Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia

Emblem of the Sanktpeterburgskie Vedomosti

Introduction

Welcome to the official website of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia, an association of academics and scholars whose research interests are related to the Russian empire during the 'long' eighteenth century - that is, from the start of Peter I's reign in 1682 to the death of Alexander I in 1825. The website has a number of functions:

to provide members with news about meetings, conferences and relevant publications
to carry information for the wider academic community about the Study Group's activities
to archive and digitise the contents of the Study Group's Newsletter for wider academic accessibility

As with any website, any contributions, comments or corrections are very welcome - please use the following link, which you will also find at the bottom of a number of pages.

2013 Meeting of the Study Group

The next UK meeting of the Study Group will take place from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th January 2013 at the High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.

The format of meetings allows a generous 45-50 minutes per paper, which provides an excellent opportunity for discussion and feedback from an international audience. The languages are English and Russian. Synopses of papers presented will be published in the following volume of the Group's annual Newsletter.

We particularly welcome the participation of postgraduate students. For those students who wish to give a paper at the meeting, there are a limited number of subsidized places available each year. They should contact the organiser directly (see below) for more details.

The cost for three days' meals and accommodation in a standard room (without en-suite bathroom) and conference fee was £140 as of January 2012.

The High Leigh Conference Centre is easily reached by road (on the A10) or train from London (20 minutes from Liverpool Street Station) or from Stansted Airport. Click here for a map of the area.

Any enquiries about the Hoddesdon meeting should be directed to Erin McBurney.

IX International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia (Leuven)

The next international conference of the Study Group will be held in Leuven, from Thursday 17 July to Tuesday 22 July 2014. It is being organised by Emmanuel Waegemans and Hans von Koningsbrugge.

PRICE: The provisional all-in cost of the conference will be €550.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Members of the Study Group are now invited to propose contributions to the conference.

Proposals should take one of two forms:

EITHER

an individual paper (giving the title and a brief five-line summary of the contents/argument)

a panel of four papers (giving the names of the contributors, who should come from more than one country, the titles of their papers, and summaries of each paper)

Please do not propose more than one panel or more than one individual paper.

Proposals should be submitted to the conference organiser, by 1 October 2012.

Any enquiries about the conference should be addressed to Emmanuel Waegemans.

New ECRSA e-Journal - ВИВЛИОθИКА

The ECRSA Publications Committee is pleased to announce that Duke University has agreed to host ВИВЛИОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies. The ECRSA’s new peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary, open-access journal will be devoted to the culture and history of the Russian Empire (broadly defined to include all the ethnicities, nationalities, and confessions within and around its shifting borders) during ‘the long eighteenth century’ (1660-1830).

ВИВЛИОθИКА seeks to take advantage of electronic media to create a platform open to our entire scholarly community, irrespective of locality. Hence, this online journal will be open to submissions in all relevant disciplines and in all the major languages in which eighteenth-century Russian studies is researched. It is our hope that this e-publication will provide a forum for the promotion, dissemination and critical analysis of original scholarly research on eighteenth-century Russian studies, based on a spirit of internationalism and a belief in the principle of accessibility.

Submission guidelines to ВИВЛИОθИКА can be found on the journal’s website. Inquiries can also be addressed to individual members of the journal’s editorial board

Two-Year Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is seeking to appoint a postdoctoral research assistant for two years from 1 October 2012. The successful candidate will assist Professor Andrei Zorin (Oxford) and Professor Andreas Schönle (Queen Mary University of London) in their Leverhulme-funded research project, 'The Creation of a Europeanized Elite in Russia: Public Role and Subjective Self'. The project seeks to provide a cultural history of the first Russian Europeanized elite from its emergence during the ‘Petrine reforms’ until 1825. The individual will conduct research in areas related to the project, will organise meetings of the research team and will liaise with consultants working on the project in Russia.

The job details and further particulars can found at: https://www.recruit.ox.ac.uk/pls/hrisliverecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=102306

Call for Papers: "Enlightened Russian", Edinburgh, 31 August - 1 September 2012

The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre at the University of Edinburgh is organising a conference, entitled "Enlightened Russian: The Russian Lnaguage Society in the Age of Catherine the Great". The conference will take place on 31 August and 1 September 2012. The conference is being organised in partnership with the 2012 Catherine the Great Exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum.

The organisers invite abstracts of no more than 300 words accompanied by a short bio to be submitted by no later than 15 May 2012 to Dashkova.Centre@ed.ac.uk. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by 5 June and will be expected to register for the conference by the pre-registration deadline of 1 July. All participants are expected to submit a full version of their paper by 1 August 2012; the papers will be posted on the conference's website. More information on the conference and its main themes can be found in this document. Any enquiries about the conference’s topic, organization, or submission process should be directed to Dr Alexander Kozin.

Other Upcoming Conferences

Politics as Family Affair? Political Activity, State Intervention and Privacy in the Russian Noble Family, 1762-1917

Venue: University of Tübingen
Dates: Friday 25 May - Saturday 26 May 2012
More information: Overview.

The French Language in Russia: The second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth

Venue: University of Bristol
Dates: Wednesday 12th September - Friday 14 September 2012
More information: in English, in French and in Russian.

Central Eurasian Studies Society's Regional Conferences 2012

Venue: Tblisi Univeristy, Georgia and University of Indiana, USA
Dates: 20th-21st July 2012 and 18th-21st October 2012
More information: http://centraleurasia.org/conferences/call-for-papers-for-2012-cess-annual-conference/

New Monograph on Religion and Science at the Petrine Court

Robert Collis, The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725 (Leiden: Brill, 2012)

The reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725) was marked by an unprecedented wave of reform in Russia. This book provides an innovative reappraisal of the Petrine Age, in which hitherto neglected aspects of the tsar’s transformation of his country are studied. More specifically, the reforms enacted by the tsar are assessed in light of the religious notion of instauration – a belief in the restoration of Adamic knowledge in the last age – and a historical and cultural analysis of the impact of Western esotericism at the Russian court. Visit the publisher's page.

Call for Submissions for the Annual Marc Raeff Book Prize

The 1st Annual Marc Raeff Book Prize has been awarded to Guzel' Vazykhanova Ibneeva, Associate Professor at the Kazan Federal University for her monograph, Imperskaia politika Ekateriny II v zerkale ventsenosnykh puteshestvii (Moscow: Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2009). Her work uses the theme of Catherine the Great's travels within the Russian empire as a lens into both social history and the articulation and performance of imperial authority.

The Eighteenth Century Russian Studies Association, an affiliate organization of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), is now accepting submissions for the 2nd Annual Marc Raeff Book Prize. The Raeff Book Prize will be awarded annually for a publication that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for understanding Imperial Russia, particularly during the long eighteenth-century. The recipient of the award will be recognized with a cash prize, which will be presented in November 2012, during the ASEEES annual convention. The award is sponsored by the ECRSA and named in honor of Marc Raeff (1923-2008), historian, teacher, and dix-huitièmiste par excellence.

Click here for more details on assessing a book's eligibility, the procedure for nominating books and contact information for the Selection Committee.

Fellowships in London for young Russian historians

The London School of Economics is setting up four fellowships a year for the period between 2009 and 2013 for young Russian historians from regional universities. Three of these fellowships will be held for one month, and one of them for three months. The fellowships are aimed at early career historians who hold full-time academic positions in Russian regional universities. The area of specialisation should be within the period 1700-1917 and preference will be given to scholars specialising in the history of Russian international relations, broadly defined, and who would benefit from working in British libraries and archives and discussing their research with British and European scholars in the field.

Further information and application forms can be found on the LSE Paulsen Fellowship Programme web-site.