Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern Russian Culture

Working Symposium

JANUARY 27-28, 2011

This working symposium will bring together scholars of Russian literature, religious history and art history to focus on the various ways the iconic image of Mary has been used to frame and shape Russian national, cultural and spiritual self-expression. The symposium will result in a volume on the Mother of God in modern Russia to be edited by Amy Adams, associate professor of Russian literature at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø, and Vera Shevzov, associate professor of religion at Smith College.

 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 27
At the , Clinton, MA

Tour of the Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, MA
Gordon Lankton, Museum Founder

Welcome
Rev. Michael McFarland, S.J., President, 17³Ô¹ÏÍø

Acknowledgements
Amy Adams, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, 17³Ô¹ÏÍø
Vera Shevzov, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Smith College

Keynote Address
William Wagner, Brown Professor of History, Williams College

 

 

FRIDAY, JANUARY 28
At the 17³Ô¹ÏÍø

 

PANEL ONE
Moderator: Vera Shevzov, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Smith College

  • "More Numerous Than the Stars in Heaven: An Eighteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Mariology"
    Elena Boeck, Associate Professor of Art History and Architecture, De Paul University
  • "The Akhtyrskaia Mother of God Icon"
    Christine D. Worobec, Board of Trustees Professor and Distinguished Research Professor of History, Northern Illinois University

 

PANEL TWO
Moderator: Olga Partan, Lecturer, Russian Languages and Literature, 17³Ô¹ÏÍø

  • "Pushkin Framing Mary"
    Sarah Pratt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California
  • "Woman at the Window: Maksim Gorky's Revolutionary Madonna"
    Amy Singleton Adams, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, 17³Ô¹ÏÍø 
  • "In Search of Wholeness: The Many Faces of Mary in Tsvetaeva's Poetry and Fiction"
    Alexandra Smith, Professor of Russian Literature, University of Edinburgh

 

PANEL THREE
Moderator: Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • "Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's Petrograd Madonna and the Meanings of Mary in 1920"
    Wendy Salmond, Professor of Art and Art History, Chapman University 
  • "Our Mother of Paris: The 'Creative Renewal' of Mariology in the Russian Emigration, 1920s-1940s"
    Natalia Ermolaeva, Department of Library and Information Science, Rutgers University
  • "'The Painter of the Madonna': Pimen Maksimovich Safronov and Marian Iconography, 1930-1970"
    Roy Robson, Professor of History, University of the Sciences
  • "Russian Religious Feminism and the Marian Ideal: Motherhood and 'Maria' in the Late Brezhnev Era"
    Elizabeth Skomp, Assistant Professor of Russian, Sewanee: The University of the South

 

PANEL FOUR
Moderator: Amy Singleton Adams, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, 17³Ô¹ÏÍø

  • "Following in Mary's Footsteps: Marian Apparitions and Pilgrimage in Contemporary Russia"
    Stella Rock, Senior Research Fellow, Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society, Baylor University
  • "The Marian Face of Contemporary Russia"
    Vera Shevzov, Associate Professor of Religion, Smith College