“Ex oriente lux, and we are spreading it”: the main events of the project “Dialogues about the East”
At the end of the academic year “Dialogues about the East”, along with other HSE student projects, sums up the results of the year. We present to you the events that we managed to hold this academic year, as well as our key materials and interviews with experts in oriental studies
In the 2021/2022 academic year, the project “Dialogues about the East”, created by students of the Higher School of Economics on the basis of the School of Oriental Studies, continues to fulfill its main task — to acquaint people with such a multifaceted phenomenon as the East. The authors of the project wrote a number of informative articles and analytical materials, as well as created new sections and formats: #ordia_news with a news digest, #ordia_languages, where student materials are published in oriental languages, #ordia_memes with — a selection of memes for oriental memes, #ordia_music and # ordia_middleeast — playlists with famous oriental music.
The participants of the “Dialogues about the East” began to expand the discussion of relevant topics from the world of the countries of the East far from only within the framework of open meetings with famous speakers. So, this year, the project launched its own podcast, which covered a number of interesting topics — from Korean business culture to Japanese anime. The podcast was hosted by the project manager, a 4th-year student of the educational program “Oriental Studies”, Ekaterina Kozlova.
In the second season of the podcast, the project began cooperation with the State Oriental Museum: the issue was opened by art critic and museum employee Anna Golda. An episode with the candidate of art history, senior researcher, Daria Vanyukova is also being prepared for release. In addition, the members of the project developed a new rubric — interviews. For example, we managed to interview Maria Minasova, a specialist in Turkey, the head of the HSE project “Fundamentals of the Turkish Language”, about the specifics of the modern Turkish language and culture.
During this year, “Dialogues about the East” held three open meetings with such well-known speakers as A.A. Maslov, A.I. Fursov and A.E. Pack. In November 2021, Aleksei Maslov, the director of ISAA, a well-known sinologist, shared his opinion with the audience about the place of China in the modern world and the future of Russian-Chinese relations. At the second open meeting of the project, which was held offline on March 18, Andrey Fursov, Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Sciences, told the audience about the role of Oriental studies in the system of social sciences and also shared his vision of the future prospects for studying the countries of the East in Russia. Since the end of the last meeting, the project team began to prepare for a new open event which took place on July 2 — an art historian-Japanese, lecturer of the educational platform “Synchronization”, Anna Pak introduced the participants to the history and features of Japanese cinema.
The project is currently starting to recruit participants for next year. Follow the link to become a part of our team — https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1IekqVcKAbJQDfH4iiD9K4Jgtz1bGiW6qsRrYow_R33A1Nw/viewform!
Prepared the material: Sofia Danilyuk
Editor of the article: Alexander Sabantsev