Third Richard Stites Memorial Lecture, 23rd March 2018, "Functions, Feasts, and the Aesthetics

Note the time and location are different from our usual Friday seminars.

Time: 4:00 pm

Location: Healy Hall 104

Reception to follow

Join us for the Third Richard Stites Memorial Lecture on 23rd March 2018, by Professor Hubertus F. Jahn, titled: "Functions, Feasts, and the Aesthetics of Empire: Russian Tsars Travelling in the Caucasus during the 19th Century." This lecture traces the visits of Russian tsars to what is today Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. It looks at the logistics and semiotics of these trips, their ceremonial qualities, aesthetic arrangements, political and diplomatic purposes, and communicative processes. It situates the “scenarios of power” of the Russian monarchy in a region that had only recently been conquered and explores their role in projecting tsarist power in and beyond the multi-ethnic periphery of the Russian Empire.

Professor Hubertus F. Jahn is Reader in the History of Russia and the Caucasus at the University of Cambridge. He holds an MA from the University of Munich, a PhD from Georgetown University, and a second doctorate from the University of Erlangen. He is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Senior Fellow of the Historisches Kolleg in Munich. Among his major publications are Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I, Birches, Bolsheviks, and Balalaikas: Popular Culture in Russian History (ed.), A Festschrift for Richard Stites, and Armes Russland: Bettler und Notleidende in der russischen Geschichte vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart, a history of beggars and poverty in Russia from the Middle Ages to the present. He is currently working on a monograph about imperial representations and the aesthetics of empire in the South Caucasus.