The Weird Russian 19th Century Symposium

The North American Dostoevsky Society stands with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our statement can be read here.


This is a post from two of our members about an event they have organized:

You are warmly invited to a two-day symposium on “The Weird Russian 19th Century,” hosted by the Russian and East European Program at Rutgers University. Note the three panels on “Weird Dostoevsky”! Register for each day of the symposium at the links below.

The Weird Russian 19th Century

Friday, April 28, 2023

Registration link: 

https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcqcOiqqjkrE9Y45mSEX9MtDD59Ydzh9T7T 

10:00 Welcome (Co-organizers: Arpi Movsesian and Chloë Kitzinger, Rutgers University)

10:15-12:15 Panel 1: Anxiety, Periphery, Soul 

Luyang Zhou (Zhejiang University): The Eastern Borderlands in Tolstoy’s Anna 

            Karenina

Ayesha Suhail (Aligarh Muslim University): Murder, Madness and the Absurdity of 

            Kreutzer Sonata

Intizor Gulyamova (Stony Brook University): The Heirs of Doom: Gogol’s and 

            Turgenev’s tormented heroes break through fin de race

Elizabeth J. Wenger (Iowa State University): Anxiety, Animal Instincts, and the Dark

            Forest: An EcoGothic Reading of Leonid Andreyev’s “The Abyss”

12:15-1:15 Lunch Break

1:15-2:45 Panel 2: Weird Dostoevsky I (Undergraduates from Rutgers University)

            Anna Lasek: Schisms and Perception: The Way into the “Porog” 

            Ilona Lyakhovsky: TBD

            May Zheng: Reality in Flux and Conflict: Meta-Theater in Notes from the House of the 

                        Dead and Hamlet

            Evan Zilber: Rodion Romanovich and Dorian Gray: A Question of Extraordinaries 

2:45-3:00 Break

3:00-4:00 Keynote: Jacob Emery (Indiana University)

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Registration link: 

https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rdOiprT8sE9F9JnTCyKcC6V0RqOTpoyjO

10:00-11:45 Panel 3: Ghosts, Women, Tsars

Chloe Papadopoulos (Dalhousie University): A Tsar Unfit to Rule: “Prirodnaia

            nesposobnost’” in Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s Tsar Fedor Ioannovich

Sophie Bradley (Lehigh University): Reading Women Through Sentimentalism 

Brett Donohoe (Harvard University): Sensual Specters: The Erotics of 

            Haunting in Romantic Verse

11:45-12:45 Lunch Break

12:45-2:30 Panel 4: Weird Dostoevsky II 

Greta Matzner-Gore (University of Southern California): Weird Dostoevsky (the 1860s)

Arpi Movsesian (Rutgers University): Dostoevsky’s Female Fools and “Urodlivyi” Laughter

Brian Egdorf (Kehillah Jewish High School): Can’t Say Gay, Can’t Say Murder: The 

           Strange Discussions Between Porfiry Petrovich and Raskolnikov

2:45-3:00 Break

3:00-4:45 Panel 5: Weird Dostoevsky III

Alina Wyman (New College of Florida): Off-Center but On Point: Eccentricity in 

            Dostoevsky

Ani Abrahamyan (Indiana University): Of Faith and Rationality: Beheadings in 

            Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Writing

Peter Gregory Winsky (University of Southern California): The Strange World of 

            Dostoevsky’s Orthodox Ontology: Demons and Cosmic Consciousness in the 

            Late Novels

With questions, please contact movsesian@greell.rutgers.edu and chloe.kitzinger@rutgers.edu .

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