling boat that
Hall has his characters create, modelled explicitly on the Pequod, as it is
the world as remembered-which is to say, the world in memory. The
"mnemovorous apocalypse" in my title is intended to suggest that what
Hall's novel "destroys" is not so much the world as it is the memory's
ability to retain a composite working image of the world. Since the memory
is also the human faculty on which story-telling (and thus novel-writing)
is based, what makes Hall's novel a postmodern apocalypse is that the
apocalypse in it destroys (or at least radically undermines) our ability to
tell or understand a story.

5. Yuri Stulov
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus
Apocalyptic Vision of the World in Contemporary African American Fiction

The paper will examine the peculiarities of the apocalyptic vision of the
world in the work of such diverse African American writers as J. Baldwin,
M. Dixon and R. Kenan. The world of the black ghetto in which their
protagonists are isolated is opposed to the world of Nature which lives
according to its own laws.

6. Olga Panova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Philology Department, Russia
American Boom of the Dead: T.Morrison The Bluest Eye, D.Delillo White Noise

T. Morrison and Don Delillo create a nightmarish apocalyptic landscape of a
small town. Both
writers combine realism, social criticism with metaphysical quest and
parable. The novels
explore American subconscious, phobias and obsessions, fear of death and
"Todestriebe".
Different scenarios and setting - a black ghetto and a prosperous middle-
class community -
help to define American image of apocalypse and death-in life.


6. Vladimir Prozorov
Karelian State Pedagogical Academy, Russia
Paul Auster's "Postapocalyptical" Novel In the Country of Last Things
(1987)

The paper discusses the peculiarities of Paul Auster's novel in comparison
with the clichÈs of the mass culture postapocalyptical novels and films.
Unlike them, In the Country of Last Things focuses not on the global
catastrophe, but on the effect of the extreme conditions on psychology and
morale of an individual human being. Instead of depicting the hypothetical
future disaster, the novel turns to the historic past of the 20th century.
The nameless city in the novel reflects the cruel reality of death-camps,
ghettos, and the slums of an inner-city in a present-day American
megapolis. In spite of the grim contents, the novel suggests the opposition
to the total destruction which is based on traditional humanistic values of
love, fortitude and hope.

7. Daria Dmitrieva
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
Apocalypse and Nostalgia in Alan Moore's Graphic Novel Watchmen and Its
Adaptation

The presentation deals with Watchmen, the most well-known graphic novel by
Alan Moore. It is a story of good intentions, Armageddon, and the brave new
post-apocalyptic world. It is a reflection both on World War II and the
Cold War. The 2009 film adaptation has added new aspects to this work. The
idea central to my argument is that the image of America was projected by
the novel and the movie from two different perspectives. They set two
figurative horizons: one starting from 1985 and extending well into the
apocalyptic future and the other beginning in 2009 and oriented
retrospectively towards the nostalgic past. Each chapter of the novel is
full of intense apprehension of an apocalypse, each moral choice is
incorrect, and each character is odd. The main mood of the movie is
nostalgia, melancholy over a world which is already in the past.
Apocalypse in the film is presented as an impossibility of a return to the
past, to good old America, a country of freedom, which, as it turns out,
never existed. Both works are self-sufficient, but their inner dialogue
gives us a chance to see America from two angles at the same time, so that
at their intersection we can catch a glimpse of America undergoing the
crisis of its own ideals.


8. Ivan Delazari
St. Petersburg State University, Russia
Culture's Nostalgia vs. Postapocalyptic Sentiment: William Faulkner's Go
Down, Moses and Cormac McCarthy's The Road

Cormac McCarthy's late rise to public acclaim after The Border Trilogy has
culminated in his Pulitzer Prize winning 2006 novel, The Road, being
selected for Oprah's Book Club, made into a film and listed as one of the
ten best novels of the 21st century. In his very first TV interview in
Oprah Winfrey's show, McCarthy mentions William Faulkner in a manner that
suggests his strong allegiance to and even deliberate self-modeling on that
literary predecessor, from whom he inherited not only his editor Albert
Erskine at Random House, but, as critics argue, many of his themes and
techniques. Contrasting Faulkner's Go Down, Moses (1942) to The Road rather
than drawing obvious parallels between them, I will argue in my paper that
the end-of-the-world motif manifests itself in the former as Culture's
nostalgia about Nature gone/passing away, and in the latter as
postapocalyptic sentiment aiming to overcome the totality of loss of both
Nature and Culture. Fatherhood and (wo)manhood, technology and motion, God
and man, regionalism and universalism, time and space in both novels will
be subject to analysis to demonstrate somewhat peculiarly American visions
of the awkward backward moves of mankind's history. Written from before
Pearl Harbor (Faulkner) to after 9/11 (McCarthy), the two novels are no
less products of history itself than of their authors' shared beliefs; read
along each other, though, Go Down, Moses and The Road suggest that the
timeline may in fact be a circle, just like the world is a globe, and that
Ike McCaslin's look into the past might well encounter the eyes of the boy
on the road staring into the postapocalyptic future.


Section 8. Mutual Influence of American and World Culture
Coordinator Dr. Tatyana Belova (MSU, Russia)

1. Galina Alekseeva
The Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia
Philosophy of Natural Life by Henry Thoreau in Tolstoy's Work and Life

2. Boris A. Rivchun
State Classical Academy, Moscow, Russia
Mutual Influence of Russian and American Musical Culture


3. Tatyana Belova
MSU, Department of Philology, Russia
Vladimir Nabokov as Translator and Commentator of Alexander Pushkin's Novel
in Verse Evgeny Onegin: How to Preserve a "Kernel" of Culture in the
Environment of Another Language

Dissatisfied with the lack of Pushkin's ''Eugene Onegin'' adequate
translation (he was in a great need of it as a Russian literature lecturer
in the USA) V. Nabokov within a fifteen years period (1949-1964) did his
best to create its English version as well as his immense magnificent
commentary to it. His concept and the main principles of poetic translation
were reflected in a series of articles published in 1940-60s in American
academic periodicals. According to it the translation of ''Eugene Onegin''
should not be paraphrastic, but very exact, accompanied by commentary
giving an attentive reader only the precise information about the ''thing
of beauty''. As a result V. Nabokov managed to have preserved the cultural
essence of Pushkin's masterpiece and exposed its artistic and cultural
value to the American audience. After that new paraphrastic translations
came into being (e.g.,Ch. Johnston's, 1977) preserving its authenticity and
taking Nabokov's commentary and some of his achievements into
consideration. Thus Nabokov's translation of ''Eugene Onegin'' and his
commentary have made a valuable contribution to American Pushkiniana.

4. E. A. Smirnov
Linguistic University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Nature, Environment and Jack Kerouac's Buddhist outlook in Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac's profound fascination with Zen Buddhism and Eastern religious
philosophy produced a sizeable impact on his fiction. The report is aimed
at main concepts, motifs and scenes typical of Kerouac's "Buddhist» novels.
The peculiarities of the characters' perception of nature and the effects
of the paradigm shift towards Buddhism on author's philosophy are shown.


5. Natalya Golovanova
Kyiv-Kharkiv, Ukraine
From Human Nature to the Culture of the USA-Ukrainian relations. Travelogue
Love is Blooming Lilac

The theme "Women at War, a woman in extreme conditions" is very popular
among contemporary American journalists and in cultural studies. In 1996
Producer Noel Denner, journalist Jan Sherbin and translator Alexander
Ethlyn created a film Under Fire about Soviet Ukrainian female veterans and
it turned out to become a revelation for American viewers. In Ukraine the
film was presented for the first time in May 2010. Ukrainian tour with the
film of the journalist Jen Sherbin turned into two weeks of her new
acquaintance with Ukraine. Witnessing everyday life of people from
different social strata, unprecedented changes in the appearance of Kiev
in the past 10 years, anniversary Victory parade in the Ukrainian capital
on the 9th of May 2010, interviews with veterans, acquaintance with the
exhibits of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kyiv, getting to know
Ukrainian journalists, political analysts and government officials,
educators, students, visiting the regions of the country formed the basis
of Jan Sherbin's photocollections Ukraine-2010 and travelogue Love is
Blooming Lilac by the author of this presentation. All that allows to make
fresh observations concerning the interpenetration of American, Ukrainian
and Soviet culture.


Section 9. Canada: Nature, Culture, Person
Coordinators Dr. Vadim Koleneko (RAS Institute of World History, Russia)
and Dr. Elena Ovcharenko (MSU, Journalism Department, Russia)

1. Evgenia Issraelyan
Institute for US and Canada Studies, RAS, Moscow, Russia
Women's and Children's rights; Canada's Position
Canada actively promotes human rights and democratic values
internationally. The country participated in drafting and implementation
of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the international
covenant on civil and political rights. Recently this area became one of
the niches of Canadian foreign policy. The country has signed practically
all international human rights conventions. The key attention is given to
women's and children's rights.


2. Liudmila Nemova
Institute for the USA and Canada Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow

How the Performance of the Canadian Health Care System Compares
Internationally


Similarly to most economically advanced democracies (and in contrast to the
USA), Canada's health care system is based on the principles of universal
accessibility to the quality medical services for all citizens and legal
immigrants. This paper presentation describes the specific features,
strengths and weaknesses, which are mirrored in the various Canadian and
international statistical sources and analytical studies. Some comparisons
with the Russian health care system are also made. Despite the problems and
concerns, most of Canadians support the basic principles of universal
accessibility and appreciate the national health care system (especially
when it is compared to the highly commercialized, extremely costly and
unequal system in the neighboring United States). At the same time, most
citizens, medical professionals, health care experts and politicians agree
that measures need to be taken for containing costs, reducing waiting times
for primary care and treatment in the hospitals, implementing electronic
health records and improving coordination between various institutions of
the public medical care system.

3. Valentina Kozhemyakina
RAS Institute of Linguistics, Moscow, Russia
Language Distribution in Canada According to Census of 2006
Canada is a unique example of the country that witnessed a long-lasting
standoff of the two world languages: English and French. Besides
Anglophones and Francophones there are representatives of various peoples
and nationalities speaking 200 languages in the country. They are migrants
and
representatives of indigenous population of Canada.
Taking into consideration the multinational composition of Canada the
country's leaders came up with the idea of shaping a multicultural society.
The model implies coexistence of a variety of subcultures and traditions on
the basis of mutual respect, interaction and mutual benefit.
The model of multiculturalism was declared a national idea. It made
building up of multicultural society a basic objective of the governmental
policy. Canada doesn't only carry out the official policy of
multiculturalism, it also provides appropriate legislative and budgetary
support for it. In 1988 Canada passed Canada's Law on Multiculturalism that
has no analogies in the world.

4. Vasily Klokov
Saratov State University, Russia
Nature of America in the Mirror of French Canadianisms

The report covers the linguocultural model of adjustments in French-
Canadian frame of mind and Canadian French to represent American
environment. It displays the peculiarities of local vocabulary development
in different periods of history when French Canadians were exposed to
American realities: in pre-colonial times, in the epoch of New France and
at a modern stage. It describes the following categories of regional
vocabulary - obsolete words of early French (archaisms) as well as
Canadianisms among which one can single out Indianisms, Anglicisms, and
lexical and semantic neologisms derived from French.

5. Anton Uchaev
Saratov State Socio-Economic University, Russia
Ecological Issues within a Frame of the Ñanadian Federal Centre and
Provinces Interaction

Interaction between the federal centre and provinces which is one of the
major issues in
Canadian society is examined in this lecture from an ecological
perspective. The main goal of
this research is the analysis of ecological policy in Canada, particularly
authority distribution
between Ottawa and provincial governments and exploration of existing
contradictions and ways
of their overcoming.

6. Alina Porokh
Volgograd State University, Russia
The Russian-Ñanadian Initiatives on Keeping Sustainable Development of the
Arctic Region

Russia and Canada are longtime allies on many aspects of international
cooperation and geographical neighbors in the Arctic basin which became the
source of mutual distrust. The conflict of interests is connected with the
reclamation for the area which is rich with oil and gas. On the other hand,
Arctic region is the global environmental resource of the planet, it is an
important part of global climate system. As a result of it the ecological
role of the Arctic Region comes into conflict with its value as a resource
supply.
The Arctic Region is a region of international value and special interests
of the world community. Therefore, cooperation of the subarctic states
should be directed to developing a uniform policy and integrated
international programs based on ecological approaches priority, Russia and
Canada should settle down to a course of assuming preventive measures on
keeping sustainable development of the Arctic Region and biosphere as a
whole.

7. Ekaterina Isayeva
Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow, Russia
North America Exoticism in F.-R. Chateaubriand's Oeuvres


8. Vadim Koleneko
RAS Institute of World History, Russia
Person and Nature in Charles Roberts' Prose

Widely known in Canada as a poet and writer, Charles George Douglas Roberts
became popular also among readers of our country due to numerous
translations of his stories about animals. Alongside with Ernest Thompson
Seton, Jack London and James Oliver Curvood he is considered one of the
founders of animalist tradition in a world fiction. His creativity,
especially in prose, is almost entirely devoted to realistic display of the
Canadian fauna of last third of the 19th -first third of the 20th
centuries, but unlike in stories of other writers of this trend in
literature, humans in his creativity never played a self-sufficient role,
carrying out rather the subsidiary function only additionally stressing the
value of animal world. Those few characters that nevertheless occur in his
stories are not heroic at all and only confirm his denunciation of
anthropocentrism. People in his prose rather resist nature rather than are
part of it. Wild animals, on the contrary, are quite self-sufficient heroes
of his stories with their instincts naturally keyed to its rhythms. Such
depiction conveys to the antinomy "person versus nature" instead of
metaphysical quite realistic character.


9. Renata Kryukova
Sibay Teachers College, Bashkortostan, Russia
Mastering the Canadian North at the Beginning of the 20th century in the
Works by Jack London: Truth or Fiction?

The history of developing the Canadian north at the beginning of twentieth
century was mostly history of mining gold, connected with life of the gold-
prospectors, forming by then the majority of population. One of them became
later a famous American writer Jack London. On July 25 1897 he boarded of
the nave "Umatilla" together with a hundred of other luck-hunters. He got
the experience upon which he wrote his stories about Canadian North. In the
paper we compare works of Jack London with diaries and memoirs of other
gold-prospectors of this period since 1896 till 1906 to find out what is
truth in them and what is it fiction.

10. Elena Ovcharenko
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Robert Falherty's Canada

Flaherty's name is well known in the cinema world. He was the author of a
large number of documentaries, the founder of non-fiction film's genre
("Nanook of the North", 1922). The eldest son of the mining engineer, he
spent with his family many years in Canada and began to make there his
first films. Besides that, the Robert Flaherty collection of Escimo (Inuit)
carvings, one of the finest in North America, was made during the visits of
the great film producer to the Canadian Arctic in 1910-1916 and then, in
1920 - 1922, to the North of the USA. Today the famous Flaherty collection
belongs to Toronto Museum of Fine Arts (Canada).


11. Irina B. Arkhangelskaya,
Nizhny Novgorod Commercial Institute, Russia
Civilizations and Technologies in the works of Arthur Kroker
The influence of information technologies and new media on society, nature
and people - are the main problems in the works of the Canadian scholar,
professor of Political Science from the University of Victoria, BC and
Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture) Arthur Kroker
(1945 - ).
A. Kroker, who is named «McLuhan of the nineties. the most interesting
thinker about culture and technology that this country has produced since
Marshall McLuhan» and «XXI century Marx» - is a rather controversial
personality. In his youth he planned to become a clergyman, but later got
interested in «leftist» radical ideas, which were popular with the young
generation of the 60s.
As McLuhan, Kroker was not recognized in the academy but his works became
popular far beyond university. Kroker's style may be called McLuhanistic.
Several Kroker's projects are vivid examples of postmodernist culture.
Kroker has played a great role in developing media sociology studying the
transformation of the people's nature under the influence of new media
technologies.

12. Konstantin Romanov
MSU Department of Foreign Languages and Region Studies, Russia
Mankind and Nature in Ancient and Modern Culture of British Columbia

The relationship of mankind and nature has become one of the hottest issues
in the world today, due mainly to the environmental challenges of the new
century. It is important in this respect that the relation of people to
nature has been altering in course of time. This relation is varied in
different cultures. The history of Canadian West populated by various
ethnical groups shows a range of different models of human relation to
nature.

13. Ilya Sokov
Volgograd State University, Russia
The Role of Alaska-Canadian Highway (ALCAN) in Acceleration of Lend-Lease
Deliveries to the USSR during the Second World War

The author of the article opens the little known pages of historical
cooperation between the USSR and the United States in the Second World War,
when Americans helped by supplies of heavy and military technical equipment
through Alaska. Americans built Alaska-Canadian Highway for this purpose,
along with intermediate aerodromes and the oil-pipe line, needed for
petroleum refining into aircraft gasoline. Thus construction of Alaska-
Canadian Highway provided important support in fulfilling the Treaty of
Lend-Lease Supply.

14. Olga Fedosyuk
English Lingua Centre, Moscow, Russia
Nature as a Source of Canadian Identity: from Howard O'Hagan to Douglas
Coupland

Nature is one of the most important components of Canadian identity. Many
20th century English Canadian writers treated nature, contrasting it with
urban civilization; it was nature that they identified Canada with. In our
paper, we are going to trace the process of interpreting nature in the 20th
century English Canadian fiction from O'Hagan's classic novel Tay John
(1939) to Douglas Coupland's novels of the 1990s.

15. Evgeniya Timoshenko
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
Jean Charron as a Researcher of Canadian Mass Media

Jean Charron is a Canadian Media researcher. In his studies Charron
systematizes approaches of different scientific schools that developed
theories of mass communication in the 20th century. Charron is a partisan
of the integral approach, where the journalists' sources of information in
particular are regarded as the sources of impact. On the basis of the
discourse analysis, the Canadian Media researcher arrives at his own
conclusions about manipulation in the media environment.

16. L. Vedenina
Moscow State University of International Relations, Russia
Fauna in Lingvo-Cultural Space of Francocanadians

Round table Imprints: Image of America and Image of Russia
Coordinator Dr. Yassen Zassoursky (MSU, Journalism Department, Russia)

Gretchen Simms
Vienna University, Austria
The Influence of American Culture on the Soviets during the Thaw: America
Magazine, The American National Exhibition and Soviet Art

Ada Baskina
MSU, Journalism Department, Russia
American Self Health Care Culture

Generally Americans are healthy. Usually it is explained by the young age
of the nation. First colonists were mostly young and strong. However modern
Americans do a lot for maintaining high level of their health. Today
culture of self health care includes prevention from cold ( ice water and
beverages; uncovered heads even in freezing weather; swimming). Americans
drink a lot of water ("Water is life" - a popular billboard inscription).
Sports is a significant part of most families' lives. Russian immigrants
found that they suffer from high blood pressure and heart diseases much
more often than the locals. The reason is dieting and nourishing food.
Americans' overweights (obesity) are a separate topic.


Round table discussion: Anton Chekhov 150th Anniversary
Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva (Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow,
Russia)

Galina Kovalenko
St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, Russia
Chekhov and American Theatre

Chekhov has influenced American Theatre on several levels. O'Neill,
Tennessee Williams, Miller, Albee, Mamet develop his traditions using
subtext, undercurrent of the plot, musical structure of form and text.
Chekhov has also influenced the staging and acting.
As a rule, formal parallels with Chekhov's plays take place, adapted to the
American model of a standard play.

Maya Tugusheva
Moscow, Russia
Social Utopianism in the Work of Anton Chekhov