Documenting the Violence: Minoritized Identities and Trauma in the Works of Russian and American Writers

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel will investigate the intersection of memory and narrative with a special focus on discursive strategies for depicting minoritized communities, violence, and memorialization of trauma. We will examine works written in the genres ranging from novels to a critical essay to an autofictional biography, highlighting the interaction between official narratives and individual storytelling. Each of these works engages in advocacy for authentic representation that reaches beyond its specific genre and into the cultural consciousness of communities at large while calling out state-sponsored discrimination, the danger of historical and cultural erasure, and the precariousness of belonging.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Yana Skorobogatov, Columbia U

Papers

• Bogoraz: Voices of the Colonized - Nadja Berkovich, U of Arkansas

• The Russo-American Memorialization of Soviet Anti-Semitism by Masha Gessen and Sana Krasikov - Alex Pekov, Columbia U

• Anna Mar’s Violent Dialogues - Erica Stone Drennan, Amherst College

• Memory and Identity in Margarita Khemlin’s Works - Yuliya Minkova, Virginia Tech

Discussant

• Edward Waysband, U of Pennsylvania