This ARTES EAST seminar will take place on Thursday, the 20th of May at 4pm Amsterdam time
Eastsplainers #7: Indigenous Communities
09.10.2023, 5-6:30 p.m., VOX-POP
Public lecture series by the Department of Slavic Languages & Cultures (University of Amsterdam), in cooperation with the University of New Europe, with artists and intellectuals who recently migrated or fled from Central & Eastern Europe to the Netherlands.
As the Russian war in Ukraine and imperialist Kremlin rhetoric continue to disturb world media, Eastsplainers offers a counterweight to westsplaining – the habit of looking at developments in Central & Eastern Europe through Western lenses. In this public program series, we listen to scholars, journalists, artists, musicians, and other cultural and academic professionals who migrated or fled from Kyiv, Łódź, Minsk, and Moscow, among other places, to the Netherlands. Rather than amplifying views on various Central & Eastern European locations as a monolithic European ‘East,’ our programs show that these locations merit independent study and careful attention to local dynamics.
On October 9, we welcome pianist Aliya Ishakova, who aims to raise awareness of and generate broader audiences for classical music from her home region, the Republic of Tatarstan. Our second speaker, Lana Pylaeva, combines her work as a physicist (Utrecht University) with work as a coordinator of FreeRussiaNL – a grassroots community of Russian-speaking humanitarian activists in the Netherlands. Pylaeva is of Komi origin – an indigenous Permian minority. Pylaeva and Ishakova will discuss the various indigenous communities that live across the Russian Federation and the challenges that these communities face because of their background. Among other topics, they will discuss the history of what recent studies define as a colonization of ethnic minorities and strategies to resist this process. Furthermore, they will discuss what it is like to practice indigenous social and creative practices.
Political anthropologist Malika Bahovadinova, lecturer at the Institute of History at Leiden University and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam, will moderate the session. Professor of Slavic languages and literatures Ellen Rutten will open the meeting with a short introduction of the Eastsplainers series as a whole.
To register for this lecture, scheduled on October 9, 5-6:30 p.m., at VOX-POP Amsterdam, please visit this registration page. For information about the other sessions, please visit the Eastsplainers webpage. The series is set up with support from the University of New Europe, Middle- and Eastern-European studies publisher Pegasus, the Amsterdam school for Cultural Analysis and the diversity & inclusion team of the UvA's Faculty of Humanities.
