Contemporary Russophone Literature: Diversity, Hybridity, Decoloniality

A book-length project which examines the works by the Russophone authors who self-identify as non-Russian ethnically.


The project

This project draws on Naomi Beth Caffee’s definition of Russophonia, ‘which refers to the widespread and variegated uses of the Russian language outside of the customary boundaries of ethnicity and nation’ (Caffee 2013). In the monograph, Dr Natalia Rulyova examines works by Guzel Yakhina, Alisa Ganieva, Hamid Ismailov, Dina Rubina, Olga Breininger, Narine Abgaryan and others.

Principal Investigator

Natalia Rulyova

Dr Natalia Rulyova

Associate Professor in Russia

My research interests spread across Russophone literature, translation studies, post-Soviet media culture and genre studies. My latest monograph is focused on collaborative self-translation drawing on the bilingual work of the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky.


Natalia's profile

Outputs and Engagement

As part of the project and in cooperation with the Pushkin House (London), a series of conversations with Russophone authors are published on the Pushkin House YouTube channel:

  • May 2023 - award-winning Tatar author Guzel Yakhina
  • June 2023 - Alisa Ganieva, an award-winning Avar writer from Dagestan, who is also a political activist and a campaigner against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
  • October 2024 - internationally acclaimed Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov.

All three interviews are available in full from these links and in shortened transcripts.

An adapted version of the interview with Hamid Ismailov will be published under the title ‘Breaking the Monolith of Russian-Language Culture': A Conversation with Hamid Ismailov about Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Post-Soviet Space in The Journal of Literary Multilingualism in 2024.

5-7 April 2024, Dr Rulyova helped to organise two panels on contemporary Russophone literature and gave a paper entitled ‘Identity and Diversity in Contemporary Russophone Literature: Yakhina, Ganieva and Ismailov’ at the annual conference organised by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES). (the picture below is taken Dr Alexandra Smith at BASEES 2024)

In April 2024, as PI, Dr Rulyova received BRIDGE seed funding to build interdisciplinary collaboration on research at University of Birmongham and UIUC related to Russophone literary diversity and peripheries. This will build collaborative ties between faculty members Nataliya Rulyova, Isobel Palmer and Irina Kuznetsova (University of Birmingham) and Valeria Sobol, George Gasyna, and David Cooper (UIUC), and create a wider network of scholars. There will be a two-day symposium at the University of Birmingham on 7-8 September 2024. In summer 2025, we plan to run a junior scholars workshop at Illinois, related to the Summer Research Laboratory hosted by the REEEC and the University Library.

April 2024 - at the invitation of Dr Tamar Koplatadze, Dr Rulyova gave a talk on this project at Christ Church, University of Oxford, entitled ‘Literary Diversity in Contemporary Russophone Literature: ‘Breaking the Monolith of Russian Culture’..  

On 25 June 2024, in cooperation with Irina Kuznetsova and Pushkin House, Dr Rulyova is co-organising a panel entitled ‘Lived Experiences of War and Geopolitics in Russian-Language Literature after 2014. A Panel Discussion with Anna Berseneva, Katerina Gordeeva and Vladimir Sotnikov’.