Symposium on Russophone Literary Diversity

It is funded by the BRIDGE Seed Fund for collaboration between the University of Birmingham in the UK, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the USA.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, decolonising and decentring approaches to the study of Russophone literature and culture have become increasingly urgent tasks. This symposium seeks to advance these efforts by examining texts by minoritized Russophone authors, including those who are ‘writing back’ from regions formerly colonized by Russia and those who ended up living in exile abroad. 

Programme 

7 September 2024

9.15-9.30       Welcome and Housekeeping

9.30-10.45     Keynote speaker: Evgeny Shtorn,the University of Helsinki, Finland, Refugee Chronicle

10.45-11.00   Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Panel 1: Post-Soviet Russophone Literature in the Caucasus 

• Elena Chkhaidze, Ruhr University, Germany, ‘Location, Time, Language: Post-Soviet Russophone Literature in Georgia’
• Benjamin Sutcliffe, Miami University, USA, ‘Country of the Soul or Occupied Territory: Russophone Authors and the Conflict in Abkhazia’
• Laura Wilson, University of Manchester, UK, ‘Gender Identities and Responses to Russian Colonialism in Alisa Ganieva’s Bride and Groom’

12.30-13.30   Lunch

13.30 - 14.00   Hovhannes Aznauryan, an Armenian Russophone author, reading from two short stories ‘За сто тысяч лет до взрыва Бетельгейзе’ (Druzhba narodov, 10, 2022); and ‘Эта осень’ (Literaturnaia Armenia, 1, 2024)

14.00 – 15.00 Panel 2: Ukrainian Russophone Literature

• Lyudmila Parts, McGill University, ‘“A Russian-Language Poet under Russia’s Bombs”: Ukrainian Russophone Poetry of Witnessing’
• Olha Khometa, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, ‘Reclaiming Ukrainian Jewish Russophone Literature of the Twentieth Century: The Case of Eduard Bagritskii and His Poem The Lay of Opanas’ (ONLINE)

15.00 - 15.15 Coffee Break

15.15 – 16.15 Panel 3: Post-Soviet Russophone Literature in Central Asia

• Azhar Dyussekenova, the University of Michigan, USA, ‘Queer Russophone Writing from Central Asia and Its Ecocritical Perspective on the Steppe and Other Native Landscapes’ (online)
• Anara Alipbayeva, Al-Farabi University, Kazakhstan, ‘The “Woman-Hearthbreaker” in Rollan Seisenbayev’s Prose: Unveiling Russian Colonial Impact on Kazakh society’ (online) 

16.15-16.30 Break

16.30-17.30   Panel 4: Belarusian Russophone Literature

• Jenya Mironava, Harvard University, USA, ‘Neither Here Nor There: Belarusian Russophone Literature as a “Minor” Literature’
• Simon Lewis, University of Bremen, Germany, ‘Literary Polyphony in Belarus: Multilingualism and Metadiscourse’

8 September 2024 

9.15-10.30     Keynote speaker: Dirk Uffelmann, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, ‘Post Printum: The Translocalization of Post-2022 Russophone Poetry’

10.30-10.45 Coffee break 

10.45-11.45   Panel 1: Embodied Geopolitics and Travel

• Irina Kuznetsova, University of Birmingham, UK, ‘Embodied Geopolitics and Forced Displacement: Cultural and Feminist Geographies of Literature on Russia’s War in Ukraine’
• Maria Whittle, UC Berkeley, ‘Searching for Home in the Air: Center-Periphery Dynamics in Siberian Aviation Fiction’

11.45-13.15 Panel 2: Mobility and Hybridity in Russophone Literature

• George Gasyna, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, ‘Watch and Listen and Remain Silent’: Demystifying the Orientalist Gaze in Mariusz Wilk’s “North Sea Wolf Journal” Trilogy’ 
• Liana Goletiani, University of Bergamo, Italy, ‘Гибридизация в романе Михаила Старицкого «Молодость Мазепы»: формы и функции’
• Natasha Rulyova, University of Birmingham, UK, ‘“Maia tvaia neponimait”: Hybridity and Misunderstanding in Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway and The Underground’

13.15-14.15   Lunch 

14.15-15.45 Panel 3: Multilingualism and Interlingualism

• Olga Kenton, University of Birmingham, UK, ‘Beyond the Mother Tongue: Translingual and Exophonic Writing in Zinovy Zinik’s Mind the Gap and Lara Vapnyar’s Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love’
• Brett Donohoe, Amherst College, USA, ‘To Russian and Back Again: Linguistic Mobility in the Margins’
• Isobel Palmer, University of Birmingham, USA, “’no replacements found”: Multilingual Memory in the Work of Russophone Uyghur poet Ramil Niyazov-Adyldzhyan’

15.45 – 16.00 Coffee break

16.00 - 16.30 Mini-Panel: Literary Storymaps

• Chloe Coulthard, Geography, the University of Birmingham, ‘Dagestan’s Diversity in Alisa Ganieva’s Novels’
• Chris Crowson, Modern Languages, the University of Birmingham, ‘Holodomor in Literature’

16.30-16.45 Concluding remarks, further plans