Book Discussion: Shredding the Map: Imagined Geographies of Revolutionary Russia, by Edith W. Clowes

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Five panelists will discuss Edith Clowes's interdisciplinary book Shredding the Map which straddles the fields of literature, digital humanities, geography, and area studies. From the publisher's website: "Shredding the Map investigates Russian place consciousness in the decade between the start of World War I and the end of the Russian civil war. Attachment to place is a vital aspect of human identity, and connection to homeland, whether imagined or real, can be especially powerful. Drawing from a large digital database of period literature, Shredding the Map investigates the metamorphic changes in how Russians related to places–whether abstractions like 'country' or concrete spaces of borders, fronts, and edgelands–during these years.
An innovative, digitally-aided study of Russia’s “imagined geography” during the early decades of the twentieth century, Shredding the Map uncovers vying emotional patterns and responses to Russian ideas of place, some familiar and some quite new.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Adrienne M. Harris, Baylor U

Roundtable Members

• Mark Bassin, Södertörn U (Sweden)

• Julie A. Buckler, Harvard U

• Adrienne M. Harris, Baylor U

• Andrew Paul Janco, U of Pennsylvania