'Antiquity and Modernity' Research and Education Centre named after A.S.Shofman
‘Antiquity and modernity’ REC was formed as the result of the scientific interest in ancient history and culture which is traditional and natural for the University Department.
During the International Forum, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Professor Arkady Semenovich Shofman’s birth (Kazan, November 2013), the REC was named after A.S. Shofman.
REC forms the basis for the implementation of research and educational projects of various levels. Thus, in December, 2012 the winter school on reception of an antiquity was successfully held. In addition, in spring of 2015 an international round table was held on the basis of the REC, dedicated to the anniversary of Professor V. I. Grigorovich.
Among the research projects implemented on the basis of the REC, are
RESEARCH PROJECT
"PATRIOTISM AND BETRAYAL IN THE ANCIENT WORLD"
(supported by RSNF in 2013-2015).
The aim of the project is to define the concepts of patriotism and betrayal in Greece and Rome, to show their correlation with value systems, ideology, law and the formation of identities, and to correlate them with the notions of patriotism and betrayal in modern society.
The relevance of the theme of the project is due to the imperishable value of such a phenomenon as patriotism-devotion to the homeland, which had its significance in all the epochs of the development of mankind, in many respects, determining the rise or decline of this or that state. And scientific novelty consists in the intention of the project participants to explore patriotism in close connection with its antipode - betrayal as well.
It is necessary to find out whether the content of the concepts of patriotism and betrayal in the ancient world coincides with its modern understanding in society? How, for example, is it legitimate to use the modern definitions of "collaborationism" and "the fifth column" to the phenomena of betrayal in antiquity? And can we say that the concepts of patriotism and betrayal were being filled with different content in different historical epochs and in different historical situations? And what are the differences, for example, of attitude to patriotism and betrayal among Greeks and Romans? All these and other issues require their solution and suggest ambiguous interpretations.
RESEARCH PROJECT
“Reception of antiquity: modern historiographical and socio-cultural practices”
(supported by RSNF in 2015-2017).
The objective of the project was to study the socio-cultural reception of antiquity in the framework of interdisciplinary research.
The relevance of the theme of the project is due to the growing recent tendency of cultural memory formation through history. The scientific novelty of the project is related to the fact that in the last decades it was precisely the anticologists of Kazan University who offered the scientific community one more version of the reception of antiquity: historical or socio-cultural reception.
Introduction of the historical or socio-cultural reception concept made it possible to define the analysis of the ancient heritage role in the design of modern socio-cultural reality as the main direction for Kazan historians today. At the same time, domestic experience is confirmed by the materials of foreign historiography, and all this together creates a single global research space in the study of reception. Within the framework of interdisciplinary approaches specific examples of reception of antiquity in a number of modern socio-cultural practices (cinema, advertising, performative practices), as well as the reflection of these studies in foreign historiography have to be explored.
