Liberating Russian Authors from the Soviet Cultural Canon in the 21st Century

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel will discuss the emergence of several new interpretations of Russian authors who had a stable reputation during the Soviet period, including Chekhov, Akhmatova and Brodsky. While their canonical images and some of their works became contested in the 21st century, the idea of approaching them through the lens of Socialist realism and the Cold War has become replaced with a set of new tools of analysis. These new approaches to well-established authors are shaped by the reassessment of the totalitarian past through the prism of memory wars, the growing interest in the relationship between medicine and literature, the debates about transnational identities, the impact of de-Sovietisation on literary developments, and the influence of the post-Soviet celebrity culture on the understanding of the creative self.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton U

Papers

• Chekhov as a Co-Founder of Narrative Medicine - Galina S. Rylkova, U of Florida

• A Romantic Heroine or a Femme Fatale?: Russian Interpretations of Akhmatova’s Creative Self in the 21st Century - Alexandra Smith, U of Edinburgh (UK)

• A Room and a Half (Film), and the Art of Cinematic Life Writing - Olga Yuri Sobolev, London School of Economics and Political Science / U of London (UK)

Discussants

• Olga Simonova Partan, College of the Holy Cross

• Carol R. Ueland, Drew U