I can’t see Tolstoy wearing a pink pussy hat.
Continue reading...Russell Valentino unravels mystery behind Woman in the Window
Anastassia KostrioukovaOn April 3, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Russell Valentino – professor and chair of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University – to speak about his latest monograph The Woman in the Window, published by Ohio University Press in October 2014. Valentino stated that the image of a woman in the window was ubiquitous in the books and films with which he has been working for many years. When writing about this trope, Valentino added, it is hard not to write about male fantasy.
Viy as Dracula: Selling “Russian literature” One More Time
Elena GapovaJust 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 conjure – only to wake up the next morning with a pounding headache and a punishing sense of guilt.
Continue reading...Not Crimea: Stalingrad in 3-D
Anne LounsberyStalingrad is a movie that meets a certain need—the need to be able to cheer wholeheartedly when an evil enemy gets blown up.
Continue reading...The Red Balloon of Russian History: How American Media Misunderstood The Sochi Olympics Opening
Veronica DavidovLetting go of Communism and the Socialist dream was not the interpretation Russian audiences reached for. And that makes sense—ending a theatrical segment entitled “Dreams about Russia” with the fall of communism is very, well, retro.
Continue reading...Sex secrets of the Russian classics
Eliot BorensteinReason #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.
Continue reading...Andrei Zorin’s Sandglass
Anastasia LittleAll creative works are autobiographical, but they are autobiographical in their own way.
As part of NYU’s commemoration of the War of 1812, the Jordan Center was pleased to welcome Andrei Zorin last Friday, to present an engaging talk on the problems of ruptures, ends, continuities and discontinuities in history and in Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. While he was mostly concerned with the subject of time in the novel, Zorin also made a case for reading the novel as a personal experience for Tolstoy rather than as a national epic.
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