SUNDAY, 29 FEBRUARY

Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion

1:30                Welcoming of the participants and guests—Stephen Zipperstein,
 Co-Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Introduction to the Babel Events—Gregory Freidin

2:00                Exhibition “Isaac Babel: A Writer’s Life (1894-1940)” from the
          Irwin T. and Shirley Holtzman Collection at the Hoover Institution Archives
          and other Stanford, Hoover, and private collections
                       Cissie Dore Hill, Exhibits Coordinator of the Hoover Institution Archives.

2:30                Conference Introduction—Arnold Rampersad, Cognizant Dean for the Humanities

2:45         Freidin (Stanford), “The Other Babel: The Play Maria and Babel’s Petersburg Myth.” Stauffer Auditorium, Herbert Hoover Memorial Building (ground floor)

3:30                Discussion

4:00                Reception for the conference participants and guests in the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibition Pavilion

4:45                Conference adjourns to the Pigott Theater for the five o’clock performance of Babel’s play Maria, directed by Carl Weber and produced by Stanford’s Drama Department

MONDAY, 1 MARCH

Tresidder Oak Lounge (Tresidder Student Union, 2^nd floor)

9: 30 AM                                Morning Session: Babel and Biography

Moderator: Steven Zipperstein (Stanford)

•        Reinhard Krumm (Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Germany), “Writing A Biography of Isaac Babel:
A Detective’s Task”

•        Patricia Blake (Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University), “Researching Babel’s Biography: Adventures, Fiascos and Consummations”

 10:45–11:00                Break

 •        Carol Avins (Rutgers University), “Isaac Babel and the Jewish
          Experience of Revolution”

12:00                       Discussion

 1:00–2:00                  Lunch for the conference participants and guests

2: 15 PM                 Afternoon Session: Babel in Context

                Moderator:  Monika Greenleaf

•        Efraim Sicher (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel), “Breakdown and Bereavement: Babel, Bialik, and Others”

•        Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley), “Babel, Flaubert, and the Rapture of Perception”

 3:15–3:30                                Break

•        Zsuzsa Hetényi (ELTE University, Budapest), “The Child’s Eye—a Pattern in the Literature of Jewish Assimilation: Babel in Russian-Jewish, American and European  Literary Context”

•        Alexander Zholkovsky (University of Southern California), “Towards a Typology  of ‘Debut’ Narratives: Babel, Nabokov and Others”

 4:30–5:30                                Discussion

 6:00–7:30 PM                Dinner for the conference participants and guests

 8:00–9:00 PM                Evening Session: Babel in Film, a Round Table

•     Oksana Bulgakowa (Stanford), chair

TUESDAY, 2 MARCH

Tresidder Oak Lounge (Tresidder Student Union, 2^nd floor)

 9: 30 AM                                Morning Session: Babel in Comparative Perspective

Moderator: Gabriella Safran

▪          Michael Gorham (University of Florida), “Writers at the Front: 
Language of State in the Civil War Narratives of Babel and Furmanov”

•        Marietta Chudakova (Institute of Literature, Moscow), “Diluted and Thinned Out: Babel in Official Russian Literature of the Soviet Period”

 10:45–11:00                Break

 •      Oleg Budnitsky (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, Moscow), “Jews and the Red in the Civil War: Red Cavalry in Historical Perspective”

 11:30                       Discussion

12:30–2:00                Lunch for the participants and guests.

                         End of Conference