“Preserving Soviet Era Archives at the Georgian Literature Museum”
Nino Dzandzava
Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Georgian Literature
Ryan Sherman
Ilia State University
Friday, April 12, 2024
5:00-6:30PM Tbilisi Time / 9:00-10:30AM EDT
The talk will be held via Zoom. To register:
https://us06web.zoom.us/…/tZcvc…
This presentation will cover the Preservation of the Order of the Blue Horn Manuscript Archive Project, funded by ARISC in 2023 and implemented by the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Georgian Literature. Under this project, the museum procured much-needed storage boxes for key collections, developed an updated and translated inventory for researchers, conducted a series of preservation-focused trainings, and is scheduled to host an exhibition on the legacy of the Blue Horn poets in June. ARISC’s grant also laid the groundwork for a new proposal to the Modern Endangered Archives Program, which successfully passed the initial review and is in the final evaluation stage. If approved, this project will entail digitization of a large portion of the collection.
Nino Dzandzava is a film and early photography researcher and artist. Her scholarly interests include the history of Georgian pre and soviet cinema and photography and Georgia’s colonial visual cultural legacy. After gaining theoretical and practical knowledge in film conservation (L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, Rochester, New York), she has based her scholarly research on primary source materials (paper collections, film, video, printed media and photographs). Nino carried out several film preservation and publication projects. She is the author and editor of several books. Her artistic projects are also based on research and mainly derive from combining personal experiences with cultural and political contexts and memory politics. In 2022, Nino joined the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Georgian Literature.
Ryan Sherman is lecturer, project manager and PhD Student at Ilia State University, as well as an ARISC Fellow. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Philosophy from Weber State in 2008, and his Master’s in Global Development from Cornell University in 2018. From Ilia State, he heads The Memory Project, a consortium of partners engaging in Georgian heritage and the Soviet past. His book “May These Ashes Be Light,” released in 2023, is a collection of Georgian poetry and prose, co-translated with Maia Tserediani. He currently lives in Tbilisi with his wife and daughter.
Funding for the Collaborative Heritage Management Fellowship is provided by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) through a grant to the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC)..This talk is organized as a part of the ARISC Event Series that showcases the work of ARISC fellows. ARISC does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, medical condition, ancestry, marital status, education, age, income, socio-economic status, or status as a covered veteran.