Staging (Un)obvious Sexualities in Contemporary Russian Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel seeks to discuss representations of sexuality in literary, visual, or performative texts (all broadly defined) which portray it as out of the ordinary or which may themselves be considered out of the ordinary, as well as ones that rarely feature in academic discourse about sexualities in Russia. Do these portrayals foster anxiety among the public who sees them? Do they provoke a rebellion against such representation? Or, maybe, they are the products of anxiety and rebellion of artists against the panorama of constantly recycled archetypes of certain sexualities? Why, when, and how do some of these archetypes become a recycled good when others lie in oblivion? And what could change the pattern? These are some of the questions that the three speakers will address in their papers that will focus on performances of sexuality in contemporary Russian poetry, theater criticism, and art.

Sub Unit

• Gender/LGBTQ Studies

Chair

• Cassandra Hartblay, U of Toronto Scarborough (Canada)

Papers

• The Poetics of Queer Negativity: Slava Mogutin’s Jouissance in Alterity - Brett Donohoe, Harvard U

• Making Love to the Listener’s Ears, or Cybereroticism in Contemporary Russian Theater Criticism - Tatiana Klepikova, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Queer and Abstract: Contemporary Russian Art and Politics of Desire - Vlad Strukov, U of Leeds (UK)

Discussant

• Kevin Moss, Middlebury College

Session Manager

• Tatiana Klepikova, U of Toronto (Canada)