News, Announcements and Press Appearances
May 2010
The second workshop of «New Media in New Europe-Asia» research project takes place at the University College London. More details are available here.
March 2010
Vlad Strukov launches a research project «New Media in New Europe-Asia» at the University of Birmingham. More details are available here.
Henrike Schmidt publishes a monograph entitled “Small Genres, Grand Graphomaniacs. Studies in Sociology and Aesthetics of Russian Literature on the Internet (1994-2009)” as part of her State Doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin.
Ellen Rutten presents a paper “Add to Cart. The Poet’s Blog as PR Tool” at the conference «Image – Dialogue – Experiment: Fields of Contemporary Russian Poetry» at the University of Trier.
Sudha Rajagopalan gives a talk “Liveness and Surveillance in Mediatized Public Spaces” (On New media and the Panopticon) at an inter-disciplinary seminar “Oh my god, is this live?!” in Utrecht University.
Ellen Rutten’s monograph «Unattainable Bride Russia: Engendering Nation, State and Intelligentsia in Russian Intellectual Culture» comes out at Northwestern University Press. Apart from historically oriented chapters, the book contains a section on political metaphors in contemporary literature and online discourse.
February 2010
Henrike Schmidt gives a talk “Voices from the Margins – Russian bloggers from the Countryside” at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, as part of New Modes of Communication in the Post-Soviet World Project.
January 2010
Ellen Rutten presents a lecture on sincerity discourse in (post-)perestroika literature and in Russian blogs at the Freie Universitaet Berlin.
Ellen Rutten presents on literary play in blogs and tweets at the conference «Future of Russian II: Linguistic and Literary Play in the Era of New Technology» at the Freie Universitaet Berlin.
December 2009
Vlad Strukov and Henrike Schmidt present papers on Russian online gaming and Russian bloggers from the countryside, respectively, at a workshop entitled «Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture». The workshop is organized by a team of scholars based at the University of Cambridge, including Ellen Rutten.
Sudha Rajagopalan’s review of ‘The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals’ (Routledge 2009) appears in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema vol. 3, no. 3 (December 2009): 353.
As part of a transinstitutional project on Eastern-European “memory wars”, led by the University of Cambridge, Ellen Rutten receives HERA funding for a three-year research project on the language of cultural memory in Russian and Ukrainian social media.
November 2009
Digital Iconseditors hold a roundtable ‘Reading and Writing Russia in 1s and 0s: Digital Culture, New Media, and the Virtual Vox Populi’ at the National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Boston.
Vlad Strukov and Robert A. Saunders present a lecture ‘The Russian Internet: Creating a New Russia through New Media’ at Rutgers University, Newark. The event is supported by IREX.
Sudha Rajagopalan’s working paper on occult fandom is presented in an e-seminar of the Media Anthropology network under the auspices of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.
October 2009
Editors of Digital Icons serve as consultants for the BBC TWO television series on the internet.
Sudha Rajagopalan gives a talk «Not Just Spooky: the Collaborative Aesthetics of Supernatural Fandom on Runet» at the School for Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London.
Sudha Rajagopalan presents her current research to the Media and Culture Studies group at the University of Utrecht, under the heading: «Should we be afraid of Bloody Mary?: Occult Aesthetics and Pop Knowledge in a Russian Fan Community».
September 2009
An interview with Vlad Strukov about the journal features in 60 Parallel journal.
Robert A. Saunders presents on cyber-nationalism in the virtual near abroad at «The Impact of Emerging Media on Russian Reality» program hosted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Centre
The first issue of The Russian Cyberspace Journal entitled ‘Virtual Power: Russian Politics and the Internet’ receives a positive review in the German academic journal Osteuropa (9/2009). Reviewer Robert Hauser characterizes the journal as the «long missed platform for the publication of relevant research results and information about topical trends and developments, as well as for networking and for constructing and expanding a scholarly community».
The Moscow Publishing House New Literary Observer (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) releases the publication of Control + Shift: ličnoe i publičnoe v russkom internete, co-edited by Henrike Schmidt. The volume comprises articles by scholars in media and cultural studies from Russian and abroad, covering a wide range of topics such as identity building via new media in Russia and its Diasporas, state initiatives for Runet regulation versus subcultural discourses, and cultural practices such as blogging and networking.
May 2009
Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov give a series of lectures and lead teaching seminars on post-Soviet media at an International Higher Education Support Program (HESP) summer school in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Robert A. Saunders presents on the digital geography of the Second World at the Centre for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE) Visual and Cultural Studies Laboratory at the European Humanities University.
February 2009
Editors of Digital Icons author and edit a special issue of Kultura: Russian Cultural Review, an online information service of the Research Centre for East European Studies at Bremen University. The title of the special issue is ‘Notes from the Virtual Underground: Russian Literature on the Internet’.
November 2008
Robert A. Saunders chapter “New Media, New Russians, New Abroad: The Evolution of Minority Russian Identity in Cyberspace” and Vlad Strukov’s chapter “Russia’s Internet Media Policies: Open Space and Ideological Closure” appear in The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals, edited by Birgit Beumers, Stephen Hutchings & Natalya Rulyova, Routledge
October 2008
Ellen Rutten, Robert A. Saunders, and Ekaterina Kratasyuk present at the invited conference «Russia Online: Mapping the Russian Blogosphere and Participatory Internet» at Columbia University
Robert A. Saunders’ comments on the Russian Internet appear in «Kremlin ‘Soft Power’ Keeping Participatory Internet In Check» (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
September 2008
Vlad Strukov curates a programme of digital animation Flash Smash: Russian Digital Animation that was shown in Apollo West End, London, as part of London Russian film festival
October 2007
Vlad Strukov organizes a round table with Linor Goralik and Olia Lialia on the Russian Internet that is held at the BBC World Service. The radio and web podcast of the round table is available here. BBC Russian