Why are there no canonical 19th-century Russian women novelists?
Continue reading...Raquel Greene explores construction of race in 1920s Soviet children’s literature
Nigar Hacizade
The Soviets condemned American slavery and European colonialism as part of their civilizing mission, but their negative assessments of race and specifically Africanness was still informed by the West.
Continue reading...“In to Africa”: The Soviet Union and its Civilizing Mission as Depicted in 1920’s Soviet Children’s Literature
Heather Janson
Radiant Futures: Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction
Ilaria Parogni
Molly Brunson discusses perspectival space in Gogol’s Dead Souls
Natasha Bluth
On February 26, 2016, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Molly Brunson from Yale University for a lecture on “Gogol Country: Rural Russia in Perspective.” After being introduced by Anne Lounsbery, Russian and Slavic Studies Department Chair at NYU, Brunson spoke about her work on a new project, titled “Russian Points of View: The Theory and Practice of Perspective in Russia, 1820-1840.” In her talk the speaker opened up productive ways to look at Gogol’s work, resisting fixation on dichotomies in order to center attention on the writer’s use of perspectival devices.
Michael Kunichika speaks on modernist world culture, Khlebnikov and Mandelstam
Ilaria Parogni
On May 15, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia welcomed Michael Kunichika, an Assistant Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, for a lecture on modernist world culture as elaborated in the works of the Russian poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Osip Mandelstam.
Six Questions for Jenny Kaminer about her new book, Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture
Eliot Borenstein
““Bad,” of course is a highly relative, historically contingent, and variable term. I try to shed light on how changing political, social, and cultural contexts shape the varying models of maternity that circulate in a given time period. “
Continue reading...Mikhail Lermontov Part I: The Original Hipster
Harry Leeds
If Russian literature is a history of Pushkin imitators, then Lermontov came first, and he’s still the best. Many have tried imitate Pushkin’s style, but few went as far to write tragic poems about his hero’s death in a duel, and proceed to, years later, perish in a duel himself. People just aren’t committed to their writing like that anymore.
Continue reading...Sex secrets of the Russian classics
Eliot Borenstein
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.
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