"Space-Time, Death-Resurrection, and the Russian Revolution"
Thursday, September 24th, 5:00-6:30pm at Green College Coach House.
Abstract:
Extraordinary excitement and trauma experienced by the Russian public during violent and catastrophic events of the early 20th century – the World War, Revolutions, and the Civil War – brought about dramatic changes in cultural perceptions of space and time. By 1921 – after nearly seven years of intellectual isolation – sensational news started arriving from Europe, producing an intellectual turmoil that focused on Einstein’s relativity, Steinach’s rejuvenation, and Spengler’s diagnosis of world history. Their ideas, when reinterpreted within the new revolutionary culture, contributed to an outburst of wildly unconventional theories and speculative hypotheses that linked the concept of space-time to biological resurrection, astronomical and historical catastrophism, the eternal return, and fundamental periodicities at different time scales (personal, historical, and cosmological).
This talk is sponsored by the Eurasian States and Societies Series at Green College,
PLEASE CIRCULATE.
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Adam Frank
Associate Professor, Department of English
Director, Science & Technology Studies Graduate Program
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
604.822.4087
adafrank@mail.ubc.ca
Transferential Poetics, from Poe to Warhol (Fordham UP, 2015).
