Understanding Our Humanness
Soviet Tbilisi in an Anti-Russian Era: Contemporary Georgian Literature and the Urban Past View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Benjamin Sutcliffe
The Republic of Georgia adamantly rejected Russian cultural hegemony following the USSR’s collapse. However, there are two recent Russian-language depictions of Tbilisi, the country’s capital. Authors Baadur Chkhatarashvili and Natal’ia Gvelesiani describe their childhoods in Soviet Tbilisi. Chkhatarashvili’s novel _What Years Did We Have?_ (Kakie nashi gody!, 2023) gives a modernist image of the city, continuing the legacy of 1920s Georgian authors. In the novel _My Little Soviet Union_ (Moi malen’kii Sovetskii Soiuz, 2017), Gvelesiani portrays childhood, violence, and friendship on the outskirts of 1970s Tbilisi. These writers avoid the extremes of post-1991 images of the USSR: uncritical nostalgia or simply rejecting the Soviet past. Naomi Caffee and Kevin Platt argue that Russophonia (Russian-language writing by non-Russians) is a new trend that opposes Kremlin politics and traditional ideas about Russian writing outside Russia. I explore how Chkhatarashvili and Gvelesiani craft an innovative Russophone vision of the socialist experience, even as Georgian culture tries to erase Russian-Soviet influence. This paper is a part of my future monograph on Russophonia and contemporary prose in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.
Grounding Their Vision: Reimagining the Future of a Community Park within the Informal Settlement of Mathare in Nairobi Kenya View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Ellis
Global Research Nairobi Studio at Wentworth Institute, Boston: Grounding Their Vision is a project which encapsulates a range of programs and focuses primarily on community-led design and a participatory approaches to reimagining the future of an existing community public space, within the informal settlement of Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. This paper explores the project as marking a strong collaborative connection between Wentworth Institute Architecture the University of Nairobi and the United Nations - Habitat.
Tales of the Bibby Stockholm: Asylum Seekers in the UK Press View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Moir
This paper reports on a discourse analytic study of newsprint stories concerning the vessel known as the Bibby Stockholm, a large three-story barge secured by the UK Government to hold up to five hundred and six asylum seekers who are awaiting the outcome of Home Office decisions on their applications. A search was undertaken using Lexis+ UK of prominent tabloid and broadsheet newspapers with reference to the barge using the terms ‘asylum seeker,’ ‘migrant’, and ‘refugee’. Two hundred and seventy news stories were generated through the search, and these were then grouped into prominent issues reported on by the press. These included issues around the safety of the barge, living conditions, protest at its use, an official report and subsequent Government action, the cost of housing asylum seekers on the barge, the sudden death of an asylum seeker, and asylum seekers on the barge converting to Christianity. The analysis of these news stories focuses upon latent themes and key features of their rhetorical construction including the framing of issues in relation to the political orientation of the newspapers, their favoured rhetorical targets, lexical choices, and direct use of reported comments. The contrasting and contested nature of the ways in which these issues are reported on is discussed in relation to wider debates in the UK about asylum seekers and migration.
