Dostoevsky on the Margins

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel unites three papers that discuss the peripheral and little studied aspects of Dostoevsky’s biography, work, and reception, uncovering the ways in which Dostoevsky’s legacy have pushed the boundaries of imperialist thinking, heteronormativity, medium, and genre. Alina Ivanova’s presentation examines the writer’s intimate relationship with the Kazakh scholar Shoqan Valikhanov, which adds to our understanding of Dostoevsky’s imperialism. Victoria Juharyan’s and Vladimir Ivantsov’s papers deal with a medium still underrepresented in Dostoevsky studies: music. Juharyan turns to Dostoevsky’s unfinished novel Netochka Nezvanova (1849), focusing on the role of music and memory in the text itself and in its later adaptations. Vladimir Ivantsov analyzes Dostoevsky’s existentialist legacy as a “poet of the underground” in such marginal genre as punk rock, considering the works and thought of the Siberian punk poet Egor Letov.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 19th Century

Chair

• Olesya Ivantsova, Oberlin College

Papers

• Dostoevsky's Companion: Shoqan Valikhanov and Their Forgotten Bond - Alina Ivanova, U of Cambridge (UK)

• Poets of the Underground: Dostoevsky and Egor Letov - Vladimir Ivantsov, Oberlin College

• Suspended Between Music and Words: Memory in Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Novel Netochka Nezvanova - Victoria Juharyan, Johns Hopkins U

Discussants

• Olga Lyanda-Geller, Purdue U

• Christopher Woodruff Lemelin, Hobart & William Smith Colleges