Join Harvard's Davis Center for a discussion with Farrah Karapetian and Feruza Aripova on differences in representation of labor, ethnicity and gender between the Soviet and post-Soviet period. 

Labor, friendships between ethnicities and strong, unsuperficial working women are themes inextricable from the Soviet metanarrative as depicted in photography and films from that period. Recent video and photography by artists from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as recent popular television and film from the Russia Federation, reveal the changes in that metanarrative, including relationships to issues of labor, ethnicity and gender that are almost entirely reversed from those valorized during the Soviet period. How might these changes reflect and influence Russian self-perception, and in turn, the perception of Russia from the world outside its borders?

Speakers:

Farrah Karapetian, artist; public thinker

Feruza Aripova, PhD candidate, Northeastern University; center associate, Davis Center