Congress
100th anniversary of Russian formalism (1913-2013)
Call for Papers

August 25-29 2013 Moscow

Hosted by:
National Research University -- Higher School of Economics
Russian State University for the Humanities

Organized by:
National Research University -- Higher School of Economics
Russian State University for the Humanities
Institute of the World Culture of Lomonosov Moscow State University
The Institute of Slavic Studies
V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute
A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature

The Congress Chairman:
Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov
Keynote Speakers:
John Ellis Bowlt (University of Southern California)
Catherine Depretto (Paris Sorbonne University)
Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (MSU, UCLA, RSUH)
Aage A. Hansen-Love (Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich)
Eero Aarne Pekka Tarasti (University of Helsinki

Working languages - Russian and English

The Organizing Committee invites experts in the field of literary theory, linguistics, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, musicology, and others interested in Russian formalism, to participate in the Congress.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

Russian formalism in the European intellectual context of its time. Epistemology of Russian formalism. Formalism and the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. The role of formalism in the use of mathematical methods in the humanities. Theory of formal structures in mathematics (Hilbert) and Goedel's theorem.

The origins and sources of European and Russian formalism. Andrei Bely and Russian formalists. Russian formal theories of grammar (Fortunatov's school and Peterson as a forerunner of Hjelmslev's glossematics), linguistics and poetics (Polivanov, Yakubinsky). Potebnya and Veselovsky: their influence on formalists.

History of OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language), Moscow Linguistic Circle and GAKhN (State Academy of Artistic Sciences ( Moscow); Jakobson and Tynyanov's program (1928) for a movement towards structuralist research of connections between different cultural rows. Later continuation, students and followers (Gukovsky, L.Ja. Ginzburg, Bukhshtab). The fate of persecuted scholars. Resurrection, revival and reprints with comments. The future?

Critical views on formalism and the other trends of the Russian literary and cultural studies at least partly opposed to formalism: Bakhtin and his circle, Vygotsky, Frank-Kamenetsky and Freidenberg (connection to Marr), Russian Marxist literary Сritique ("Literary critique": Lukacz, Livshitz). Vinogradov against Kacnelson's typology and Fortunatov's "homunculus" understanding of proto-Indo-European: semantics against purely syntactic approach. Deconstruction as a reaction against structuralism, its late advent and spread in Russia.

Semiotics of folklore. A methodological framework for the analysis of folklore in Propp' work and modern folklore. Russian formalism and / as cultural studies (Bogatyrev and semiotics).

Formalist art criticism. European formalism; GAKhN, its legacy in the context of current research on the history of philosophy and culture, Gustav Shpet's philosophy of art and theatre. Reflexes of Russian formalism in contemporary visual studies.

The relationship of Russian formalism and avant-garde in verbal and visual art. Formalists and contemporary literature. The relationship of the theories of formalism and Russian and European literary avant-garde (from Futurism to Oberiu- The Association for the Real Art) and avant-garde in the visual art and theatre (Meyerhold's late project of description of performance and biomechanics: relationship to N. Bernshtein's precybernetic studies of motions). Vaganova and ballet's description.

Russian formalism and film. Formalism and Sergei Eizenstein.

Transfer of the formalist ideas in Western and Eastern Europe. Russian formalism and Czech structuralism. Heritage of Prague School and the modern history of knowledge. Polish formalism.

The Congress welcomes proposals for individual papers and panels from any discipline and theoretical perspective.
Please send a title and up to 350 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and a brief professional biography to: ru.formalism@rggu.ru by 10 April 2013. Use 12 point type. The text must be single-spaced.
Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress abstract book. Selected papers of the Congress would be published in a proceedings collection.

Notification of acceptance May 25, 2013
More information at: http://ru-formalism.rggu.ru/index.html