IDEM Doctoral Seminar 2026–2027: Identities, Memories and Creativity: Minorities (ethnic, religious, gender-based and sexual) in the Eurasian region

IDEM Doctoral Seminar 2025–2026: Identities, Memories and Creativity: Minorities (ethnic, religious, gender and sexual) in the Eurasian region, coordinated by Dominique Samson and Olga Blinova.

Seminar description

Our societies are still largely shaped by norms and values produced by a dominant order—particularly religious or political—that claims universality. History, literature, the arts and gender have often been the work of the ‘civiliser’, anxious to perpetuate a world in their own image, to the exclusion of all others, which must be denounced, concealed or eradicated. For several decades now, the emergence of ‘minorities’ in the public sphere – and thus of new fields of study – has been challenging societal models and assigned roles. Consequently, these groups or communities present a challenge both to states and to public opinion. Apart from the difficulty of defining a minority – the recognition of which may also entail specific rights – do the members of these minorities themselves identify as such?

At a time when many authorities are retreating to what they call ‘traditional values’ in the face of shifting identities in both society and the arts, diversity is once again emerging as a threat to political stability and social cohesion. The aim of this transdisciplinary doctoral seminar is to analyse how ‘marginalised’ and ‘minorised’ groups (from colonisation through repression to erasure) are formed and how they evolve.

Seminar programme

- Wednesday 21 October 2026 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in Room 6.04 at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13^e and via videoconference (Zoom link to follow).

• Alexandre Grigorev: ‘Indigenous gender relations in Siberia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) ”
• Discussant : Arthur Clech.

- Wednesday 20 January 2027 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in Room 6.05 at the Pôle des Langues et Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13^e and via videoconference (Zoom link to follow).

• Catherine Poujol: “Jews of Bukhara, Tchalas, Batche: various nuances of minorities in Central Asia”
• Speaker to be confirmed. 

- Wednesday 10 March 2027 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in Room 6.15 at the Centre for Languages and Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13^e and via videoconference (Zoom link to follow).

• Tatiana Bottineau: ‘The Sorbs in Germany: the smallest Slavic people in Germanic lands”
• Speaker to be confirmed. 

- Wednesday 26 May 2027 from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in Room 6.05 at the Centre for Languages and Civilisations, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13^e and via videoconference (Zoom link to follow).

• Anna Shcherbakova & Olga Blinova: “ Presentation of issue no. 60 of the journal ILCEA, Women’s Literary Production and Mediation in Russia at the Turn of the 21st century: from women’s literature to feminist writing ”.