Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Mikhail Bakhtin’S Heritage In Literature, Arts, And Psychology. Introduction, Slav N. Gratchev, Howard Mancing

Modern Languages Faculty Research

This volume celebrates hundred years of Bakhtin’s heritage: in September 13 of 1919 in the literary journal Den Iskusstva (The Day of the Art) was published the first work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, the work that became his literary manifesto.

This book aims to examine the heritage of Mikhail Bakhtin in a variety of disciplines. To achieve this end, we drew upon colleagues from eight different countries across the world--United States, Canada, Spain, Great Britain, France, Russia, Chile, and Japan--in order to bring the widest variety of points of view on the subject. But we also wanted …

Play This Paper: Forms Of Time In The Open World, Branching Narrative, Roleplaying Game, Jimmy Evans

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper is an analysis of chronotopes in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that reveals how the procedurality of video games might suggest a refined heteroglossic form. Synthesizing contemporary american philosopher Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric with the materialist linguistic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, this ultimately hypertextual and interactive article reflects on language as Bakhtin once did: as "agent and agency” (MPL 146). After detailing how the three major processes of the game coordinate spacetime, it is necessary to conclude that its kaleidoscopic nature provides new opportunities for the rendering of the geometry of thought in what is a …

The Hyperintellectual In The Balkans, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although hypointellectuals have long been a part of our cultural landscape, it is in post-conflict societies, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, that there has arisen a strong need for a different breed of intellectual, one who is more than simply a social critic, an educator, a person of action, and a compassionate individual. Enter the non-partisan intellectual—the hyperintellectual. It is the hyperintellectual, whose non-partisanship is manifested through a reciprocating critique and defense of both the nationalist enterprise and strong interventionism of the International Community, who strives to create a climate of understanding and to enlarge the moral space …

Popular Culture: Russian Folklore And Mores, Zara Abdullaeva

Russian Culture

The heroine of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," a Russian woman named Shosha, explains to Hans Kastorz, a German, what Russians mean by morals: "Morality? Do you want to know about morality? Well, we believe that morality is not to be found in virtue, that is, not in reason, discipline, good manners, or honesty; quite to the contrary, we find it in sinfulness, in danger to which one exposes oneself and evil which could devour us. We believe it is morally loftier to perish, to drive oneself into the ground, than to save one's soul. . . ."

Labor Culture: Labor Morality Under Socialism, Vladimir Magun

Russian Culture

Soviet leaders had always taken a keen interest in workers' behavior and labor motives and sought to keep labor morality under strict state control. A complex network of values and regulations was developed for this purpose after the October Revolution of 1917. They were best articulated in the "political economy of socialism" which purported to present a scientific picture of the country's economic life. Textbooks on socialist economy were widely circulated in the Soviet Union and appropriate courses included into a core curriculum for all higher education institutions in the country. Basic tenets of socialist political economy were taught in …

Tomáš Masaryk And Jane Addams On Humanitarianism And Cultural Reciprocity, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Chapter addresses similarities between Addams's and Masaryk's positions on cultural difference and national states. The similarities were based not only on their shared general humanitarian point of view, but on a personal interaction as well. Masaryk visited the U.S. several times and even delivered series of lectures on Slavs and their history at Hull House in Chicago. Masaryk spoke with Addams and was in contact with her through his daughter Alice, who spent time in Chicago and whom Addams mentored. In these circumstances the similarities in their ideas of trans-nationalism, the plasticity of national identity, and cultural reciprocity are not …

Epistemical And Ethical Troubles In Achieving Reconciliation, And Then Beyond, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

My optimism towards reconciliation in places like Bosnia and Kosovo has become increasingly guarded because of certain epistemical and ethical issues. Reconciliation presumes the making of moral judgments about a wrongdoing, judgments that are empirically informed. If the perceptual judgments that are used to do the informing are made suspect because of a lapse in the commonplace self-restraints (or controls) on reasoning or glitches in the regulative ideals or epistemic goods like understanding and intelligibility, then the moral judgments on which they are grounded become suspect as well. This happens to both fanatic and non-fanatic. In this article I explore …

Book Review: How To Cure A Fanatic, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

How to Cure a Fanatic by the internationally acclaimed novelist and peace activist Amos Oz, is a book I took with me on a recent trip to the Balkans. I decided to read the book and write my review in my flat on Gradacacka Street in the Otoka neighborhood of Sarajevo, given the book’s topic and the problems that have plagued the people of Bosnia for the past fifteen years.

Book Review: To End A War, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

If asked to name career diplomats who have tackled some very difficult international crises, many foreign policy makers would put Richard Holbrooke near the top of the list. Not many negotiators have wielded moral principle, power, and reason as well as Holbrooke. His book on the Bosnia negotiations leading up to the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement is timely, given the ethnic cleansing that is being carried out in Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia's Serb Republic. Once again we are faced with unrest in the Balkans. We have seen the daily newspaper headlines change from "24 Albanian Men Killed in …

Book Review: Chechnya: Tombstone Of Russian Power, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From December 1994 to August 1996, Russia was engaged in the Chechen War, a Vietnam-style quagmire that exemplified, on the one hand, the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power, and, on the other hand, "one of the greatest epics of colonial resistance in the past century.'' No analysis can hope to understand the totality of forces that lend to the stability (or instability) of nations with large minority populations unless it first examines the conditions that led to the Russian defeat in Chechnya. At the center of that problem lies an interesting issue. What aspects of …