Reimagining the Past: Memory and Postmemory in Russia in the 2010-2020s

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel will discuss the re-configuration of Russian cultural memory in the 2010-2020s and focus on the use of literature as a tool of preservation of popular beliefs and traditions. It will comprise the analysis of The Nose, or the Conspiracy of Mavericks, a feature-length animated film directed by Andrei Khrzhanovsky (2020) and envisioned as a part of his trilogy of ‘memory films’. The film is inspired both by Gogol's story The Nose and Shostakovich's opera The Nose. It will be shown how the film pays a tribute to Shostakovich, Bulgakov, Meyerhold and Gogol and poses a question about the role of the artist in Russia in totalitarian contexts. The panel will also talk about Maria Stepanova’s appropriation of Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory (1997, 2022). In her book In Memory of Memory (2017), Stepanova shows effectively how traumatic experiences of previous generations continue to affect their descendants. Additionally, the panel will survey the postmodernist nature of Zhenya Berkovich’s novel Pitomtsy (2024). It will include a paper that focuses on Berkovich's engagement with Russian and Soviet cultural memory via textual allusions, quotations and self-quotations.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Carol R. Ueland, Drew U

Papers

• Displacement of Memory in Maria Stepanova’s In 'Memory of Memory' (2017) - Alexandra Smith, U of Edinburgh (UK)

• Zhenya Berkovich’s Pitomtsy (2024): The Poetics of Quotations and Self-Quotations from a Prison Cell - Olga Simonova Partan, College of the Holy Cross

• Reclaiming and/or Redeeming History: The Nose or the Conspiracy of Maverick - Helga Niemand

Discussant

• Diane M. Nemec Ignashev, Carleton College