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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

1. 
   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)

1. Nikolai Zykov
   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
   Everyday life of Americans as covered by The Voice of America

2. Irina Isakova
   Independent researcher,  Moscow, Russia
   Changing Image Perceptions of America: civil-military relations – traditions and current realities

3. 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

4. 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

5. Maxim Razmyarchik , Artem Lipov 
   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 

6. 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

 7. 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 

8. 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.

9. Polina Minailenko
   Saint-Petersburg State University, Political Sciences Department, Russia
   From Civil Religion to Narrative Identity: The Image of America in Presidential Holiday Proclamations 

10.  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

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

Coordinator Dr. Boris Maksimov
(Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)
 December 2, Tuesday 2.00 pm-5.00 pm MSK

1. Helen Lioznova
   Lomonosov Moscow State University School of Public Administration, Russia
   The Concept of “America” in the North American Colonies at the Turn of the 17^th to 18^th Centuries: the contribution of New England Puritanism to the formation of regional identity and American self-awareness

 2. Savelii Iakhnovets
Lomonosov Moscow State University Law Department, Russia
Philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment as the basis of XVIII century’s culture. Civilizational Analysis of T. Jefferson and T. Paine views 

3. Narine Shakhnazarova
   Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus
   America in the Perception of English Romanticists

4. Boris Maximov
Lomonosov Moscow State University Journalism Department, Russia
The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe

5. Andrey Taigildin
   Mari State University, Yoshkar-Ola, Mari-El, Russia
   «The Norman» Southerners or the Development of National Identity of the White Population in the Slave-owning States of the United States before the Civil War of 1861-1865

6. Tatyana Belova
   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Philology Department, Russia
   National Identity of Americans in the Novella Daisy Miller by H. James (1878) in Historical Connotations

_7. Nikita Leonov
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
The Genesis of the Myth of the West in American Culture 

 8. Eugenia Andreyeva
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
Alaska in the Works of American Artists in the Context of Regional Exploration in the 19th–20th centuries

 9. Peter Korolyov
Kursk Liceum # 1, Russia
Facets and tendencies of American culture of the 17th – 19th centuries in the research of the Kursk scientific school (in the works of T.V. Alentyeva and M.A. Filimonova)

10. Eugenia Pogadayeva
    Perm State National Research University, Russia
    Images of America and Americans in the Poetry of Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda: Ontological and Typological Similarities and National Originality 

  Section 3. American Culture of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries

Coordinator Prof. Dr. Elena Kornilova
(Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
 December 3, Wednesday, 10 am – 1.30 pm (MSK)

1. Olga Antsyferova
   Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia
   Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy: A Century Later

 2. Natalia Petrovskaya
Georgy Arbatov Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, RAS, Moscow, Russia
Americans and Work: 250 Years of Transformation from Farmer to Freelancer

3. Olga Nesmelova, Zhanna Konovalova
   Kazan Federal University, Russia
   “Why They Don’t Write Great American Novels Anymore?”  A genre in crisis in the 1960-1970s

 4. Anna Aleinik
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia
The Neon Emptiness of the American Dream in A. Ginsberg’s poem A Supermarket in California 

 5. Kirill Ignatov
Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
Ideological revisionism” in contemporary US literature

 6. Natalia Kopytko

Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus

America and Americans Through the Prismatic Lens of Otherness in J.C. Oates’s Novel The Gravedigger’s Daughter

7. Irina Kudryavtseva
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus
Phenomena of American mass culture in the collection of short stories Flash Fiction America

 8. Alla Nikoulina
Akmulla Bashkir State Pedagogical University, Ufa, Russia
The U.S. South, North and West in Walker Percy’s Philosophical novels

9. Anastasia Korolyova
Research Institute of Theory and History of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
American Alternative: Edward Hopper’s Magical Realism

 10. Olga Lyubimskaya
Independent Researcher, Tyumen, Russia
The Image of Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s Novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s: The Escape of the Holy Spirit 

 11. Sofia Semenova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
The Narrator Figure and Narrative Techniques in L. M. Miranda’s musical Hamilton: An American Musical 

Section 4. Ethnic Aspects of American Culture

 Coordinator Dr.Oksana Danchevskaya
(Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia)
December 3, Wednesday, 3.00 am – 7.00 pm (MSK)

1. Tatiana Alenkina
   Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia
   The Contemporary Epistolary Novel about Indians and the Search for Hybrid Identity

2. Dmitry Popov
   Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York, USA
   Mary Austin as a Singer and Herald of the Native American’s Poetic Tradition: At the Origins of Modern American Poetry

 3. Oksana Danchevskaya
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia
Spider Woman as a Symbol of Femininity and Wisdom in North American Indian Mythology: Historical Roots and Modern Interpretations

4. Dmitry Vorobyev
   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
   The Problem of the Emergence of African-American Identity in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Work “The Souls of Black Folk”

5. Tatiana Voronchenko
   Transbaikal State University, Chita, Russia
   “Chicano” in Search of Identity: A Complex of ‘Latinofuturism’ Ideas in the Poetry of Mexican-American Authors

6. Elena Gladkyh
   Transbaikal State University, Chita, Russia
   The Representation of Regional Identity in Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Novel The Squatter and the Don

7. Ekaterina Fyodorova
Transbaikal State University, Chita, Russia
The Problem of Self-identification in the Historical Novel by Mexican-American (Chicano) Writer A. Morales The Brick People

8. Tatiana Ivanova
   University of Science and Technology MISIS, Russia
   Roadside Memorials in the USA: National Character Through the Lens of a Utilitarian Approach to Memory Preservation

9. Kristina Korobko
   Lugansk State Pedagogical University
   The Female Perspective on the “American Dream” within Chinese Immigrant Discourse in the United States (A Case Study of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club”)

10. Yuri Stulov
    Independent researcher, Belarus
    America Imagined and Real in the Conscience of Chinese immigrants (on the basis of Gish Jens’ dilogy)

11. Maxim Ochkalov
    Lomonosov Moscow State University, Sebastopol Branch
    Italian-American Identity as a Narrative: The Evolution of Representations in US Cinema (Mid-20th – Early 21st Centuries)

12. Elena Shabashova
    Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia
    American University: Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?

Section 5. Gender Aspects of American Culture

Coordinators Dr. Nadezhda Shvedova
(RAS Arbatov Institute of the USA and Canada, Russia) and Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova
 (Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)
 December 5, Friday 10.00 am – 1.00 pm (MSK)

 1.Nadezda Shvedova
Georgy Arbatov Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, RAS, Moscow, Russia
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA): A Long-Awaited Prospect

 2. Maria Zolotukhina
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
Child Reading and National, Ethnic and Racial Identities in the contemporary US

 3.Tatyana Kamarovskaya
M.Tank Belarusian Pedagogical University, Minsk, Belarus
Religious Narratives in M. Gordon’s Novel “Pearl”

 4.Tatjana Srceva-Pavlovska
American University of Europe – AUE, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia
Female Paranoia as a Symptom of the Postmodern Quest for Meaning – Thomas Pynchon’s Oedipa Maas and The Crying of Lot 49

 5. Yuliya Viarbitskaya
Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus
Understanding the role of women in the formation of the American nation (based on Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series) 

6.  Ekaterina Markova
Kuban State University, Krasnodar, Russia
The Shapeshifter Called Moses: Harriet Tubman and Gender Ambiguity in James Emanuel’s Mythopoetics

7. Larisa Mikhaylova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
Egalitarian Concepts of Saving the World in the popular TV Series  9-1-1 (2017-pres)

Section 6. Fantastic in the Arts

Coordinator Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova
(Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)
 December 5, Friday, 2.15 pm – 5.15pm (MSK)

 1.Larisa Mikhaylova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department, Russia
E Pluribus Unum: Employing the Basic American metaphor in the series Pluribus (2025)

 2. Ekaterina Abramova
HSE University, Moscow, Russia
A Satirical Depiction of the American Backwoods in the Comic Strip Li’l Abner by Al Capp 

3. Aishat Ostanbekova
   St-Petersburg State University, Russia
   March Music as a Manifestation of Superman’s American Identity (Based on the 1978 Film Superman)

 4. Stanislav Kazachenkov
Rostov State University of Economics , Russia
The “American Mission” Re-Imagined: From Captain America’s WWII to the Avengers’ Global Guardians

 5. Artemy Atamanenko
Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, Russi
The Political Identity of the Contemporary American Superhero: ‘The American Way’ and Power

 6.Valeria Parfenova
Penza State University, Russia
American Antiutopias of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries

 7. Helen Kornilova
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Journalism Department
The Future of American Civilization in Bong Joon-ho’s Dystopian Film Mickey 17 based on the novel by Edward Ashton

8. Osip Kazantsev
   Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
   How to be an American without America? An answer by J. G. Ballard in Hello, America! (1981)

 9. Darya Mitrokhina
Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia
An American Nightmare: The Transformation of Lovecraftian Motifs in The Sinking City and Darksiders 2 Video Games as a Reflection of National Identity”

Imprints: Image of Russia and Image of America

Round Table In Memoriam of Professor Yassen Zassoursky

Coordinator RSACS Academic Secretary Dr. Larisa Mikhaylova

December 3, Wednesday, 7.30 pm –9 pm  (MSK)

 1. Alyona Vanova
Independent researcher, Moscow, Russia
Metaphorical concepts of America and Russia: stereotypes and archetypes

 2. Stanislav Kazachenkov
Rostov State University of Economics, Russia
Redefining the ‘Digital Frontier’:  Russian Innovation Vs. U.S. Tradition in Tax Systems 

 3. Zhang Rong
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Department of Foreign Languages, Moscow, Russia
Music as a Medium: The Efficacy of Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching in Chinese Learners’ Perceptions of Russian and American National Images through Foreign Language Song Teaching

 4 .Ljubica Kardaleska – Radojkova
American University of Europe – AUE, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia
Divergent Paths: Legislating Language in the US and Canada 

 5. Pankaj Kumar
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Animation as a Cultural Bridge: Opportunities for Russian–American Co-Productions in Children’s Animation

6. Irvin Weil
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA
Family Story as an Origin Story for the Country