Profs and Pints Online presents: “Spirits Around the Place,” a look at Russian beliefs in supernatural creatures and their homes, with folklorist Philippa Rappoport of George Washington University.

Russian culture long ago gave rise to beliefs in mythological beings known as “nature” or “place” spirits. Their influence on homes, farmsteads, bathhouses, threshing barns, woods and water was felt daily in the Russian peasant’s world, and it still can be seen today in the ways in which Russians relate to home and space.

Join Philippa Rappoport, an expert on Slavic folklore and rituals, for an examination of Russian beliefs and traditions surrounding spirits that seem to embody and haunt their domain.

We'll learn about the sprits of the home and homestead, such as the domovoi, a spiritual master and protector of the home and hearth, and his counterpart of the yard, the dvorovoi. We'll talk about the bannik, the bathhouse spirit who presided over bathing and births in his domain.

A little farther from home, we'll meet the spirits of the forests, waters, and fields, including the leshii, master of the forest and its inhabitants, who might appear like a peasant, devil, or beast, and the vodianoi, also known as the “water devil,” a bloated, shaggy, slimy water spirit that you simply do not want to encounter.

We'll explore beliefs and traditions connected to these place-based manifestations of the unclean force, and examine how these supernatural creatures are related to perceptions of space, boundaries, danger, and people categorized as “others” and shunned for it.  We’ll gain insights on how people express fear of the unknown, and how such fear connects to xenophobia and some of the worst human behavior imaginable.

It’s a talk that will give you an entirely new vantage point for viewing Russian history and culture, and help you better understand the 19th- and 20-century Russian propensity to close borders or punish by exile and gulag.  (This talk will remain available online in recorded form.)

Profs & Pints Online: Spirits Around the Place