More about the lecture:
In the emergent literature on Russian hip-hop, one often occurring assumption suggests that the racial dimension of US hip-hop was entirely untranslatable to post-Soviet Russia. In this lecture, using the case of the Black Star music label and its ex-celebrity Timati, I will challenge this assumption by presenting the framework of racial translation to analyze the (geo)politics of race/ethnicity and gender/sexuality in mainstream Russian hip-hop of the 2010s. The lecture will trace the racial translation strategies utilized in Timati’s music videos throughout the 2010s, such as regional originals, vicarious realness, and racial/sexual metonymy of the beard.

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V-NYI #8. Global Solidarity lecture series. "Performing race, gender, and sexuality in Russian hip-hop". Dinara Yangeldina, independent scholar. January 12, Friday. 1:00-2:20 pm (NY), 7:00-8:20 pm (CET), 8:00-9.20 pm (Kyiv), 9:00-10.20 pm (St. P)
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On Saturday night, Jan. 13th, (1 pm NY) we will be viewing and discussing The Apple, a film by Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran) from 1998.

Saturday Night at the Movies, NYI style, has already become a tradition since we went digital several years ago. It involves gathering in one dedicated Zoom room, which we transform into a “cinema” by sheer virtue of our combined energies and desires!

Polly Gannon will give a short introduction and share the movie link. After watching it, we return to our Zoom Home Cinema and talk about what has just transpired during our common watching—questions, ideas, conundrums, heartstrings (pulled or not), irritations, indifferences, or passions endured, tears, (whether shed or not), and other whys and wherefores—all of it!

Please join us. Popcorn is welcome! (Apples would be appropriate, too.)
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Saturday night at the movies. "Sib"/"The apple", Samira Makhmalbaf (1998, Iran). Post-screening discussion with Polly Gannon. Saturday, January 13. 1:00 pm (NY), 8:00 pm (Kyiv), 9:00 pm (St. P)
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Dear everyone,

You're warmly invited to "Constraining alternatives", a talk by Aron Hirsch of the University of Maryland. The event is open to everyone. You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe

More about the lecture:
The focus operator only conveys that alternatives to its prejacent are false (e.g. “I only had coffee” entails that “I ate” is false). But, how are the alternatives computed? It has been observed that alternatives often cannot contain negation. Fox & Katzir (2011) propose that alternatives are constructed by replacing the focus with syntactic constituents of equal or lesser structural complexity. If negation is not present in the prejacent, it cannot occur in the alternatives either, since it would add complexity.
In this talk, however, we observe that more complex alternatives are available in certain discourse contexts. This will lead us to explore a view where more complex alternatives are not blocked by the grammar, and alternatives are regulated pragmatically by the Question Under Discussion (as in Beaver & Clark 2011, Roberts 2012, Katzir 2023). This is joint work with Bernhard Schwarz.

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V-NYI #8. Distinguished Linguist lecture series. "Constraining alternatives". Aron Hirsch, University of Maryland. Monday, January 15. 11:30-12:50 pm (NY), 5:30-6:50 pm (CET), 6:30-7:50 pm (Kyiv), 7:30-8:50 pm (St. P)
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The "Global Solidarity" lecture series continues on Monday with Kevin Potter's talk on movement solidarities! Everyone is welcome. You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe

More about the lecture:
This lecture re-evaluates solidarity as a process of movement. Specifically, as a process of intensive movement, a moving solidarity enables us to confront the global, ruling power of the value-form, as Karl Marx theorized it. As such, in addition to the value-form operating in accordance with laws of motion, it also creates a poetics - a semiotic regime that delimits what is thinkable and knowable. I argue that international and collective solidarity is thinkable through migrant literature; and that a counter-poetics based on and in movement operates with its own logic, one that challenges global systems of accumulation and dispossession.
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V-NYI #8. Global Solidarity lecture series. "Movement solidarities: the value-form and the intensity of migrant poetics". Kevin Potter, University of Vienna. January 15, Monday. 1:00-2:20 pm (NY), 7:00-8:20 pm (CET), 8:00-9.20 pm (Kyiv), 9:00-10.20 pm (St. P)
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Dear everyone, we've got an important panel discussion on language activism planned for Tuesday. Please join us! Everyone is welcome. You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe

Details:
We'll discuss how learning your native language could be a practice oriented to increase the freedom of indigenous peoples and regional communities, promote the empowering of self-identity by challenging the concept of the power matrix of colonial languages. Is language activism a tool of solidarity and resistance against the imperialist erasure of self-identity? What is our personal connection to language? These are the questions we will be discussing.

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V-NYI #8. Global Solidarity lecture series. "Decolonizing dialogue: language activism". Marsel Rafail-uli Ganeyev, Gothenburg University. Sargylana Kondakova,Free Yakutia Foundation. Valera Ilinov, Komi Daily. January 16, Tuesday. 1:00-2:20 pm (NY), 7:00-8:20 pm (CET), 8:00-9.20 pm (Kyiv), 9:00-10.20 pm (St. P)
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You're warmly invited to "Queer everyday lives in digitalized spaces", a talk by Sung Un Gang. It's going to be fascinating, so we encourage everyone to join us! You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe

Details:
“We Are Everywhere” is a powerful reminder of the ubiquity of LGBTQIA+ individuals and a claim for queer people’s spaces in society. However, when a government insists on a heteronormative family model based on gender binaries, and concealing one’s queerness becomes a survival strategy, where do we find ourselves? Based on his ongoing research project “Smart People: Queer Everyday Life in Digitalized Spaces”, Sung Un Gang (Technische Universität Berlin) invites you to join his journey through diverse spaces in Seoul, South Korea: a queer feminist bookstore, trans* bars right neighboring an elementary school and mosque, a gentrified gay slum, and private Instagram accounts managed by lesbian bars.
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V-NYI #8. Global Solidarity lecture series. "Queer everyday lives in digitalized spaces", Sung Un Gang, Berlin. January 17, Wednesday. 1:00-2:20 pm (NY), 7:00-8:20 pm (CET), 8:00-9.20 pm (Kyiv), 9:00-10.20 pm (St. P)
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This Wednesday, we're thrilled to invite you to a lecture on cross-clausal dependencies in Georgian, delivered by Tanya Bondarenko of Harvard University! Fun fact: prof. Bondarenko is a NYI alumna and we're so happy to see her again as an invited speaker 💜

The event is open to everyone. You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe

More about the lecture:
In this talk I show that there are three strategies of forming long-distant wh-dependencies in Georgian: (i) a scope-marking construction, (ii) a prolepsis + gap construction, (iii) a prolepsis + wh-doubling construction. I argue that none of the three strategies involve an actual movement dependency, and make a proposal about how these structures get interpretations of long-distant questions. One question that arises is why long-distance wh-movement is impossible in Georgian. I speculate about this at the end of the talk, comparing several possible alternatives (Relativized Minimality, Antilocality, Horizons).
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V-NYI #8. Distinguished Linguist lecture series. "Getting by without movement: cross-clausal dependencies in Georgian". Tanya Bondarenko, Harvard University. Wednesday, January 17. 11:30-12:50 pm (NY), 5:30-6:50 pm (CET), 6:30-7:50 pm (Kyiv), 7:30-8:50 pm (St. P)
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Dear everyone, you're warmly invited to our final lecture in the "Global Solidarity" series this winter! Join us on Thursday to learn about the Afrikaaps language and decolonial liberation work that's related to it.

The event is open to everyone. You can find the Zoom link on the NYI website under Lectures: https://nyispb.org/universe
Details:
In this talk, I discuss the non-racial future of Afrikaaps, an African ‘language’ that became the slave lingua franca of the indentured indigenous, enslaved populations and Khoi in the settler Cape Colony. I begin with an overview of the history of the language, pointing to concerted attempts to move away from colonial and apartheid communication practices, and towards decolonial communication practices. I analyze three research projects that seek to empower Afrikaaps speakers today: (1) the development of the first trilingual dictionary of Afrikaaps, (2) Afrikaaps bilingual learning materials, and (3) considerations for a descriptive grammar, orthography and standardization of Afrikaaps.

I conclude the talk by reflecting on whether the existing measures can successfully challenge the binaries inherent in the remains of colonial and apartheid communication practices.
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V-NYI #8. Global Solidarity lecture series. "Decolonial communication and Afrikaaps: towards non-racial linguistic futures". Quentin Williams, University of the Western Cape. January 18, Thursday. 1:00-2:20 pm (NY), 7:00-8:20 pm (CET), 8:00-9.20 pm (Kyiv), 9:00-10.20 pm (St. P)
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What wonderful two weeks it's been! It's hard to believe the school is almost over. We've got something very special planned for the final day: first, we'll have a Festival of Workshops where you can see what the participants created over the past two weeks and share your own work as well.

After that, the Closing Ceremony begins. There'll be a virtual awarding of certificates, lots of joy, reminiscences, and some important announcements! Please come. We'll be happy to see you there. 😘

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Friday, January 19, 2024.
Festival of Workshops. 8:45 am (NY), 3:45 pm (Kyiv), 4:45 pm (St.P).
In (another's) Tongues.
Writing into Conflicts and Trauma.
Feminist Resistance Movements in Times of Conflict.
Diary Film, Autoethnography, and Poetic Film Writing.
Memories/Futurities.
Text as Image and Image as Text.
Closing Ceremony. Virtual awarding of certificates, video tribute, images of NYI, Constellations, and other surprises.
12 noon (NY), 7 pm (Kyiv), 8 pm (St P).
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Hi everyone! Applications are open for the V-NYI summer school (June 27 – July 12, 2024).

The participation fee is $75 if you apply before the early bird deadline: May 30. After that, it’s $95, and the final deadline is June 17.

Link to apply:
Seminar lists:

Stay tuned for updates — we can't wait to tell you all about the upcoming events!
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Applications for the V-NYI summer school are open! Early bird deadline: May 30. Final deadline: June 17.
Virtual NYI #9, June 27 – July 12, 2024.
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📌 What is NYI?
The NYI Global Institute of Cultural, Cognitive, and Linguistic Studies is an online, live advanced study program focusing on underrepresented and interdisciplinary fields of study, including critical cultural studies, theoretical linguistics, and more. We’re a worldwide intercultural network of inspirational people, bringing forth ideas and implementing changes. Upon completing the program, you receive a Certificate.

📌 When and where is NYI?
V-NYI #9 is happening June 27–July 12, 2024! You can join in from anywhere in the world with an internet connection and an installed Zoom app. You’ll take 3–4 seminars or workshops of your own choosing and hang out in our very own NYI Commons virtual space.