CFP: “Reading in Russia” (AATSEEL)

Deadline for Applications: July 01, 2017

Please consider submitting an abstract for the stream, “Reading in Russia,” for AATSEEL 2018. The stream is anticipated to consist of three panels: “Emergence: Learning to Read Soviet,” “Consolidation: Soviet Reading at Mid-Century,” and “Disruption: Contemporary Russian Reading.” Applicants with papers on other topics relating to the overall stream description are also encouraged to apply.

We are looking for a chair and discussant for a couple of the panels and welcome interest in these roles as well.

The deadline for applications is July 1st; please contact the stream organizers, Sean Blink and Carlotta Chenoweth (carlotta.chenoweth@yale.edu and sean.blink@yale.edu), if you plan to apply.

For detailed information on submission guidelines, visit this page on the AATSEEL website.

Stream #3B: Reading in Russia

This series of panels examines how reading practices have informed textual exegesis in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It has been well documented that Russia’s history of textual production, distribution and consumption differs from its European counterparts. From the relatively late acquisition of national literacy, to the divide between permitted and prohibited reading practices in the Soviet Union, to the emergent online networks of readers and writers in the post-Soviet world, it is clear in the Russian context that reading practices cannot be separated from textual analysis. In the midst of our own period of media upheaval, we find ourselves re-examining the varied forms that reading has taken in the past.

We will pose in these panels the following questions, considering them from an interdisciplinary perspective that takes into account the history of reading, the history of the book and literary scholarship: How does a given text object (book, website, etc.) interact with its readership? Where can we identify moments of transition in Russian reading practices? How are Russian readerships formed and what influence do they hold on textual production?