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Yelena Khanga, Belonging, and Blackness in Russia
Early in Episode 694 of the This American Life podcast, "Get Back to Where You Once Belonged," hosts Emanuele Berry and Ira Glass are watching clips from the 1936 Soviet...
Person or Persons Unknown
Everyone loves to be proven right, but novelists don’t often expect it — especially five hundred years after the period where their books are set. After all, that’s half the...
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Viy as Dracula: Selling “Russian literature” One More Time
Just imagine the clash of civilizations when the two parties drink together; eventually, the rational Englishman starts seeing irrational things—all the ugly monsters, demons, and witches that contemporary CGI can...
Talking with Geoff Cebula, Author of "Adjunct"
I knew from the beginning that I didn't want her to be a Slavist.
"One Soldier’s War" and the New Literary War Hero
In literature and in real life, there is a new type of veteran. From the West’s GWOT (Global War on Terror) "hitters" to the generation Russia lost to Chechnya, the...
Asceticism and Embodiment: Female Bodies, Sexuality, and Religious Experiences in Contemporary Russian Women’s Writing
Despite the constantly shifting landscape of women’s involvement and engagement with Orthodoxy and the Church, those seeking to reconcile female religious subjectivity and current Church dogmas—particularly as articulated by reactionary...
The "Doctor Oz" of Russia
Have you ever wondered why Babushkas fear the draft more than any pathogen?
Russia vs. PornHub: Lie Back and Think of the Motherland
Apparently, people would rather do anything else—watch porn, have gay sex—than engage in heterosexual intercourse.
Sex and Death in Věra Chytilová's "Daisies" (1966)
Questions of individualism, waste, superfluousness, apathy, and death, at the forefront of Chytilová's exploration of social conditions in mid-century Czechoslovakia, remain eminently relevant not only to the country's “communist” period,...
Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith: Conference Recap
The Jordan Center's first all-day conference of the fall on Friday October 18th: "Governing Religion, Mobilizing Faith"
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part II
Pity is weird. We happily extend it to strong figures but we’re stingy with the weak, with actual “victims.”
Sex secrets of the Russian classics
Reason #137 to study Russian literature: apparently, it will teach children about sex. This is a good thing, because no one else in Russia seems to want to.
Universal Pictures: Zvyagintsev, Dostoevsky and the Politics of the Particular
By the end of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, I wanted to scream.
Cold Snap (Part II): Russian Film after Leviathan
An auteurist orientation, therefore, is neither good nor bad, but it is certainly mismatched to an industry—especially during periods of robust growth—in which so-called “spectators’ cinema” [zritel'skoe kino] is in...
Change is coming to All The Russias
I am stepping away from most of my editorial duties for the blog
Film Review: Sarik Andreasian's "Guardians" (2016)
With "Guardians," cinemas saw a Russian superhero team at last. Most of them wished they could unsee it.
Reinventing the Soviet Past: Actor Pavel Derevyanko's "Positive Heroes"
In the series "Dark Side of the Moon" (2011-) and in the film "Salyut-7" (2017), historical and biographical truth take a backseat to the aesthetic and ideological needs of the...
It Gets Better: Lena Klimova's "Children-404" Today
Founded by the journalist Elena Klimova in 2013, Children-404 provides an outlet for members of the LGBT+ community in Russia.
Zvyagintsev’s "Leviathan" and Debates on Authority, Agency and Authenticity
We argue that the film effectively generated political debates because it left viewers to grapple with a series of ambiguous positions, which merit attention at a moment when most observers...