29.03.2024
The Conference was held on March 29, 2024, within the framework of the Readings in Humanities RSUH-2024. It was attended by scholars from RSUH, IVI RAS, RUDN, VGIK, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, Herzen State Pedagogical University, Samara State University.
First Vice-Rector Pavlenko spoke about the advantages of the constructivist approach to the study of international relations, about its methodological limitations and substantive risks that researchers needed to take into account.
The Conference was opened by a plenary presentation by Victoria Zhuravleva, Head of the Department of American Studies. She demonstrated how the Russian and American Others had worked as significant ones in the national identity discourses of the United States and Russia over a long time period, forming the meanings convenient for solving domestic and foreign policy issues.
Dr. Alexander Kubyshkin of St. Petersburg State University, proposed his periodization of cultural wars during the years of bipolar confrontation between the USSR and the USA, questioning the universality of the term “cultural wars” as applied to various periods of the Soviet-American relations.
The participants demonstrated the variety of ways to question the past and present of Russian-American relations, offered by the methodology of constructivism, and focused their attention on the characterization of foreign policy as a field for constructing identity.
The presentations on Soviet-American relations during the Cold War were built on the discourse of mass sports, textual analysis of verbal, visual and audiovisual sources.
