This is a hybrid event. We will be hosting it both in-person at the Elliott School of International Affairs and on online- Zoom link here.

“A Race for the Future. Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness” (Harvard UP, 2022): is the first attempt to write a comprehensive story of “race” as an empowering discourse embraced by Jews in the Russian Empire and early USSR in response to the specific challenges of their imperial situation and the post-imperial future. It recreates a completely forgotten reality of the Russian Jewish race science and brings to light previously unknown archival materials pertaining to the broad Jewish grassroot medical, statistical and eugenic mobilization in the Russian Empire and the Soviet “affirmative action” empire. The story is told in two parts: the Science of Race and The Biopolitics of Race, and covers the period from mid-19th century to early 1930s.

The book talk will be followed by a discussion of the invisibility of “race” in Russian and Eurasian studies and will also address current calls to “decolonize” the field.

Speaker:

Dr. Marina Mogilner holds the Edward and Marianna Thaden Chair in Russian and East European Intellectual History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Since 1999 she has been a cofounder and coeditor of Ab Imperio Quarterly (Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space). She is the author of multiple articles and chapters exploring various aspects of the politics of knowledge in the Russian Empire, especially in human sciences. The list of her books include: Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series; University of Nebraska Press, 2013); edited collection A Cultural History of Race in the Age of Empire and Nation State (1760–1920) for the six-volume Bloomsbury series “A Cultural History of Race” (2021); A Race for the Future. Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness (Harvard University Press, 2022); and Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference. The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire (Indiana University Press, [July] 2023).

Moderator:

Dr. Marlene Laruelle is a Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES). At IERES, she is also Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, Co-Director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia), and Director of GW's Central Asia Program. She teaches courses in Populism & Illiberalism, the Rise of the Far Right, Politics of the Post-Soviet Space, Nationalism and Nationbuilding in Eurasia, and Central Asian Politics, and leads the Democracy Studies specialization of the MA in International Affairs. Dr. Laruelle received her Ph.D. in history at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures and her habilitation in political science at Sciences-Po in Paris. She is Senior Associate Scholar at the French Institute for International Relations.