A Childhood in the "Orient": Autobiographical Reflections through the Lens of the Soviet Experience

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Abstract
Provide a 1 paragraph description of the session topic, in language that would be clear to someone who is not a specialist on the topic. The panel focuses on autobiographical writings of childhood in the Soviet “Orient”––Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia across the twentieth century. It explores the writers’ search for ways of self–identification as a Soviet citizen with a specific ethnic and religious background, filtering one’s own experiences through the lens of the Russian literary childhood canon (Gorky and Bunin), and the attempts to reassess one’s own gender identity shaped by both “local” and dominating Soviet culture.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Elena Monastireva-Ansdell, Colby College

Papers

• A Girl from the Sunny City: An Autobiography of 'Oriental' Soviet Childhood in Dina Rubina’s and Narine Abgaryan’s Fiction - Anastasia G Kostetskaya, U of Hawai'i at Manoa

• Witnessing the Past: Abdulla Qahhor’s Tales from the Past and Soviet Self-Identification in 1930s-1960s Uzbekistan - Kristen Jasmin Fort, American U of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan)

• The Myth of Childhood in the Early Works of Akram Aylisli - Peter Orte, Williams College

Discussant

• Polina Popova, U of Illinois at Chicago