Power of Memory in 20th Century Russian-Soviet Literature

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable will entail a comparative analysis of memories - bodily, spiritual, linguistic - as they are represented in Russian, Soviet and emigre literature to have a profound effect on self-identity, ethical values, relationships and one's interface with mortality. Different kinds of memories will be considered and discussed - painful memories, toxic memories, redemptive memories and shared ones. Literary masterpieces of late Tolstoy, novels and short stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1957 "Pnin," 1961 "The Gift"), novellas of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn ("Cancer Ward," 1966) and Ludmila Ulitskaya’s “Funeral Party” (1997) representing exiled as well as ethnic communities will be part of the conversation. Discussants will compare and contrast how authors echo and diverge from each other in addressing the fundamental questions of selfhood, faith and community on the threshold of major life's challenges, transformational experiences and impending death. A broad sweep of communities from late tsarist to Soviet, from emigre to ethnic and post-Soviet will have us think about language, metaphor, narrative approaches - realist, modernist, experimental and philosophical - to unraveling characters' memories and ultimately ask ourselves how one leads a meaningful life and stands up to evil under the heavy press of all sorts of pressures – an urgent quest in the minds of many people today in Russia and beyond.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Svetlana Nikitina, Worcester Polytechnic Inst

Roundtable Speakers

• Adam Hartman-Whitfield, Binghamton U

• Svetlana Nikitina, Worcester Polytechnic Inst

• Ekaterina Sharova, Arctic Art Institute / APECS

• Samantha Sharp, Binghamton U

• Katherine Sinyavin, UC Berkeley

Session Manager

• Katherina Boicheva Kokinova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria)