REEES Faculty Spotlight: Anna Kovalova

Guest: Anna Kovalova, Pitt’s new Visiting Assistant Professor in Slavic Languages and Literatures, on her work on early Russian cinema.

Catholicism in Poland

September 8, 2023

Guests: Geneviève Zubrzycki and Jose Casanova on the place of the Catholic Church in Polish politics and national identity.

Secret Police Archives as Depositories of Faith

August 18, 2023

Guests: Anca Sincan and Tatiana Vagramenko discuss the how secret police files document religious belief and worship in communist Romania and Ukraine.

Lived Religion in Ukraine

August 4, 2023

Guest: Catherine Wanner on lived religion in Ukraine, belief, belonging and community, and the impact of the war on religion.

The Nivkhi of Sakhalin

July 17, 2023

Guest: Bruce Grant revisits his book, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas, on the Nivkhi of Sakhalin, their Soviet experience, and the complexities of indigeneity.

Queer Under Communism

June 29, 2023

It’s Pride month! Misha Appeltova, Irina Roldugina, and Kate Davison join us to talk about their research on gender, sexuality and queer under state socialism.

The Soviet Union was a latecomer to the whaling industry. But after a bumbling start, by the 1960s, Soviet whalers were slaughtering over 20,000 whales a year. The decimation of the world’s whales in the 20^th century, a genocide in which the Soviets played no small part, has had catastrophic results on the world’s ocean environments. Ryan Tucker Jones tells us about the Soviet whaling industry, the lives of Soviet whalers, their attitudes toward their craft, and the lasting trauma of the hunt the ocean’s majestic creatures.

Ainu Fever

May 18, 2023

Roma Shatrov is the founder of the Silent Cape Nature Park in Sakhalin. Irina Grudova is Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of Sakhalin. Roma is obsessed with Ainu history and culture and has dedicated the Silent Cape to revitalizing their tradition. Irina is a local Ainu activist and is skeptical of such outsiders looking to exploit her heritage. Yet Roma and Irina instantly hit it off and formed a strong bond over their mutual love of the Ainu. Rusana Novikova brings us a story about the romanticism and self-discovery at the heart of Irina and Roma’s complicated friendship, and its potential promise for Ainu and Russian relations.