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Twelve groundbreaking essays show the varied and complex ways in which ideas about sexuality, gender, and the body have shaped and been influenced by Russian literature, history, art, and philosophy from the medieval period to the present day.
Since its founding three hundred years ago, the city of Saint Petersburg has captured the imaginations of the most celebrated Russian writers, whose characters map the city by navigating its streets from the aristocratic center to the gritty outskirts. While Tsar Peter the Great planned the streetscapes of Russia’s northern capital as a contrast to the muddy and crooked streets of Moscow, Andrei Bely’s novel Petersburg (1916), a cornerstone of Russian modernism and the culmination of the “Petersburg myth” in Russian culture, takes issue with the city’s premeditated and supposedly rational character in the early twentieth century. “Petersburg”/Petersburg studies the book and the...
Though the Russian Symbolist movement was dominated by a concern with transcending sex, many of the writers associated with the movement exhibited an intense preoccupation with matters of the flesh. Drawing on poetry, plays, short stories, essays, memoirs, and letters, as well as feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Beyond the Flesh documents the often unexpected form that this obsession with gender and the body took in the life and art of two of the most important Russian Symbolists. Jenifer Presto argues that the difficulties encountered in reading Alexander Blok and Zinaida Gippius within either a feminist or a traditional, binary gendered framework derive not only from the peculiarities of their creative personalities but also from the specific Russian cultural context. Although these two poets engaged in gendered practices that, at times, appeared to be highly idiosyncratic and even incited gossip among their contemporaries, they were not operating in a vacuum. Instead, they were responding to philosophical concepts that were central to Russian Symbolism and that would continue to shape modernism in Russia.
Een aantal essays over de culturele bijdrage die Russische vrouwen geleverd hebben aan de Russische beschaving. De volgende bijdragen zijn opgenomen: The second fantasy mother, or all baths are women's baths / door Nancy Condee; Keeping a-breast of the waist-land: women's fashion in early-nineteenth-century Russia / door Helena Goscilo; Female fashion, Soviet style: bodies of ideology / door Ol'ga Vainshtein; Getting under their skin: the beauty salon in Russian women's lives / door Nadezhda Azhgikhina en Helena Goscilo; Domestic porkbarreling in nineteenth-century Russia, or who holds the keys to the larder / door Darra Goldstein; The ritual fabrics of Russian village women / door Mary B. K...
The first generation of Russian modernists experienced a profound sense of anxiety resulting from the belief that they were living in an age of decline. What made them unique was their utopian prescription for overcoming the inevitability of decline and death both by metaphysical and physical means. They intertwined their mystical erotic discourse with European degeneration theory and its obsession with the destabilization of gender. In Erotic Utopia, Olga Matich suggests that same-sex desire underlay their most radical utopian proposal of abolishing the traditional procreative family in favor of erotically induced abstinence. 2006 Winner, CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Titles, Current Reviews for Academic Libraries Honorable Mention, Aldo and Jean Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Modern Language Association “Offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of new information on early Russian modernism. . . . It is required reading for anyone interested in fin-de-siècle Russia and in the history of sexuality in general.”—Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Slavic and East European Journal “Thoroughly entertaining.”—Avril Pyman, Slavic Review
By integrating the human dimension into Russian history, The Human Tradition in Modern Russia introduces Russian social history to readers in a provocative and interesting new way. The essays in this unique collection are based largely on previously classified Russian archival information available only since 1991. This is a study of Russian history since 1861 from the perspective of individuals and groups usually underrepresented in scholarly studies, giving the reader a thorough view of Modern Russia from the 'grassroots' level. The Human Tradition in Modern Russia is ideal for courses on Russian history and civilization, modern European history, and world history.
In 1918 the People's Commissariat of Public Health began a quest to protect the health of all Soviet citizens, but health became more than a political platform or a tactical decision. The Soviets defined and categorized the world by interpreting political orthodoxy and citizenship in terms of hygiene. The assumed political, social, and cultural benefits of a regulated, healthy lifestyle informed the construction of Soviet institutions and identity. Cleanliness developed into a political statement that extended from domestic maintenance to leisure choices and revealed gender, ethnic, and class prejudices. Dirt denoted the past and poor politics; health and cleanliness signified mental acuity,...
A series of essays to challenge and stimulate, examining the links between gender, domesticity and architecture from a number of different perspectives and disciplines.
A study of the reception of the Eastern Christian Orthodox doctrine of deification by Russian religious thinkers of the immediate pre-revolutionary period.
The Chinese style of prostitution regulation