SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS FOR THE PANEL: Please submit your questions for the panel in advance so they can address your particular areas of interest at: https://goo.gl/forms/s4TtDOijLzZElI7L2
Russia Watch: 20 Questions on the Future of US-Russia Relations will feature an interdisciplinary panel of Russia experts from UK, moderated by Molly Blasing (MCLLC-Russian) and featuring:
Karen Petrone (History)
Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (MCLLC-Russian)
Cynthia Ruder (MCLLC-Russian)
Gregory Hall (Patterson School)
Panelists will respond to a set of up to 20 questions curated from queries that students, faculty and community members will submit electronically to organizers in advance of the session. The Q&A-style discussion will run for 60-75 minutes. Attendees will leave with a list of resources to explore further the major questions on Russia that arise in the session.
In recent months, revelations concerning Russia’s role in geopolitical struggles and in the 2016 American Presidential elections have dominated the headlines of our newspapers and social media feeds, with new developments coming at an almost bewildering pace. The details are alarming and destabilizing, and the cast of characters—from Putin to hackers to pop stars—have had something of an intoxicating effect on the American imagination. Public conversations about Russia have reached an intensity we have not seen in decades.
The future of US-Russia relations will have an impact on a range of issues that affect our communities, from electoral politics to human rights, from military alliances to cyber security and global economic development. Yet, in the era of “fake news” and shifting media landscapes, it can be difficult to know how best to approach the task of improving personal and institutional information literacy when it comes to news and analysis of Russia.
Given the complexity of the issues at hand, and the propensity toward misinformation about and exoticization of Russia, how can we as an intellectual community work to improve the tools we have to understand and engage with this critical aspect of contemporary foreign relations? What resources are available to the reading public for understanding and interpreting Russia, and how should we approach them?
Russia Watch 20/20 is a series of four interrelated events that come on the heels of a well-attended panel discussion on the topic of “Russia and the World in 2017” for the College of Arts and Sciences Civic Life seminar series in Spring 2017. The expanded “Russia Watch” program of events will focus on the present and future of US-Russia relations. We will bring UK’s Russia specialists from across the disciplines into conversation with community members and students in order to discover and make sense of the tools we have available for understanding Russia’s role in the world today.