Bodily Aesthetics: Health, Illness, and Treatment in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel focuses on the intersection of medicine and art in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia. How did aesthetics influence the experience of health and illness? We seek an interdisciplinary answer to this question: by considering the rhetoric of health in different medias, we touch upon the problems of the portrayal and perception of illness. Elena Fratto’s talk examines nutrition and hygiene in literature and book illustrations in the early Soviet period. William Nickell will address the relationship between Soviet aesthetic experience and medical treatment. Giulia Dossi will focus on how grotesque literary texts shaped psychiatric taxonomies in late Imperial Russia. Our broad scope will allow us to engage with medical humanities as a field and suggest an expansive understanding of the interrelation of literature, art and medicine.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Russian and Eurasian

Chair

• Brian Egdorf, UC Berkeley

Papers

• Writing Mental Patients: Psychiatry, Literature, and Narrative in Late Imperial Russia - Giulia Dossi, Harvard U

• Medical Aesthetics in Soviet Russia - William Scott Nickell, U of Chicago

• Seeing Health: Hygiene, Nutrition, and the Visual Arts in Early Soviet Russia - Elena Fratto, Princeton U

Discussant

• Valeria Sobol, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign