Tag Archives: science fiction

RSACS XLIX International Conference 2023 Full Videorecordings

Opening Session

Section 1. Journalism

Section 2. American Culture of the 17th-19th Centuries 

Section 3. Contemporary American Culture of the 20th-21st Centuries. Part 1

Section 3. Contemporary American Culture of the 20th-21st Centuries. Part 2

Section 4. Ethnic Aspects of American Culture

Section 5. Gender Aspects of American Culture

Section 6. Fantastic in the Arts.

Round Table in Memoriam of Professor Yassen Zassoursky “Imprints: Image of Russia and Image of America”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstracts of the XLVIII International RSACS Conference “American Family in Flux Reflected in Literature, Art and Media”, November 30-December 3, 2022

Plenary session

November 30, 7.00 PM   room 103

 

  1. Dr.Larisa Mikhaylova

Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University

RSACS Academic Secretary

Introduction of the Plenary Speakers and the schedule of the conference

 

  1. Dr. Carolyn Calloway-Thomas

Past President, World Communication Association

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies

Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S. A.

 Portrayals of the American Family in Print  Media:  ‘Cells of Consciousness and Quilts of Reality’

“Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality—collecting fragments of experience, here, pieces of information there.”

—Toni Morrison

Once upon a time,  over fifty years ago, it was easy for Americans to define what is a family. Today, however, technology, educational attainment,  and shifting values and attitudes have profoundly  changed  the definition (s)  of  family,  leading to more diverse views of what constitutes an American family.  But what are some social  and cultural trends that intersect to promote changes in family life? Why do such trends matter?   And what are the implications  of such trendlines for the larger society and our place in it?  Although the reasons are complex and various, part of the answer lies in the way newspapers and magazines frame the nature, structure,  and idea  of the American family.

This presentation examines the way select newspapers and magazines frame trends and patterns of American family life through the specific lens of a thematic cluster analysis.  An analysis  of articles and editorials have much to recommend, because they can  reveal perceptions of  what  diverse  families share in common,  as well as suggest what is strategically significant in holding American society together and sustaining citizenship and  collective familial bonds. Newspaper articles and editorials  in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Post form the basis of the analysis,  augmented by literature from the Pew Research Center.  My major emphasis is on the words authors and editors  use to talk about the American family and how the words work. The end  goal is to see how editors and writers view the American family  in the twenty-first century.

 

  1. Dr. Maria Zolotukhina

Associate Professor

Sociocultural Practices Chair,Department of Culture Studies

Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia

The New American Dream: changing values of parenting and parenthood

To launch a child into adulthood right at the time of entering college (and via doing that) has been one of the fundamental values of American middle class – vague as this category may appear. It served as the criteria for successful parental efforts of upbringing and its tangible result – an independent person, already focused on his or her own future success, separated from the family of origin. What seems to have changed quite significantly over the past decades are both the time frame of growing up and the criteria for achieving adulthood thus calling into question the very philosophy of life for Americans. The good old formula – “leave your home, become independent, live the American dream” – that served so well as a universal cultural imperative, while remaining recognizable, has lost its immutable character. Therefore parenthood and parenting as a project changed their rather substantiative qualities: in what constitutes being child-centered now, how is independence and autonomy taught and – most of all – what is the new understanding of affection and its manifestations. Such profound changes can not but influence the core elements of American childhood – an ideal space for a child at home, means of learning financial independence and charity, the notion of privacy and self-esteem and achievement. New types of parenting having become media mems (helicopter parenting. Tiger moms, bulldozer parenting etc ) create both moral panics (boomerang children never leaving home once they are back) and bring about condescending smiles. Emerging adultdood – a term coined by Jeffrey Arnett as a phenomenon even made insurance companies extend their policies up to age 24-25. Covid pandemic of 2020 and 2021 seems only to have reinforced the already existing new patterns without fully doing away with the old ones creating a new version of the American dream.

The presentation is based on long time included observation, media sources and interviews.

 

Section 1. Journalism

Coordinator Dr.Andrei Ruskin (Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)

December 1, Thursday  3 PM – 4.30 PM room 103

 

  1. Andrei Ruskin

Journalism Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

The Family Subject Coverage by the US Local Media: a comparative analysis based on the 2022 daily newspapers publications

Publications in regional newspaper-type dailies on family topics in the broad sense of this issue have been constantly presented. Even in local newspapers, which began to be published in the XIX century and even earlier, the topics of family culture and relations between spouses, approaches to raising children, principles of household management, family property and inheritance of fortunes have always been raised. Invariably, newspapers reflected all sorts of intra-family conflicts when they became public, and even more so if it affected famous people. Another topic that American journalists dealt with thoroughly was related to the study of family unions that arose at the junction of different races, religions, cultures, traditions, estates and social classes. In recent years, publications about single-parent families and their problems, marriages between representatives of both the same sex and without gender indication, social support for low-income and disadvantaged families, families of new immigrants and migrants, refugees have increasingly appeared in the materials of local publications. The aim of the study was to determine whether there are pointed differences in the coverage of the family topic in newspapers of different states and, if so, which ones and how it is presented, whether or not it is related to the geographical factor, or the economic situation of a certain region of the USA. To conduct the study, a sample of 50 local publications was selected (one for each state). As criteria for the sample, factors such as publication in traditional paper and electronic form, daily frequency (at least five issues per week), the universal nature of newspapers (non-specialized) were taken into account. Only those publications were searched where the topic of family (or its derivatives) was not just mentioned, but also considered in detail (thus, the predominant genres of the selected publications were articles, reviews, interviews, sometimes reports and editorial columns). As a result of the conducted research on the coverage of the family topic by local newspapers, it was not possible to identify significant differences on a geographical basis. Almost all newspapers paid equal attention to the most significant and topical aspects of this subject. One of the explanations for this conclusion can be considered as the «publisher factor». Many local newspapers are still controlled by large publishing and media holdings, which «recommend» the same approaches to all «their» publications.

 

 

  1. Fedor Serdotetsky

Journalism Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

Genre and Thematic Features of the American Media Platform Twitch.Tv and Family Image On This Service

 

American platform Twitch.tv as a youth media platform  The topic of the report is the genre and thematic features of journalistic content on the American streaming platform Twitch.tv and the policy of this service regarding statements about new types of families in the United States.  The problem of the study is due to the difference between traditional media, which are used mainly by the older audience, and youth media, whose main consumers are young people under 35 years old, as well as the promotion of new ethical standards. The idea behind this study is to argue that streaming platforms and Twitch.tv in particular are extremely popular media sources among young people. For the report, foreign and Russian Twitch channels were selected, which are divided into the following categories: official media accounts, accounts of political journalists and accounts of video gaming magazines. The random sampling method was used for selection. On the example of these channels, genre diffuseness and hybridization of classical genres were revealed. Such genre specificity and format are unique to media content intended for a young audience. In addition, censorship of statements against the new type of families in the United States was revealed. Moreover, the study of Twitch channels revealed the existence of a complex hypermedia genre, which, thanks to new technological capabilities, combines the properties of all classical media at once, as well as the modified interactive property of new media, and promotes the speech culture inherent in youth into the digital space. The American platform Twitch.tv is a platform with great potential for journalism, as this service is an example of a fundamentally new type of content distribution, as well as interaction with the audience. However, at the same time, there is censorship on the platform aimed at the creators and consumers of content.

 

Continue reading

XLVII RSACS International Conference Program «Преодоление: выработка идеалов и их отображение в культуре США — Overcoming: Cultivating Ideals through Overcoming Barriers in American Culture»

Plenary Opening Session  

December 1,  Wednesday 6.00 PM

  1. Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova

RSACS Academic Secretary

Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State Universuty,Russia

Plenary Speakers Introduction

 

  1. Cynthia Lazaroff

 Cynthia Lazaroff is the founder of Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth. She is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of Dawn of a New Armageddon, a personal account of the Hawaii missile scare amidst escalating nuclear dangers, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Hiroshima Day. Cynthia is engaged in Track II citizen diplomacy and mediation efforts with Russia and has founded groundbreaking U.S.-Russian exchange initiatives since the early 1980s. Cynthia is dedicated to catalyzing efforts in U.S.-Russia relations to reduce the nuclear risk and to working with people in Russia and all countries to move towards a world without nuclear weapons.

Cynthia Lazaroff Opening Words — American Studies Conference Moscow 12-1-21

 

  1. Professor Nikolai Popov

PhD in History, Leading Researcher

RAS Institute of the USA and Canada, Moscow, Russia

American and Russian High School Students –Direct Connection Against the War Threat

 

Section 1. Journalism

Coordinator Professor Yulia Balashova (St.-Petersburg State University, Russia)

December 2, Thursday  11.30 AM – 2.30 PM

 

  1. Yulia Balashova

St.Petersburg State University, Russia

Russian and American Almanacs Calendar Invariant

Comparative media researches are one of the most demanded areas, however, in fact, they have not actually been sufficiently developed in the historical aspect. The media comparative approach is based primarily on the socio-political, not the general cultural factor, which is not always adequate to the historical and journalistic realities. This type of publications as an almanac emphasizes the cultural code. Comparison of the Russian and American traditions of publishing almanacs is being undertaken for the first time. In these two diverging traditions, almanacs have historically functioned in the different cultural environments: elite – in the  Russian culture, and popular, mass –  in the American version. Nevertheless, almanacs  comparative typological invariant  reveals the unity associated with the mediatization of the calendar, the seasonal reading circle. As the main empirical material, the almanacs of the period of formation are considered, by the 18th  –  19th centuries.

 

  1. Linna Liberchuk

Independent Scholar, Moscow, Russia

The Ideals and “Pitfalls” of the Founding Fathers’ Actions: Interviews with Accomplished American Historians at the Library of Congress

Interaction and mutual influence of American history and culture presented through interviews in а book “American History. Conversations with Master Historians” (2019) by D. Rubenstein, a philanthropist, investor, founder of “patriotic philanthropy”. Using the chapters which discuss the Founding Fathers, the presentation shows (1) key points of interviews with historians in regard of unusual historical, cultural and social events in the country’s past: the Founding Era of the nation. The “Congressional Dialogues” program at the Library of Congress was designed for members of Congress, (2) the book includes a part of these “Dialogues”, which was presented to the general readers in Washington, DC at the popular bookstore “Politics and Prose” (2019) and at the National Press Club (2020) for national and international journalists, (3) inspiring moments of biographies of “giants” – George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin with focus on ideals which motivated them (e.g. independence, freedom, readiness to give up power, international relations, diplomacy), as well obstacles of the crisis we never knew: an unsupported military budget, hierarchy, dynasties and partisan biases, inconsistency of political processes and segregation, excessive trustfulness and personal mistakes. Conclusion: (1) The book is a powerful tool of studying interview techniques through international communication. A civilizational shift in 1776 affected the complicated, difficult and confusing world as our world does now. David Rubinstein’s exceptional professionalism in asking questions shows authors’ knowledge of history, enthusiasm and humor. (2) The collection of interviews presents different opinions about historical decisions which changed the course of the nation, the Founding Fathers’ destinies illuminating their values, respect for ordinary people, priority of revolutionary ideas in private lives. This book is an effective source for historians, political scientists, international journalists in a search for strategies for the international cooperation.

Continue reading