Deadline: Open Until Filled
This stream will focus on Russophone literature (poetry and prose) directed against the imperialist discourse of the necessity of war, which has prevailed in Russian literature since at least the 18th century. Meanwhile, other kinds of utterances and voices have gradually developed which discredit the victorious, unifying “bellopoetics”: revelations of the catastrophic nature of what is endured in war, of the experience of war for individual human lives. How have these utterances developed over the course of the past two centuries? What devices, forms of historical narration and depictions of subjectivity have been used? What is the relationship here between prose and poetry? How about official and unofficial writing? Can we talk about a tradition of Russian anti-war writing?
We encourage proposals for presentations on authors writing against the traditions of imperialist military rhetoric (and literature), in the Horatian mode: seeking out the stranger and lonelier voices, those which clash with the military song-and-dance ensembles. To some extent we could call this “deserter poetics.” We anticipate treatments of “different” writers such as Velimir Khlebnikov, Yan Satunovsky, Lydia Ginzburg, and many others. How did these writers understand war and grapple with it in their writings—not only in terms of ideology, but in the way they construct subjectivity (personal, lyrical, historical), in the formal aspects of this writing (even the grammar)?
Interested? Please submit your proposal via the AATSEEL website submission page, and remember to select “STR” (stream) as the category of submission.
Write to Ainsley Morse (ainsley.e.morse@dartmouth.edu) or Polina Barskova (pbarskova@hampshire.edu) with any questions!