Women And Russian Culture

The image of women in Russian culture has undergone profound changes: from the origins of modern Russian literature in the eighteenth century until the Revolution of 1917, when women were a source of fascination for Russian writers, to the socialist realism period, during which public discussion of the representation of women in literature rapidly declined and the "woman question" was declared to have been "resolved," to a reappraisal of the position of women since the 1980s. This collection of essays by leading western and Russian specialists contains new insights and updates previous research into the role of women in Russian culture in the last two centuries and contributes to two exciting and growing research areas: the feminist critique of work by Russian male authors and the study of Russian women writers. Moreover, whereas most previous studies have concentrated on the aesthetic qualities of works by women writers, this collection includes both close textual analysis and the discussion of biographical, historical, and political questions relating both to the representation of women and women's culture. The aim is not to present aunified manifesto, but rather to bring together a spectrum of approaches and positions within their common focus on the relationship between women and culture in Russia. Contributors: R. Marsh, A. Barker, J. Andrew, D. Greene, I. Kazakova, C. Schuler, S. Graham, K. Hodgson, N. Kolchevska, N. Cornwell, J. Curtis, M. Katz, M. Ledkovsky, P.I. Barta, A. Darmodekhina, D. Gillespie, N. Zhuravkina, B. Lanin, S. Carsten, A. Tait

Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700-1825 is a collection of essays by leading researchers shedding new light on women as writers, actresses, nuns and missionaries. It illuminates the lives of merchant and serf women as well as noblewomen and focuses on women's culture in Russia during this period.

"This collection of essays examines the lives of women across Russia--from wealthy noblewomen in St Petersburg to desperately poor peasants in Siberia--discussing their interaction with the Church and the law, and their rich contribution to music, art, literature and theatre. It shows how women struggled for greater autonomy and, both individually and collectively, developed a dynamic presence in Russia's culture and society"--Publisher's description.

This volume charts the changing aspects of gender in Russia's cultural and social history from the late seventeenth century to the Stalinist era and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The works, while focusing on women as a primary subject, highlight in particular gender difference, the construction of both femininity and masculinity in a culture that has undergone major transformation and disruptions over the period of three centuries.

The 1980s witnessed the ascendency of Russian women in multiple spheres of artistic creation, including literature, film, and painting. This volume may thus be said to engage not only women's artistic production but, indeed, the best and most colourful of recent Russian culture. Treating contemporary Russian women's creativity, it approaches women's texts, films, and canvasses from a range of perspectives, from anti-gendered to feminist. Some of the essays introduce writers not previously well studied, others challenge conventional interpretations and assumptions, while still others yield original viewpoints through novel juxtapositions. In addition to offering insights into the various artists under analysis, the essays map the wide terrain of issues and methodologies proliferating in cultural criticism today, and mirror the diversity that is one of the most appealing features of women's creativity in contemporary Russia.

"Joanna Hubbs has found the trace of Baba Yaga and the rusalki and Moist Mother Earth and other fascinating feminine myths in Russian culture, and has added richly to the growing interest in popular culture." -- New York Times Book Review "... brave... fascinating... immensely enjoyable... " -- Times Higher Education Supplement "... a stimulating and original study... vivid and readable." -- Russian Review "An immensely stimulating, beautifully written work of scholarship." -- Francine du Plessix Gray "Joanna Hubbs has provided scholars... with a wealth of significant interpretive material to inform if not reform views of both Russian and women's cultures." -- Journal of American Folklore A ground-breaking interpretation of Russian culture from prehistory to the present, dealing with the feminine myth as a central cultural force.

Winner, 2014 AWSS Best Book in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Women's Studies In Russian culture, the archetypal mother is noble and self-sacrificing. In Women with a Thirst for Destruction, however, Jenny Kaminer shows how this image is destabilized during periods of dramatic rupture in Russian society, examining in detail the aftermath of three key moments in the country s history: the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the fall of the Communist regime in 1991. She explores works both familiar and relatively unexamined: Leo Tolstoy s Anna Karenina, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin s The Golovlev Family, Fyodor Gladkov s Cement, and Liudmila Petrushevskaia s The Time: Night, as well as a late Soviet film (Vyacheslav Krishtofovich s Adam s Rib, 1990) and media coverage of the Chechen conflict. Kaminer s book speaks broadly to the mutability of seemingly established cultural norms in the face of political and social upheaval. "

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. Kelly; Dirty women: cultural connotations of cleanliness in Soviet Russia / door Nadya L. Peterson; Women on the verge of new language: Russian salon hostesses in the first half of the nineteenth century / door Lina Bernstein; Stepping out/going under: women Russia's twentieth-century salons / door Beth Holmgren; Pleasure, danger, and the dance: nineteenth-century Russian variations / door Stephanie Sandler; "The incomparable" Anastasiia Vial'tsva and the culture of personality / door Louise McReynolds; Flirting with words: domestic albums, 1770-1840 / Gitta Hammarberg; Gendering the icon: marketing women writers in fin-de-siècle Russia / door Beth Holmgren; Domestic crafts and creative freedom: Russian women's art / door Alison Hilton.