On April 17-18, St. Petersburg, Russia, gathered over eighty students and young scholars from Bard-affiliated institutions for a two-day assembly across disciplines. With “Science and Technology through the Prism of Humanities” as its “umbrella topic”, the Fourth Smolny Annual International Student Conference was held at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of the St. Petersburg State University.
Bard College Berlin was represented by Lysan Boshuyzen (BA2, the Netherlands) with the paper “Art Generating Paradigm Shift,” Dylan Davis (BA3, USA) with “Beyond Hate: Exploring the Relationship between Hate and Equality,” Lena Kück (BA1, Germany) who presented on “Focus in Fractions – The Effect of New Technology on our Ability to Focus in Social Environments,” and myself with the paper “The Relationship between Scientific Knowledge and Political and Religious Power in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis.”
After our altogether successful presentations and Q&As, we were lucky and organized enough to spend our free time traversing and wandering through the city’s grandiose boulevards, seductive avenues, and historical squares. St. Petersburg is a living architectural miracle – even mere walking feels like a visit to an open air museum. With sunset light accentuating the features of some of its most popular buildings, afternoon chats among young couples, early spring strawberries, birds on the Neva river, and some random wonders that new travelers always find a way to stumble upon, we had a kaleidoscopic experience of the city that sparked a curiosity which, in my judgment, one could never fully satisfy in a place so rich with history and culture, still in the process of building the bridge between the old and the modern. Below are few impressions from St. Petersburg, the iconic wonder of Russian aesthetics – the elegant dame of the Baltic Sea (all photos by Inasa Bibić):
