Literature and/as Liberation: Studying Early Queer Literature from Central and Eastern Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores early queer literature from Central and Eastern Europe, focusing attention on understudied queer authors, such as the Polish novelist poet Narcyza Żmiwchowska and the Czech novelist, poet and critic Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, while presenting new approaches to more well known queer works, such as Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings (1906) and Konstantin Shildkret’s Wings of a Serf (1926). All the papers will inscribe these authors and their works within the socio-political and aesthetic contexts of their time. In so doing, the panel seeks to outline both transnational features of early queer writing from Central and Eastern Europe and to identify distinct regional thematics and styles.

Sub Unit

• Gender/LGBTQ Studies

Chair

• Carleton Bulkin, Independent Scholar

Papers

• 'We Are under a More Terrible Shackle than Censorship': The Queer Life and Writings of Narcyza Żmiwchowska, 1819-1878 - Anna Dżabagina, U of Warsaw (Poland)

• Modernism as Liberation: Czech Decadent Author Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic - Carleton Bulkin, Independent Scholar

• 'My 'Chaste' Novel': Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings and the Problem of Queer Beauty - Brian James Baer, Kent State U

• Konstantin Shildkret’s Wings of a Serf (1926): Blasphemous Bodies and Past Perversions - Maya Aracelia Acevedo Garcia, Harvard U

Discussant

• Kevin Moss, Middlebury College