Annual reports
CREECS activities have been suspended in 2004/5 and 2005/6.
Report for 2002/2003
CREECS was established as a research centre in 2000 and submitted a new MA programme for start date October 2001. It currently has no postgraduate students, thus no income other than external funding and a grant of £500 from the Dean’s Budget, with which it runs its seminar series and supports conference speakers.
Activities in 2002/3
CREECS organised a seminar series with a number of prominent scholars visiting Bristol. Visiting speakers included: Vladimir Paperny (LA and Bristol); Carol Adlam (Exeter); Gerard McBurney; Rosalind Gray Blakesley; Brandon Taylor (Southampton); Catriona Kelly (Oxford); Branislav Dmitrievic and Ljiljana Blagojevic (Belgrade); Rosamund Bartlett (Durham); David MacFadyen (UCLA); Marina Balina (Nottingham).
CREECS mounted a conference on ‘Stalin's Cultural Legacy’, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Stalin’s death. This attracted attention from the local press, as well as from national and international scholars. The conference took place on 15/16 March 2003 at the History of Art Department. The conference was attended by ca. 50 scholars from the UK and abroad, and is likely to lead to an edited volume (to be edited by Mike O’Mahony). The conference was co-organised by the BASEES Study Group for Culture and the Media.
As a result of CREECS’s conference on music for film and theatre a cluster of articles on ‘blockbusters’ has been published by Slavic Review, which contains several of the papers presented at the conference.
CREECS was awarded two visiting fellowships from the IAS for the calendar year 2002. Professor Vladimir Paperny visited Bristol from October to December 2002 and gave a seminar to CREECS. The article on Moscow architecture which he completed during his stay has unfortunately not been accepted for publication. He discussed with Mike O’Mahony possible internet projects.
CREECS had been part of a grant from the British Academy’s Joint Projects with South East Europe Fund to develop links between British-based scholars and their counterparts in the former Yugoslavia. A programme entitled ‘Visual Culture – East and West’ has been implemented; O’Mahony visited Belgrade in autumn 2002, and the scholars from Belgrade gave a seminar to CREECS in February 2003.
Applications
CREECS resubmitted its application in October 2002 to the AHRB Centre scheme, this time with Oxford and King’s College, London; the application was again A rated, but not shortlisted.
Plans for 2003/4
The British Academy continues the Joint Projects with South East Europe grant and the Belgrade project will carry on this session with a further round of visits. An international symposium is planned to take place in Belgrade during the next academic year to determine the next stage of the project. It is intended to establish a dedicated, research centred, website with specialist resources for scholars of visual culture in the former Yugoslavia.
CREECS is planning a seminar series for the session for fortnightly Wednesday seminars.
Applications are planned for funding for a collaborative project with several US and Russian universities, Almaty and Bishkek. If this is successful, it is hoped that a conference on Central Asian cinema could be organised in autumn 2004.
BB&MOM, August 2003
Report for 2001/2002
CREECS was established as a research centre in 2000 and submitted a new MA programme for start date October 2001 (postponed until October 2002). It currently has no postgraduate students, thus no income other than external funding and a small grant from the Dean’s Budget.
Activities in 2001/2
CREECS organised a seminar series for 2001/2 with a number of prominent scholars visiting Bristol as well as Bristol scholars presenting their works (Beckles Wilson, O’Mahony). Visiting speakers included; Professor Katerina Clark, Yale; Evgeny Dobrenko, Nottingham; Vladimir Andreev, Russian Embassy, London; Philip Bullock and Stephen Lovell, Oxford, and Mikhail Ryklin, Moscow/Bristol.
CREECS mounted a conference on ‘Music for film and theatre’ on 1/2 December 2001 at the Watershed Media Centre. The conference was attended by ca. 25 scholars from the UK and abroad, and lead to several papers being contributed to academic journals and to a cluster of articles to be edited by Beumers for Slavic Review. The conference was accompanied by a programme of new Russian films screened at the Watershed. The Alumni Foundation kindly sponsored the visit of the filmmaker and former chairman of the Filmmakers’ Union, Sergey Soloviev, who introduced his latest film, Tender Age, and offered a question and answer session after the screening. The conference also included a workshop-seminar by the composer Alexander Pantykin from Ekaterinburg on 2 December, which was open to members of the public and held at the Watershed. Pantykin’s visit was partly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, partly by the BASEES Study Group for Culture and the Media that co-organised the event.
CREECS was awarded two visiting fellowships from the IAS for the calendar year 2002. Professor Mikhail Ryklin from the Institute for Philosophy, Moscow visited Bristol from February to May 2002, and gave seminars and lectures in Bristol and at other universities (Nottingham, Exeter, London, Birmingham). He participated in a panel on the Moscow metro with O’Mahony and Beumers, the papers of which were subsequently published in a Moscow journal, and he worked with O’Mahony on a proposal for a collection of essays on the Moscow metro.
Applications
CREECS participated in, and was awarded, a grant from the British Academy’s Joint Projects with South East Europe Fund to develop links between British-based scholars and their counterparts in the former Yugoslavia. A programme entitled ‘Visual Culture – East and West’ has been implemented; it will involve, in the first instance, reciprocal exchange visits between Belgrade and Bristol.
CREECS applied in February 2001 to the AHRB Centre scheme; the application was A rated. CREECS is currently preparing another application to the new round of the scheme for October 2002.
Plans for 2002/3
Vladimir Paperny, scholar of architecture, will be visiting Bristol from September to December 2002 as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies.
The Belgrade project will continue this session with a visit by O’Mahony to Belgrade and a reciprocal visit to Bristol by Branislav Dimitrijevic of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Belgrade.
A conference on Stalin’s Cultural Legacy is planned for 15 March 2003 to mark the 50th anniversary of Stalin’s death.
CREECS has planned a seminar series for the session for fortnightly Wednesday seminars.
BB & MOM, August 2002
Report for 2000/2001
Having established itself as a research centre in 2000, CREECS used the first year for informal discussions about projects and conferences. These were held between Liz Leach, Mike O’Mahony, Rachel Beckles-Wilson, and Birgit Beumers over the academic year 2000/1.
CREECS is planning a conference on ‘Music for film and theatre’, to be held on 1 December 2001 at the Watershed Media Centre; this will be accompanied by a small programme of Russian films.
CREECS has applied for three visiting fellowships to the IAS and been awarded two: for Professor Mikhail Ryklin, Moscow (February – May 2002), and Vladimir Paperny, Los Angeles (September-December 2002). Ryklin is an internationally known scholar working in the field of Russian cultural history, who will be giving a variety of talks and seminars in Bristol, and work with Neil Cornwell (on Nabokov), and O’Mahony and Beumers on aspects of contemporary Russian culture (e.g. the metro; parks and gardens; monuments). Paperny is an architect and the author of a seminal study of Soviet architecture under Stalin. Paperny will be working with O’Mahony and Beumers on contemporary Moscow architecture.
CREECS has discussed projects and future collaboration with a variety of scholars working in the field of Russian and EE culture. Together with the universities of Oxford and Sussex the Centre has put together and application for funding in the AHRB Centre Scheme.
CREECS has created a new M.A. programme in Russian and East European Culture, which will be available from October 2001, but in practice start only in October 2002.
CREECS is planning a series of seminars for the coming academic session.
BB, July 2001