Anna Graber, Postdoctoral Fellow, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
A Siberian Enlightenment? For much of Europe’s reading public in eighteenth century, such a thing was a contradiction in terms, for to them the name of Siberia was synonymous with barbarism. But learned visitors to Siberia’s three mining regions—the Urals, the Altai, and Nerchinsk—found at mines and metallurgical factories something they recognized as Enlightenment: a public-minded network of mine owners and mining officers who used European natural science to create mineralogical knowledge that could be used, they believed, to strengthen the Russian economy and ultimately improve the material condition of every subject of the Russian empire. This paper is an examination of how mines and metallurgical factories, the principle sites of Russian natural historical investigation of the earth, became significant centers of Enlightenment culture and knowledge production. I offer a new interpretation of the Russian Enlightenment as a movement that was far more technical and socially and geographically diverse than previously understood.
The 2016–2017 theme of this interdisciplinary seminar series is "Ideas, Ideologies, and Power: Eurasia Past and Present,"and is coordinated by Professor Rawi Abdelal and Justin Weir. The series features innovative research on the influence and mobility of ideas, the construction and evolution of ideologies, and the inter-connections among different forms of power.
Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
For more information, please call 617-495-4037.
LOCATION:CGIS Room S354, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20170301T170000Z DTEND:20170301T190000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR