Full Description
This edited collection focuses on the nexus between literary consumption, memory and collective identity formation in Russia from the 1980s until today. It challenges perceived notions about the reduced social significance and identity-building potential of contemporary Russian literature. Drawing on a diverse set of primary source materials, ranging from memoirs, diaries and essays to fan art and BookToks, the collection seeks to do justice to the diversity of an enormous reading public that is often routinely referred to as the 'Russian reader'. The case studies explore the reading habits and self-understanding of very different audiences that are dispersed along regional, gender, generational and technological divides. In doing so, this collection examines both the continuities and shifts in the multifaceted relationship between literary consumption, memory and identity during the profound and ongoing transformations in Russian society and its literary landscape.
Contents
Introduction.- Part I. Literary Production and Consumption in Times of Transition.- Chapter 1. Dmitrii Ravinskii - Mass Reading in an Era of Change.- Chapter 2. Chapter 2. Josephine von Zitzewitz - The Kopilka Project: Collaborative Translation of Russian Anti-War Poetry.- Part II. Revisiting Literary Models of the Past.- Chapter 3. Otto Boele - Reading and Worshiping Nikolai Rubtsov. Evolution of a Literary Cult. Chapter 4. Katharine Hodgson - Yevgenii Yevtushenko: The Last Soviet Poet in the PostSoviet Afterlife.- Chapter 5. Alexandra Smith - Reconfiguring Personal Experiences and Creative Communities as Literary Models: Liudmila Ulitskaia's Life-Writing of the 2010s.- Part III. The Role of the Reader Between the 1990s and Today.- Chapter 6. Boris Noordenbos - Plotting Communities: Pelevin's Meta-Paranoid Fiction.- Chapter 7. Dorine Schellens - Literature as a 'Thread of Noise': Kirill Medvedev's Dialectical Approach to Memory and Literary Consumption Since the 1990s.- Part IV. Creating Publics in the Digital Sphere: Feminist and LGBTQ+ Literature.- Chapter 8. Ksenia Robbe - Feminist Writing/Reading in Contemporary Russia: Creating Counterpublics Through Languages of Sociality and Care.- Chapter 9. Manon Junggeburt - The Reception of Young Adult LGBTQ+ Books on TikTok: The Case of Days of Our Lives.
