Looking Back, Moving Forward: Memory and the (De)Colonization of Literature of the South Caucasus

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable examines historical memory and the impact of Russian and Soviet colonialism on the literatures of three Caucasian republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The theme of memory threads through issues of individual and national history, language, and ways of contending with Soviet ideology as writers from the region forge new literary traditions. The discussion centers around memories of the Soviet era and their role in the creation of national identities; the impact of Russophonia on the development of literary voices; and the formation of new, post-Soviet literary traditions vis-à-vis historical and political memory. The authors and works include Akram Aylisli’s Soviet-era trilogy People and Trees (1969) and his post-independence novellas; the Soviet impact on the construction of Armenia’s capital in Mkrtich Armen’s modernist novel Yerevan (1931); representations of the recent past and historical memory in the writers of Armenia’s so-called “Generation Independence;” patterns in post-Soviet prose depictions of memory and post-Soviet trauma in works of women writers from the 2000s; and memories of the Soviet era in contemporary Russophone Georgian literature. Located on the periphery of the Soviet Union geographically, linguistically, and ideologically, the region has produced many literary works that reflect a problematic relationship with the center through passive and active forms of literary dissidence. The aim of this roundtable is to address some of the parallels in the ways in which the Soviet past is problematized and reflected in these three national literatures and to contextualize them within a broader postcolonial discourse.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Zara Martirosova Torlone, Miami U of Ohio

Roundtable Speakers

• Tamar Koplatadze, U of Oxford (UK)

• Sona Mnatsakanyan, Humboldt U Berlin (Germany)

• Margarit Ordukhanyan, CUNY Hunter College

• Benjamin Massey Sutcliffe, Miami U of Ohio

• Katherine E Young, Katherine Young Translations