RUS4016/RUS5016/COM5016 - Contemporary Russian Short Stories - 2022/23

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Required Readings

Vladimir Sorokin, 'Passing Through' (English)

Vladimir Sorokin, 'Passing Through'/Проездом (Russian)

Lipovetskii, Mark. Postmodern Crises: from Lolita to Pussy Riot, Brookline, MA: Ars Rossica, 2017, 109-29.

Required Readings

Liudmila Petrushevskaya, 'Hygiene,' 'The New Robinson,' 51-74

Liudmila Petrushevskaya, 'Hygiene'/ Гигиена (Russian)

Liudmila Petrushevskaya, 'The New Robinson'/Новые Робинзоны ((Russian)

Edith W. Clowes, ‘The Robinson Myth Reread in Postcolonial and Postcommunist Modes,’Critique, 36:2, (Spring 1995): 145-59.

Eliot Borenstein, ‘Dystopias and catastrophe tales after Chernobyl,’ in Evgeny Dobrenko and Mark Lipovetsky, Russian Literature Since 1991, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2015, 86-103.

Further Readings

Dalton Brown, Voices from the Void: the Genres of Liudmila Petrushevskaia, London: Berghahn, 2000 (excerpt).

Required Readings

Pelevin, "Mid-Game' (see below, in folder)

Пелевин, Миттельшпиль (Русский текст)

Sally Dalton-Brown, ‘Ludicrous Despair? Viktor Pelevin and Russian Postmodernist Prose,’ The Slavonic and East European Review, 75:2 (Apr., 1997), 216-233.

Vitaly Chernetsky, Mapping Postcommunist Cultures Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University PressMcGill-Queens UP, 2007,107- 09.

Further Readings

Elana Gomel, ‘Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Post-Soviet Russia,’Narrative, 2013 Oct; 21 (3): 309-321. 

Note - only read up to page 18

Required Reading

Ulitskaia, 'Gulia' (Russian text)

Ulitskaia 'Gulia' English text (see pdf below in folder)

Skomp, Elizabeth, & Sutcliffe, Benjamin. Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance, Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, (excerpt, see pdf below in folder). 

Carol Adlam, Women in Russian Literature after Glasnost: Female Alternatives, London, 2005, 111-13. (see pdf below in folder)

Further Reading

Gramshammer-Hohl,Dagmar, ‘The Sameness of the Ageing Self: Memory and Testimony in 20Century Russian Narratives of Ageing,’Russian Literature, 85:10  (2016), 23-41. 

Benjamin M. Sutcliffe, The Prose of Life: Russian Women Writers from Khrushchev to Putin, Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2009, 99-129

Helena Goscilo, ‘Inscribing the Women’s Body in Women’s Fiction: Stigmata and Stimulation,’ in Liudmilla Petrushevskaia, ‘Hygiene,’ ‘New Robinson’ in Mark Lipovetsky and Lisa Wakomiya (eds),Late and post-Soviet Russian literature: a reader, Book 1: Perestroika and the post-Soviet period, 2014,43-51.

Required Reading

Anna Starobinets, ‘The Icarus Gland,’ in The Icarus Gland: And Other Stories of Metamorphoeses, trans. James Rann, London: Skyscraper, 2014, 13-34. (see pdf below)

Starobinets, ‘The Icarus Gland’(Русский текст)

Interview with Natalia Golysheva https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csww8t  (last accessed 25.07.19)

Elizabeth Kiem, ‘Anna Starobinets,’ https://themorningnews.org/article/anna-starobinets

Ol´ga Lebedushkina, ‘Our New Gothic,’ Russian Studies in Literature, 46:4, (2010), 81-100.

No Further Reading

Required Readings

Slava Mogutin, ‘The Death of Misha Beautiful,’ Mark Lipovetsky and Lisa Wakomiya (eds), Late and post-Soviet Russian literature: a reader, Book 1: Perestroika and the post-Soviet period, 2014, 123-32.

Slava Mogutin, ‘The Death of Misha Beautiful,’ alternative link

Морутин, "Смерть Миши Бьютифул' (Русский текст)

Brian Baer, ‘Russian Gay and Lesbian Literature,’ in E. McCallum & M. Tuhkanen (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 421-37 (see pdf below)

Vitaly Chernetsky, Mapping Postcommunist Cultures Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University, 2007, 171-81.

Further Readings

Dan Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 93-110, 131-48.

Required Readings

Vladimir Makanin, ‘Prisoner from the Caucasus,’ in Vladimir Makanin, The Loss: A Novella and Two Stories, trans. Byron Lindsey, Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1998, 117-54 (see pdf below).

Маканин, "Кавказский пленный' (Русский текст)

Bruce Grant, ‘The Good Russian Prisoner: Naturalizing Violence in the Caucasus Mountains,’ Cultural Anthropology, 20: 1 (2005), pp. 39-67. 

Mark Lipovetsky, ‘Makanin's Existential Myth in the Nineties: "Escape Hatch," "The Prisoner from the Caucasus" and Underground,’ in Routes of Passage: Essays on the Fiction of Vladimir Makanin, edited by Lindsey Byron and Tatiana Spekktor, Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 2008.97-107.

Further Readings

Anisimova, Irina, ‘The Post-Soviet 'Orient' in Stories by Vladimir Makanin and Liudmila Petrushevskaia,’Canadian Slavonic Papers Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 59:1-2, (2017), 1-20.

James Hughes, Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad,Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 1-29.

Required Readings

Zakhar Prilepin, ‘Sergeant,’ in Sin, trans. Simon Patterson with Nina Chordas, Glasgow: Glagoslav, 2012 (pdf in folder)

Прилепин, 'Сержант,' (Русский текст)

Kukulin, Ilya. ‘Cultural Shifts in Russia Since 2010: Messianic Cynicism and Paradigms of Artistic Resistance,’ Russian Literature, 02/2018, Volume 96-98

Fedor, Julie, ‘Spinning Russia's 21st Century Wars,’ The RUSI journal, 163: 6, 18-27

Further Readings

Serguei Oushakine, ‘(Post)Ideological Novel,’ Evgeny Dobrenko and Mark Lipovetsky, Russian Literature Since 1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 45-65.