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 

7th September 2024

•  09.15 - 09.30: Welcome and Housekeeping
• 09.30 - 10.45: Keynote speaker: Evgeny Shtorn, 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 – 15.00:  Panel 2: Post-Soviet Russophone Literature in Central Asia

Natasha Rulyova, University of Birmingham, UK, ‘“Maia tvaia neponimait”: Hybridity and Misunderstanding in Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway andThe Underground’

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)

Ankara Alipbayeva, Al-Farabi University, Kazakhstan, ‘The “Woman-Hearthbreaker” in Rollan Seisenbayev’s Prose: Unveiling Russian Colonial Impact on Kazakh society’ (ONLINE)

• 15.00 – 15.15: Coffee break 
• 15.00 – 16.30: Panel 3: Ukrainian Russophone Literature

Lyudmila Parts, McGill University, ‘“A Russian-Language Poet under Russia’s Bombs”: Ukrainian Russophone Poetry of Witnessing’

Valeria Sobol, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, ‘A Ukrainian Voice in the Russian Empire: Panteleimon Kulish’s first novel and its Russian critics’

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) 

• 16.45-17.00:  Break 
• 17.00-18.00: 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’

8th September 2024 

• 9.15-10.30: Keynote speaker: Dirk Uffelmann, ‘Digital Diversity: Ukrainian Russophone Writers’ Post-2022 Blogging’
• 10.30-10.45:  Coffee break
• 10.45-11.45: Panel 1: Mobility and Hybridity in Russophone Literature

Liana Goletiani, University of Bergamo, Italy, ‘Гибридизация в романе Михаила Старицкого «Молодость Мазепы»: формы и функции’

Irina Kuznetsova, University of Birmingham, UK, ‘Embodied Geopolitics and Forced Displacement: Cultural and Feminist Geographies of Literature on Russia’s War in Ukraine’

• 11.45 – 12.45: Panel 2: Russophone Literary Strategies

David Cooper, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, ‘Mystification as a Strategy for Minoritized Writers: Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya’s and Orest Somov’s Play with Pseudonyms’

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’

• 12.45-13.45: Lunch
• 13.45-15.15: 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’

• 15.15 – 15.45: Conclusive remarks, further plans