Online technologies are, of course, a wonderful tool, but they do not solve the fundamental problems still discernible in our ways of conducting research on literature and culture in Russia today. In this note I’ll touch upon two important problems related to the institutional context and traditions of Russian literary criticism.
Continue reading...
Sources or Theories? On a False Dichotomy in the Study of Russian Literary History, Part II
Kirill Zubkov |In my view, the unavoidability of what amounts to a choice between knowledge and interpretation has had a particularly detrimental effect on research in nineteenth-century literature.
Continue reading...
Sources or Theories? On a False Dichotomy in the Study of Russian Literary History, Part I
Kirill Zubkov |Here I’ll try to explain the origins of two positions in Russian academic circles, how they affect the way Western studies of Russian literature are perceived, and why this opposition is felt with particular acuteness in the field of nineteenth-century literature.
Continue reading...
Lessons Learned: Girls’ Empowerment Projects in Uzbekistan
Paula Zhang |Western methods for encouraging girls’ empowerment and gender equality in Central Asia often lack a willingness to not only acknowledge, but also to work within historical, cultural, and political contexts. This shortcoming often renders short-term gains unsustainable and results in high turnover, meaning that empowerment efforts are typically led by a lineup of constantly-changing Western faces. Yet the success of these projects requires leadership alongside or exclusively by local experts capable of providing institutional memory, credibility, and an understanding of cultural contexts.
Continue reading...
Maria Vinogradova: Guns on Film in Soviet Culture
Matt Simkowitz |On September 29th, Maria Vinogradova, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute, came to discuss and impart her expertise surrounding the role of guns on film in the culture of the Soviet Union.
Continue reading...It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia
B. E. Philpot |On October 6th, Fabrizio Fenghi of Brown University joined the Jordan Center to speak about the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and it’s legacy in his talk, “It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia.”
Continue reading...A Spectre is Haunting Russia, or A Chilling Journey from Ulyanovsk to Silicon Valley, Part II
Fiona Bell and Ekaterina Olson Shipyatsky |As near-daily news articles expose American tech leaders’ unethical business practices and shifts into neoconservativism, we are more in need than ever of creative means for limiting their power. Maybe Russian memers can show us the way.
Continue reading...
A Spectre is Haunting Russia, or A Chilling Journey from Ulyanovsk to Silicon Valley, Part I
Fiona Bell and Ekaterina Olson Shipyatsky |How does the Airpod-sporting, Tesla-obsessed Ulyanovsk teen compare to Eugene Onegin with a bust of Napoleon in his study?
Continue reading...
On Translating the chinari
Charlie Smith |While their participation in OBERIU offered a crucial period of incubation for their thought and art, it is as chinari that Kharms, Vvedensky, Lipavsky, and Druskin assumed their most influential creative form. After all, these authors attained their “spiritual ranks” sometime around 1925, before OBERIU had even been conceived. The enunciations of the OBERIU manifesto establish crucial features of the chinari method: creating art that is “real” — art that is first and foremost an object with noumenal status, a body interacting with other bodies. But the full application of this theory occurred only after 1930, after OBERIU’s dissolution, in the twilight of vandalized bedrooms in the apartment of Leonid and Tamara Lipavsky, with their Conversations being perhaps the most crucial text for understanding the group as a whole.
Continue reading...
The Difficulty Of Ending a Story: On the ‘Thick Novels
B. E. Philpot |On September 23rd Schamma Schahadat, of the University of Tübingen, joined the Jordan Center for another talk with 19v, a working group on 19th century Russian culture. She discussed Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in her talk, “The Difficulty Of Ending a Story: On the ‘Thick Novels.’”
Continue reading...
