Beyond the Binary: Bisexual, Trans, and Non-Binary Russian Subjectivities

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Queer Russian studies has become an increasingly prolific and urgent avenue of research, yet there remains an imbalanced focus on the lives and cultural production of gay men and lesbian women while bisexual, transgender and non-binary subjectivities have not received as much attention. Our panel addresses this gap in scholarship by exploring questions concerning the spaces between, across, and outside of gender and sexual binaries. How have Russian-speaking subjects liberated themselves from the expectations of these binaries? How are their subjectivities reflected in life and art? And what, in turn, does this show us about the construction of the binaries themselves? To engage with these questions, our papers collectively consider bisexual cultural texts, non-binary comedy, and transgender experiences.

Sub Unit

• Gender/LGBTQ Studies

Chair

• Yana Kirey-Sitnikova, Uppsala U (Sweden)

Papers

• Toward a Bisexual Poetics: Articulating a Bisexual Subjectivity in Russian - Rowan Dowling, U of Oxford (UK)

• Sasha Kapadya: Non-Binary Russian-Speaking Stand-Up Comedian - Nikon Kovalev, U of Texas at Austin

• ‘Coming Out in Russia’: Recollections of Transgender Identity in Society - Xavier Jean Rock, U of Oxford (UK)

Discussant

• Lauren Kaminsky, Harvard U