VIII Zverev International Conference at RSUH: “America’s Hinterland in Literature, Politics, and Culture”

The review outlines the major topics of the conference on the American Studies held by RSUH in April 2023. Оn the one hand, the US hinterland, is proud of the reputation of true America with its family values and religious traditionalism as opposed to multicultural and cosmopolitan large urban centers. On the other hand, it often sees itself as a territory associated with the decline of morality, loneliness, poverty, and racial intolerance. The conference organizers proposed to conduct an interdisciplinary study of the problems associated with the life of the American hinterland; to show its self-representation and understanding from the standpoint of the Other; to enter the conversation about the hinterland into the general humanitarian space in order to identify those common elements that form a characteristic idea of the life of provincial America in various discursive practices and contexts in literature, culture, history and political thought of the XIX–XXI centuries. The conference topics included depiction of the US hinterland in literature; gothic narrative and hinterland; American hinterland as a factor and actor in the modern US politics; its images in visual discourse; its role in creating the image of the United States; a comparative analysis of Russian and American hinterland representations. Additionally, 2023 marks the centenary of the Walt Disney Company. Special round-table discussion was arranged at the conference commemorating this event. The conference featured two presentations: the educational internet-project “Discover America” (80 lectures and 80 videos) finished by the publication of three books both in Russian and English at RSUH Press and the collective monograph “Dreiser’s Path”: A View with a Modern Lens.