Georgy Arbatov Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature, RAS
The Society of American Culture Studies
The LI International conference
«The Concepts of «America» and «American» in Literature and Culture of the USA: historical and modern connotations»
Moscow, December 2-5, 2025
PROGRAM
Оpening Session
December 2, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Plenary Papers
Dr. Andrew Wiget
Professor Emeritus, New Mexico State University
“I, Too, Sing America”:
When A Spring Wind Arose in America and the Soviet Union
The theme of this conference — «The Сoncepts of «America» and «American» in Literature and Culture of the USA” –is not only timely but urgent. Today the ways in which Americans and America are represented not only to the world but to themselves is more than an academic question. We are in a reactionary moment. The idea of American exceptionalism has taken a bizarre and dangerous turn. In both the United States and abroad, attempts are being made to invalidate the idea of America as a complex historical mosaic of experience. Instead, there is official pressure to revert to an older, less complicated idea of America and an American national character. In this talk I want to argue for two points.
First, that this is, in fact, a genuinely reactionary response to the actual success of promoting that more complex vision of America through law, literature, and public discourse. I draw on my own personal and academic experience. I was raised and educated in that simpler notion of American national character, but my later career has been shaped by demonstrating the shallowness and inadequacy of such a simple notion.
Second, there are dangerous consequences to seizing this reactionary moment as a way to reassert bizarre notions of American exceptionalism and national character. In the US, the present government believes that ideologically reshaping public discourse on national identity and history is necessary step towards forging a unified national identity. However, experience shows that such a policy marginalizes large segments of the population and will inevitably lead to resistance, which will be used to justify violent suppression. In short, such steps ultimately undermine the goal of national unity that they aim to promote by showing that such exclusionary national identities have no inherent truth and can only be maintained by force.
For me personally–and I believe it is true for all of us all of us positioned socially as academics–the dangers of this reactionary moment can only be resolved by restoring a concept of national identity based on a truthful vision of national history and culture as complicated and inclusive. For me, a transformative moment in this regard was a 1991 seminar I organized in Moscow in which American and Russian scholars of American literature met to discuss the shape of the new, second edition of The Literary History of the United States then being developed at IMLI.
Тема этой конференции — «Понятие «Америки» и «американского» в литературе и культуре США» — не только актуальна, но и крайне важна. Сегодня то, как американцы и Америка представлены не только миру, но и самим себе, — больше, чем просто академический вопрос. Мы переживаем реакционный период. Идея американской исключительности приняла странный и опасный оборот. Как в Соединенных Штатах, так и за рубежом предпринимаются попытки опровергнуть представление об Америке как о сложной исторической мозаике. Вместо этого официально оказывается давление, чтобы вернуться к старой, менее сложной идее Америки и американского национального характера. В этом докладе я хочу обосновать два момента.
2 Dr. Carolyn Calloway-Thomas
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence
Past President, World Communication Association
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
The Otherness of the Other: Ethnic Diversity, Tribalism, and Empathy
On June 5, 2009, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who was imprisoned at Buchenwald concentration camp as a 16-year-old boy, toured the site with President Barack Obama during the latter’s trip to Germany. In commenting on the barbarism resident at Buchenwald and in reflecting on other terrible and evil acts that are “meant to diminish the humanity of other human beings,” from Cambodia to Bosnia, Nobelist Wiesel asked a compelling question, ”Will the world ever learn?” And then he offered, we human beings must “stop hating the otherness of the other” and “respect it.”
In my talk, I will argue first that genuine efforts to foster ethnic and racial inclusion are leading to an ossification of discourses and a troubling specie of tribalism (Us versus Them), which undermine sociability and civil society. Second, drawing on Yuval Noah Harari’s concepts of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, as well as on Kantian, Stoic and other notions of a respect for human dignity, I will offer a pedagogy of empathy as a humanizing way for deepening intercultural relationships among human beings in the United States. Finally, I will discuss how a pedagogy of empathy (a toolbox), fused with reasoned discourse and thoughtfulness can promote more compassion in the world. If not now, then, when?
Section 1. Journalism
Coordinator Dr. Andrey Ruskin
(Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)
December 2, 2025, Tuesday, 10 am – 1 pm (MSK)
- Nikolai Zykov
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
Everyday life of Americans as covered by The Voice of America
- Irina Isakova
Independent researcher, Moscow, Russia
Changing Image Perceptions of America: civil-military relations – traditions and current realities
- Arseniy Kanidyev
State Academic University of Humanities, Moscow, Russia
Algorithmic Constitutionalism and Freedom of the Press: Redefining the First Amendment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Content Moderation
- Nikita Litvinov
The HigherSchool of Economics – The NationalResearchUniversity, Moscow, Russia
Contemporary Russian-language Media of America and Russian-speaking-Americans: Features and difficulties of interaction
- Maxim Razmyarchik , Lipov Artem Alekseevich
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
Countering the Spread of Disinformation and “Deepfakes”: the experience of American Fox News and CNN TV channels in 2025
- Maria Sargsyan
Southern Federal University, Institute of History and International Relations, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
The Dynamics of American Media Discourse on Latin American Migration during Donald Trump’s Second Presidential Term
Fedor Serdotetsky
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
The Image of America and Americans in Digital Culture: Representations in the Telegram Discourse of International Media
- Yegor Akimov
High School #1, Yoshkar-Ola, Mari-El, Russia
The Political Culture of the «Deep South» through the Prism of Pachine politics: the phenomenon of Harry Byrd Sr.
- Polina Minailenko
Saint-Petersburg State University, Political Sciences Department, Russia
From Civil Religion to Narrative Identity: The Image of America in Presidential Holiday Proclamations
Konstantin Romanov
Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
“Canada Strong” vs. “Canada First”: Conceptualizing “Canada” and “Canadians” in Canadian Socio-Political Discourse of 2025
