19th-Century Russophone Women Writers III: Memoirs by Actresses and Midwives, Crime Fiction, and Screenplays

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

As our field continues to transform itself by decolonializing and decanonizing Russian literary history, the often sidelined and forgotten voices of Russophone women writers speak to us in powerful new ways. Women engaged in conversations with their peers – men as well as women, nationally and internationally. This series of four panels includes papers that address dialogues among the most well-known noblewomen and famous men, including Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev; Sofia Khvoshchinskaia, Varvara Tsekhovskaia, Zinaida Gippius, and Karamzin; Evgeniia Tur and Turgenev; Karolina Pavlovna and Friedrich Schiller; Maria Zhukova; Avdotia Panaeva and Chernyshevsky; and the husband-and-wife teams of the Dostoevskys and the Tolstoys. We include not only novels, but crime fiction, memoirs by midwives, novels in verse, poetry and drama, movie scripts, and a panel devoted to translations.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• Romy Taylor, Independent scholar

Papers

• In Their Own Words: Midwives and Memoir - Melissa Lynn Miller, Colby College

• Nineteenth-Century Female Crime Writers and the Marriage Debate - Claire Whitehead, U of St. Andrews (UK)

• Feminist Screenwriting in the Russian Empire: The Case of Ekaterina Vystavkina - Anna Kovalova, U of Pittsburgh

• Representing Public Life in the Memoirs of Russian Women Performers - Maude Meisel, Columbia U

Discussant

• Hilde M. Hoogenboom, Arizona State U