Russian Formalism: Travels across Space and Time

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The aim of this panel is to re-contextualize Russian Formalism in terms of the “history of theory,” focusing on such aspects of its evolution and reception as the relationship between different groups and factions within OPOIAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the transformations Formalism underwent in emigration/exile and in the USSR—both in the Stalinist and late Soviet periods. We present our explorations of a plural Russian Formalism, whose contributions to literary theory have been inflected by time and space in ways that have not yet been properly examined. We are thus advancing the study of Russian Formalism beyond the still dominant take on it as an assemblage of disembodied theoretical pronouncements on literature.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Russian and Eurasian

Chair

• Galin Tihanov, Queen Mary, U of London (UK)

Papers

• OPOIAZ in Exile: Viktor Shklovsky and Russian Berlin - Andrei Ustinov, The Old School

• How Many Faces Does Russian Formalism Have? - Igor Pilshchikov, UCLA

• Immersion to Delirium: How Victor Shklovsky Learned to Be a Soviet Writer - Jan Levchenko, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

• Resistance to Theory: Notes from the Underground - Galin Tihanov, Queen Mary, U of London (UK)

Discussants

• Jessica E Merrill, Columbia U

• Peter Steiner, U of Pennsylvania

Session Manager

• Alicia Baca, Ohio State U