BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH PRODID:-//Telerik Inc.//Sitefinity CMS 15.1//EN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Eastern Standard Time BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=11 TZNAME:Eastern Standard Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20250301T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=2SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:Eastern Daylight Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DESCRIPTION:The Moynihan Insititutes' Center for European Studies and the R ussian Department will host a talk by Steven Lee \;Ph.D.\, from \; the University of California\, Berkeley.Asians have played a strangely con spicuous part in the current war. After Russian forces withdrew from Bucha in 2022\, it became clear that at least some were from national minority regions near the Mongolian border. More recently\, on the front lines of K ursk\, North Korean soldiers are participating in active combat for the fi rst time since the Korean War. This talk presents the “Asiatic” aspects of the war as echoes of: 1) Russian-émigré Eurasianism\, which in the 1920s and 30s held that a restored\, spiritual Russia would counter a decaying\, materialist Europe\; and 2) visions of the Bolshevik Revolution as a deco lonizing revolution that\, by the late 1920s\, increasingly focused on Eas t Asia. \;The talk bridges the early 20th century to the present\, fir st by discussing contemporary interpretations of Eurasianism by such figur es as Alexander Dugin\; and second by highlighting a flexible\, ironic app roach to minority identity from the late-Soviet period that attached unexp ected meanings to race and nation—what Lee has elsewhere conceptualized as “deterritorialized nationality.” This flexibility\, Lee argues\, enables the cynical reworking of early decolonizing discourses now on display in P utin’s Russia. However\, deterritorialized nationality also opens alternat ives to such cynicism\, as evidenced through a brief\, concluding discussi on of Soviet Korean rock star Viktor Tsoi.Steven Lee \;Ph.D. is an ass ociate professor of English at the University of California\, Berkeley. Hi s research interests include American literature\, comparative ethnic stud ies\, Soviet and post-Soviet studies\, and Northeast Asia during the inter war years. He is the author of \;The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cult ures and World Revolution \;(Columbia UP\, 2015)\, co-winner of the ML A’s Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies\, and co-editor (with Amelia Glaser) of \;Comintern Aesthetics \;(University of Toronto Press\, 2020)\, winner of the ACLA’s René Wellek Prize. DTEND:20250416T210000Z DTSTAMP:20260305T203542Z DTSTART:20250416T200000Z LOCATION: SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Deterritorialized Asiatics\, In and Against the Ukraine War UID:RFCALITEM639083217429670260 X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

The Moynihan Insititutes' Center for Europe an Studies and the Russian Department will host a talk by Steven Lee \;Ph.D.\, from \;the University of California\, Berkel ey.

Asians have played a strangely conspicuous part in the current w ar. After Russian forces withdrew from Bucha in 2022\, it became clear tha t at least some were from national minority regions near the Mongolian bor der. More recently\, on the front lines of Kursk\, North Korean soldiers a re participating in active combat for the first time since the Korean War. This talk presents the “Asiatic” aspects of the war as echoes of:

1) Russian-émigré Eurasianism\, which in the 192 0s and 30s held that a restored\, spiritual Russia would counter a decayin g\, materialist Europe\; and

2) visions o f the Bolshevik Revolution as a decolonizing revolution that\, by the late 1920s\, increasingly focused on East Asia. \;

The talk bridges the early 20th century to the present\, first by discussing contemporary i nterpretations of Eurasianism by such figures as Alexander Dugin\; and sec ond by highlighting a flexible\, ironic approach to minority identity from the late-Soviet period that attached unexpected meanings to race and nati on—what Lee has elsewhere conceptualized as “deterritorialized nationality .”

This flexibility\, Lee argues\, enables the cynical reworking of early decolonizing discourses now on display in Putin’s Russia. However\, deterritorialized nationality also opens alternatives to such cynicism\, as evidenced through a brief\, concluding discussion of Soviet Korean rock star Viktor Tsoi.

Steven Lee \;Ph.D. is an ass ociate professor of English at the University of California\, Berkeley. Hi s research interests include American literature\, comparative ethnic stud ies\, Soviet and post-Soviet studies\, and Northeast Asia during the inter war years. He is the author of \;The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution \;(Columbia UP\, 2015)\, co-winner of the MLA’s Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies\, and co-edi tor (with Amelia Glaser) of \;Comintern Aesthetics \;(Uni versity of Toronto Press\, 2020)\, winner of the ACLA’s René Wellek Prize.

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