Slavic Forum RE: Constructions, Memory and Imagination with speakers Masha Gessen and Maxim Shrayer

RE: Constructions, Memory and Imagination

The University of Virginia Society of Slavic Graduate Students will host an interdisciplinary forum devoted to
the intersections of memory and imagination. Traditional applications of the terms memory and imagination
have emphasized a barrier between the concepts based on the premise of accuracy. However, cognitive
scientists have demonstrated that the same neural processes underlie both memory and imagination. Memories
are as much constructs as imagination. Despite the seeming differences between memory and imagination, they
both affect every sphere of human experience and endeavor. In this forum, speakers from a variety of fields will
explore the role of memory and imagination in literature, history, art, linguistics, and identity.
 
Keynote speakers:
 
Friday, March 31, 6 p.m., Maury 209

Maria “Masha” Gessen will give a talk on current LGBTQ activism in Russia

Russian journalist, author, and political activist; contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker,
The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post; author of groundbreaking books on Russian
politics, society, culture, and history. For more information see speaker’s bio at www.prhspeakers.com.
 
Saturday, April 1, 5:30 p.m., Maury 209

Maxim D. Shrayer

“The Texture of Translingual Memory, or Nabokov in the Attic”
Dr. Maxim D. Shrayer is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Dr. Shrayer has
published fifteen books of criticism, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and translations. Among Shrayer's awards and
honors are the National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rockefeller Fellowship.
 Forum organized by the Society of Slavic Graduate Students at UVA and sponsored by CREEES, the Department of Slavic Languages
and Literatures, the French Department, the McIntire Department of Art, and the Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation. Masha
Gessen’s talk co-sponsored by CREEES, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies Program (WGS), the Center for Global Inquiry + Innovation, the Department of English, the Corcoran Department of History,
and the Department of Media Studies.
Date: 
Friday, March 31, 2017
Time and Location: 
Maury 209