conferences

Call for Papers: The Cities and Towns of and in Dostoevsky (Istanbul, Oct 2020)

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The Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society is pleased to announce its Second International Symposium, to be held in Istanbul (Turkey), October 19-22, 2020.

The Symposium will be organized in collaboration with:

  • Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
  • National Museum of Literature (Sofia)
  • The Community of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Istanbul (Bulgar Ortodoks Kilisesi Vakfi, Istanbul)

The topic of the Symposium is:

The Cities and Towns of and in Dostoevsky

The symposium’s program will be orientated toward the following problems:

  • The question of the space in Dostoevsky. The specificity of the town’s space in Dostoevsky.
  • Topics on topoi in the novels of Dostoevsky: the hierarchy of topoi, “privileged” topoi, and the typology of topoi.
  • Dostoevsky as a writer of the city/town. The phenomenology of the city/town in Dostoevsky: the street, the bridge, the square, houses, slums and cabins, taverns, hotels, and parks. The question of real and “imaginary” cities/towns.
  • The Russian cities/towns in Dostoevsky: Moscow, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, Novokuznetsk, Tver etc. and the Russian ways of Dostoevsky.
  • European cities/towns in Dostoevsky: Dresden, Geneva, Florence, Naples, London, Ems, etc. and the European ways of Dostoevsky.
  • St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky.
  • Constantinople and the Holy Land in Dostoevsky.
  • Topics on “Space and Time,” “On the threshold” and “On the eve,” and Dostoevsky on the eve of his 200-year anniversary.

Specialists of various fields are invited to participate in the Symposium: including literary scholars, linguists, philosophers, architects, anthropologists, theologians, psychologists, and others.

The official languages of the Symposium are Russian and English.

Presentations should last no more than 20 minutes and will be followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

Applications and abstracts (up to 2000 characters, including spaces) must be submitted to the following e-mail address: symposium2020@bod.bg

Deadline for the submission of applications: 31 December 2019.

The number of participants at the Symposium will be limited to 40.

The registration fee will be 130 Euros for participants and 80 Euros for guests, respectively. The registration fee includes: abstract publication, paper publication, coffee breaks, cultural program, and excursion.

The cultural program of the Symposium will include sightseeing in Istanbul as well as one-day-trip to the Princes’ Islands, concluding with a celebratory dinner.

Accommodation and travel expenses are to be borne by the participants.

Venue for the Symposium: The Building of the Bulgarian Exarchy (Istanbul – Şişli, 124 Abide-i Hürriet Caddesi Str.).

Organizing Committee of the Symposium: Emil Dimitrov (Sofia, Chair), Hulya Arslan (Istanbul, Vice Chair) Stoyan Assenov (Sofia), Philip Kumanov (Sofia), Basil Liase (Istanbul), Kader Hasanova (Istanbul), Ivan Zelev (Sofia), Rosanna Casari (Bergamo, Italy), Anastasia Gacheva (Moscow), Jordi Morillas (Barcelona, Spain), Pavel Fokin (Moscow).

Program Editing Committee: Emil Dimitrov, Philip Kumanov, Nina Dimitrova (Sofia), Аlessandra Elisa Visinoni (Bergamo, Italy), Alexander Kochetkov (Niznyi Novgorod, Russia).

The Social Board of the Symposium includes eminent and popular scientists and cultural activists in Bulgaria and Turkey.

The Program Committee will review the submissions and decisions will be announced by March 1, 2020.

All information about the symposium will be updated in a timely manner and available on the website of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society: https://bod.bg/bg/

We look forward to seeing you in Istanbul!

This is the second International Symposium organized by the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society. A writeup of the first appears here on Bloggers Karamazov: ‘To Uncover the Secret of the Person, While Preserving the Secret as a Secret’ – A Review of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society’s International Symposium “The Anthropology of Dostoevsky” – check it out!

Call for Papers: Havoc and Healing (Uppsala, March 2020)

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Call for Papers

Havoc and Healing: Insights into Human Action in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Conference at Uppsala University, 26–27 March 2020

In the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, human action is frequently destructive, leading collectively to war and individually to murder or other forms of social and familial disruption. Concomitantly these authors offer some of the most incisive psychosocial insights available in cultural discourse into the motivations and dynamics of such behavior.

Focusing on Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, this conference will examine the full complexity of these insights, explicit in philosophical statements and implicit in the embodied human experience of the fictional characters.

Keynote speakers:

Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis University
Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto

We welcome paper proposals on topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Depictions of war, crime and injustice
  • Depictions of family, domestic happiness and discord
  • Existential questions such as free will and the existence of God
  • The relation of these questions to such formal aspects as narratorial and textual structures
  • The question of “polyphony”: Without adducing the writer’s presumed position, does the novel in question privilege certain standpoints over others or do several standpoints remain equally valid?

The general format is a 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes for discussion. However, participants may propose another time-frame or format, e.g. a roundtable discussion on a particular topic. The conference will be held in English.

There will be no conference fee. Participants are expected to book their own accommodation and travel. Suggestions of hotels in Uppsala will be provided in due course.

Please send your paper title, an abstract (150–200 words) and a short bio (100 words) to the organizers Julie Hansen (julie.hansen@moderna.uu.se) and Torsten Pettersson (torsten.pettersson@littvet.uu.se) by January 10, 2020. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of January.

This conference is organized with support from the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University (www.uu.se).

Dostoevsky papers and events at ASEEES 2019!

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The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is holding its 51st annual convention in San Francisco, November 23–26. Once again, the conference offers a rich selection of panels, roundtables, and individual presentations on Dostoevsky’s works and thought. The list below is divided into two parts: Part I features panels and roundtables that focus primarily on Dostoevsky; Part II lists panels and roundtables where Dostoevsky’s works or legacy feature prominently in at least one presentation. We hope you can join us in San Francisco to hear about the fruits of another year’s work on Dostoevsky!

 

Panels with a Principal Focus on Dostoevsky

Sunday, November 24

Philosophy and Form throughout Dostoevsky’s Creative Corpus

2:30 to 4:15pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

When discussing Dostoevsky’s famous claim (“I am only a realist in the higher sense, that is, I depict all the depths of the human soul”), Robert Louis Jackson points out that “it is no surprise, against a background of an age dominated by German romantic aesthetics, to find Dostoevsky positing art as a form of philosophical inquiry <…> and the object of philosophical inquiry is simultaneously the object of poetic creation” (Dostoevsky’s Quest For Form. A Study of His Philosophy of Art, 13). The goal of this panel is two-fold. First, we aim to address the ways in which philosophy and poetics are inextricably interwoven throughout Dostoevsky’s oeuvre: from the influence of Friedrich Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity on the early novella White Nights, to The Brothers Karamazov’s specific conception of love as informed by the author’s readings of the Gospels and patristics. Secondly, we will examine, by means of close-reading, Dostoevsky’s “quest for form” in its metaliterary dimension, looking at how, in Crime and Punishment, the concept of form is encoded on the phonemic level and builds up into the novel’s potential master trope. We envision the two approaches—one foregrounding the philosophical context of Dostoevsky’s creation, the other privileging the texts’ formal features— as compatible rather than contradictory. Given the broad scope of works that our panel touches upon, we hope to identify both shifts and consistencies across Dostoevsky’s corpus, from his early, pre-exile works to his final novel.

Papers:

“Reason and Aesthetic Knowledge in Dostoevsky’s ‘Belye nochi’” – Kit Pribble, UC Berkeley

“‘Form Won’t Run Away’: Patterns of Paranomasia in ‘Crime and Punishment’” – Semyon Leonenko, UC Berkeley

“‘He That Loveth Not Knoweth Not God’: Praxis, Theory, and Spiritual Knowledge in The Brothers Karamazov” – Braxton Boyer, U of Toronto (Canada)

Discussant: Julian W Connolly, U of Virginia

Chair: Lindsay Marie Ceballos, Lafayette College

 

The North American Dostoevsky Society: The Idiot Approaching Modernity

4:30 to 6:15pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

This panel marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Idiot with three papers focused on the novel’s relationship with modernity. The first paper examines the novel’s situation in the modern through its engagement with philosophy, both its involvement in contemporaneous debates and its grounding in Enlightenment humanistic discourse. The second paper looks at illness in the novel and, in particular, the way modern medicine is portrayed as both a reflection of its time and a future-looking projection. Finally, the third paper, reflects on technology in the novel, in particular the relatively new field of photography, and its implications for social stratification. Looking at reflections of modernity such as philosophical debate, medical science, and photography in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, these three papers engage in a broader discussion about the place of the human as both individual and as part of a broader collective in Dostoevsky’s work and in modern life.

Papers:

“Can Idiots Become Human?” – Brian Arthur Armstrong, Augusta U

“Modernity and Medicine in The Idiot” – Brian R. Johnson, Macalester College

“‘It’s All One Big Fantasy’: Memory, Identity, and Modernity in The Idiot” – Katya Jordan, Brigham Young U

Discussant: Kate Rowan Holland, U of Toronto (Canada)

Chair: Susan McReynolds, Northwestern U

 

Tuesday, November 26

Dostoevsky and Philosophy

8:00 to 9:45am, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

In 2002, James Scanlan wrote that the “idea of treating a great writer as a philosopher will be unsettling to both writers and philosophers.” It may seem that such “philosophical ghostwriting,” as Scanlan describes it, will do injustice to the literary text; it may also seem that such ghostwriting will fail to be philosophically rigorous. Nonetheless, the influence of philosophy on Dostoevsky and of Dostoevsky on philosophy remains. This panel aims to further investigate those influences in an attempt to do justice to both Dostoevsky’s thought and writing. In particular, each panelist will focus on the reception of Dostoevsky’s work by Russian philosophers: Mjør and Ceballos will focus on the early twentieth century reception and Ivantsov on the Leningrad Underground of the 1970s and 80s.

Papers:

“The Making of a Philosopher: Dostoevsky through the Lens of Rozanov, Bulgakov, and Shestov” – Kåre Johan Mjør, Western Norway U of Applied Sciences (Norway)

“Overcoming Existentialism: The Reception of Dostoevsky by the Members of the Leningrad Religious-Philosophical Seminar” – Vladimir Ivantsov, Williams College

“Philospher of the Spirit: Racial Typologies in Merezhkovsky’s L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky” – Lindsay Marie Ceballos, Lafayette College

Chair: Lyudmila Parts, McGill U (Canada)

 

Dostoevsky and The Gospel of Luke

10:00 to 11:45am, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

We have seen renewed scholarly interest in the religious and theological dimensions of Dostoevsky’s fiction in the past few decades. It is not surprising that methodological approaches and assumptions vary widely, although one frequent assumption is that Dostoevsky should be read in a Johannine context, whether because of marks he made in his copy of the 1822 edition of the new Russian Synodal Bible or because of the importance of John in Russian Orthodoxy. When other Gospels are cited, they are often used episodically or as part of broader Synoptic context. However, it is the claim of this panel that Luke – author of a Gospel and Acts – warrants special attention because of Luke’s pragmatic approach to issues vital to Dostoevsky, including social justice and the challenge of overcoming enmity with one’s neighbors. Our panelists will each work with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamzov, and they will focus on the Lukan concern with incarnational realism (Contino), terrestrial time (Parlin), and the neighbor (Wyman).

Papers: 

“The Gospel of Luke and Incarnational realism in The Brothers Karamazov” – Paul Joseph Contino, Pepperdine U

“Luke, Acts, and Active Love: The Validity of Terrestrial Time in The Brothers Karamazov” – Maxwell Parlin, Princeton U

“An Ideal ‘Thou’: The Concept of Neighbor in The Brothers Karamazov” – Alina Wyman, New College of Florida

Discussant: Michael Mikhailovitch Ossorgin VIII, Fordham U

Chair: Michael Mikhailovitch Ossorgin VIII, Fordham U

 

In Honor of Joseph Frank: Comparative Approaches to Dostoevsky Through the Lens of Belief

12:00 to 1:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

In this panel, dedicated to the memory of acclaimed Dostoevsky scholar, biographer, and comparatist Joseph Frank (1918-2013), whom most of the panel participants knew personally and whom all panel participants admire and use in their work, panelists employ comparative approaches to examine the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, as focused through the lens of belief. The trained comparatists delivering papers, Arpi Movsesian, Monika Greenleaf, and Sara Pankenier Weld, take a comparative angle to investigating their individual topics of holy foolishness, performance, and theodicy as they juxtapose Dostoevsky’s writings with those of major figures of the Anglophone tradition, namely William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Vladimir Nabokov. Though united by their shared focus on Dostoevsky, the collective scope of the papers also encompasses a range of periods; genres such as drama, poetry, and prose; and disciplinary approaches, such as religious studies, performance studies, and philosophy – all of which enrich their analysis and the scope of the panel. The papers’ commonalities and shared focus on belief ensures a coherence and cohesiveness to the panel, as does the subsequent discussion guided by the remarks of discussant Martha Kelly, who brings her expertise on religion and poetics to the panel. The comparative scope of the panel and the attention to a broader religious and intellectual context represented by all panelists represents an homage to Joseph Frank, who himself embodied a broadly comparative perspective and a depth of insight into literary, cultural, philosophical, and religious history, as the panel organizer and chair will highlight in a brief introduction.

Papers:

“Performing Faithfully: Shakespearean Fools in Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead” – Arpi Movesian, UC Santa Barbara

“Two Cruel Talents: The Interplay of Constriction and Kata-Strophe in the Scenic Art of Dickinson and Dostoevsky” – Monika Greenleaf, Stanford U

“Theodicy and Faith in an Ethical Universe: Dostoevsky and Nabokov on the Suffering Child” – Sara Pankenier Weld, UC Santa Barbara

Discussant: Martha M. F. Kelley, U of Missouri

Chair: Sara Pankenier Weld, UC Santa Barbara

 

Book Discussion: “Approaches to Teaching Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment,” Edited by Michael Katz and Alex Burry

12:00 to 1:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific C

A volume of essays is currently in preparation for the MLA Series called Approaches to Teaching (edited by Michael Katz and Alex Burry). This roundtable will allow five of the contributors to share their ideas about how to teach the novel in the college or secondary school classroom. The approaches vary widely. A roundtable will enable the presenters to gain valuable feedback from the audience as they prepare their essays; it will also provide suggestions and ideas to the audience as to how they might approach the book in their various classrooms.

Roundtable Members: 

Katherine Bowers, U of British Columbia (Canada)

Kate Rowan Holland, U of Toronto (Canada)

Ani Kokobobo, U of Kansas

Susan McReynolds, Northwestern U

Chair: Michael R. Katz, Middlebury College

 

Panels Featuring One or More Papers on Dostoevsky 

Saturday, November 23

Dark Waters and Monstrous Illusions in Russian Literature and Culture

12:00 to 1:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 12

Literature, film, fine art and other acts of cultural production have long mediated our relationship with landscape. Following Karine Gagne and Mattias Rasmussen’s call for an “amphibious anthropology” that directs our attention to the confluences of land and water (Anthropologica 58: 2, 2017), this panel explores cultural production in the Russian tradition that mediates our relationship to ‘amphibious’ land-and-waterscapes. The papers on the panel, however, add engagement with the dark, the uncanny, the monstrous to this conversation. How does water act as a conduit for the otherworldly and what does this dynamic reveal about amphibious landscapes within the bounds of Russian cultural production?

Papers:

“Go I Know Not Where, Bring Back I Know Not What: The Russian Folktale in Uncertain Waters” – Barbara Henry, U of Washington

“Watery Creatures: The Fantastic and the City in the Petersburg Text” – Katherine Bowers, U of British Columbia (Canada)

“Making Kin with Swamp Monsters: Zinovieva-Annibal’s ‘Chudovishche’” – Alec Brooks, Memorial U of Newfoundland (Canada)

Discussants:

Brittany Rae Roberts, UC Riverside

Colleen McQuillen, U of Southern California

Chair: Jenny Kaminer, UC Davis

 

Future Visions, Unseen Dimensions, and Dreamscapes in Russian Literature

4:00 to 5:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 5, Sierra G

Papers:

“‘Novel Voyages’: Fantastical Travel through Time and Space in the Early Nineteenth Century” – Stephen Andrew Bruce, Columbia U

“Of Imaginary Machines and Mundane Futures: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Literary Interface and the Perception of Reality through Alternative Literature” – Alejandra Isabel Otero Pires, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“‘Higher Matter’” The Fourth Dimension in Anderi Bely’s Petersburg” – Olga Zolotareva, Princeton U

“Overcoming Linear Perspective in Dostoevsky’s ‘Dream of a Ridiculous Man’” – Olga Stuchebrukhov, UC Davis

Discussant: Irina M. Erman, College of Charleston

 

Imperial Culture in the Soviet Imaginary

4:00 to 5:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific H

In The House of Government, Yuri Slezkine writes, “The Bolsheviks… ended up raising their children on ideas that were the very opposite of those they wished them to have (or thought they did, some of the time). The parents lived for the future; their children lived in the past.” [1] Slezkine points to an apparent paradox in the foundation of Soviet culture: those who set about remaking society enthusiastically embraced the literary culture of the previous era. Throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, nineteenth-century literature and culture continued to be incorporated into party-line cultural policy and production, and claimed as an inheritance with equal vigor by the Marxists of Literaturnyi kritik and representatives of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, such as Anna Akhmatova. The works and biographies of authors from Pushkin to Dostoevsky to Chernyshevsky were put to a variety of symbolic uses, institutionalized and reconceived in complex ways. This panel will explore the reception and reframing of nineteenth-century culture in the Soviet period in the context of cultural memory, institutions, and ideological texts. Papers will consider the reconfiguration of powerful nineteenth-century cultural concepts such as the “intelligentsia,” as well as the role of memorializing institutions such as literary house museums in shaping cultural memory at different historical moments.

[1] Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 955.

Papers:

“The Soviet Masses as Polufabrikat: Grigorii Pomerants and the Meaning of “Intelligentsia” and “Narod” in 1968” – Pavel Khazanov, Rutgers, the State U of New Jersey

“A Space Outside the Present: The Literary House Museum and Memorialization in the Soviet Union” – Brett Roark Winestock, Stanford U

“Reshaping Russian Imaginaries: Literary House Museums in the Post-Soviet Era” – Kathleen Macfie, UNC at Greensboro

Discussant: Christine Elaine Evans, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Chair: Ludmilla A. Trigos, Independent Scholar

 

Soviet Film Adaptations: Soviet-Western Encounters through Film, 1930-1972

4:00 to 5:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 11

This is the first in the series of three panels on film adaptations produced in the Soviet and post-Soviet period, 1930-2017. Our first panel examines Soviet-Western encounters through studying film adaptations made between 1930 and 1972: Soviet film adaptations of Western literature, such as the Soviet Winnie the Pooh, and vice versa, Western attempts to adapt Russian literature to screen, as in the Hollywood adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” The panel is interested in the conversion “from foreign to native” system of beliefs that happens in the course of cross-cultural film adaptations. The focus is on the Soviet vs. Western (Disney, Hollywood) divide, and the way film adaptations attempt to bridge cultural gaps.

Papers:

“Every Sound is Shrill: Sergei Eisenstein, Adaptation, the American Landscape” – Dustin Michael Condern, U of Oklahoma

“Filming the Criminal Mind: Josef von Sternberg’s and Lev Kulidzhanov’s Adaptations of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment” – Rita Safariants, U of Rochester

“Naïve Absurdity in the Soviet Winnie the Pooh” – Sabina Amanbayeva, Oklahoma City U

Discussant: Elena Konstantinovna Murenina, East Carolina U

Chair: Maria Mayofis, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

 

Sunday, November 24

Expanding the Nineteenth-Century Russian Prose Canon

12:30 to 2:15pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 12

In recent years, North American scholarship on nineteenth-century Russian prose has become increasingly focused on a shrinking number of authors, namely: Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Goncharov. The aim of this panel is to reintroduce the figures around these “literary giants,” men and women who played an integral role in shaping Russia’s literary landscape. Gabriella Safran’s paper examines Aleksei Pisemskii’s novel People of the 40s to address issues of cultural appropriation and the materiality of print culture. Greta Matzner-Gore looks at the scientific writings of a range of non-canonical writers that had a crucial shaping influence on authors like Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. And Anna Berman focuses on the novels of Evgenia Tur to explore how her depictions of courtship, marriage, and the family complicate our ideas about the classic Russian approach to these topics. Together the papers address a variety of Russia’s central literary concerns, demonstrating how expanding the range of authors we consider to more accurately reflect what people were reading in the period gives us a clearer picture of Russia’s literary tradition.

Papers:

“Aleksei Pisemskii’s People of the 40s, Cultural Appropriation, and Paper” – Gabriella Safran, Stanford U

“The Science of Early Russian Realism” – Greta Nicole Matzner-Gore, U of Southern California

“Evgenia Tur and the Non-Canonical Marriage Plot” – Anna A. Berman, McGill U (Canada)

Discussant: Anna Schur, Keene State College

Chair: Valeria Sobol, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

Nationalizing Russian Literature: How Literary Institutions Shaped the Canon in the 19th Century

4:30 to 6:15pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 12

This panel, bringing together Russian, European and American scholars, seeks to reestablish the sociological perspective in the studies of 19th-century Russian literature and culture. Using recent theories of nationalism and canon formation, the speakers will explore how various institutions (theatre, book publishing, school, Academy of Sciences) modernized the notion of literature and its practice according to the most cutting-edge ideology of nationalism and unification. The panel also stresses reciprocal and unexpected influences between social and literary institutions.

Papers:

“Staging Theatre History: The Origin Myth and the Struggle for Autonomy in Russian Imperial Theatre” – Andrey Fedotov, Lomonosov State U (Russia)

“Constructing Russian Nation in the Age of the Great Reforms: Alexander Ostrovsky and the Canon of Russian Drama” – Kirill Zubkov, Higher School of Economics (Russia)

“Classics for All?: Book Publishing and the Popularization of Dostoevsky in Late Imperial Russia” – Raffaella Vassena, U of Milan (Italy)

“How Russian Novel Came to School: Curriculum and Literary Canon in Late Imperial Russia” – Alexey Vdovin, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

Discussant: Jeffrey Peter Brooks, Johns Hopkins U

Chair: William Mills Todd III, Harvard U

 

Monday, November 25

Cognitive Approaches to Russian Literature II

10:00 to 11:45am, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 12

Our panel tests recent findings in cognitive science (psychology and philosophy) by applying them to established works of Russian literature. Inasmuch as these works denote acceptance by wide audiences, they constitute valid data for assessing so-called human universals.

Papers:

“Rates of Foreign Influence in the Russian Tradition: An Application of Psychology to Literary History” – Tom Dolack, Wheaton College

“Ivan Karamazov’s Fuzzy Feelings: The Cognitive Possibilities for a Non-Euclidean Mind” – Milica Ilicic, Columbia U

“The Cognitive Psychology of Belief, Piety, and Fantasy: From Fictive to Actual Inquisitors, Zealots, and Visionaries” – Jerry Piven, Rutgers, the State U of New Jersey

“Possibilities of Cognitive Approach to Biographical and Historical Novels of Evgeny Vodolazkin” – Amina Gabrielova, Purdue U

Discussant: Brett Cooke, Texes A&M U

Chair: David Powelstock, Brandeis U

 

Violence, Crime, and Suicide: The Ethics of Representation in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

3:45 to 5:30pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific I

Scholars across disciplines have increasingly turned to exploring the ethical implications of literary forms of representation as a way of reexamining traditional narrative categories. The study of the intersection of narrative and ethics has produced many works that question the essentially positive value of fiction-reading, or that investigate the possible encounters novels enable with lives different than our own. Focusing on the representations of suicide, trials, and violence, this panel seeks to bring the Russian nineteenth-century novel into this conversation by examining the intersections of narrative and ethics in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who stand out for their use of literary forms to question and explore the implications of the ethics of their fiction.

Papers:

 “Dostoevsky and Thanatotic Contagion” – Amy D. Ronner, St. Thomas U

“Fictional Defendants and Real Readers: The Ethics of Literary Trials” – Erica Stone Drennan, Columbia U

“‘Что ж, хоть и чужой, все надо жалость иметь’: The Ethics of Representing Alterity in Early Tolstoy” – Thomas Dyne, UC Berkeley

Discussants:

Alex Spektor, U of Georgia

Deborah A. Martinsen, Columbia U

Chair: Irina Paperno, UC Berkeley

 

Tuesday, November 26

Post-Soviet Film Adaptations: Redefining Russian and Soviet Literary Classics in 1990-early 2000s

10:00 to 11:45am, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Salon 11

This is the second in the series of three panels on film adaptations produced in the Soviet and post-Soviet period, 1930-2017. Our second panel focuses on the renewed attempt to re-interpret Russian and Soviet classics through film adaptations in the post-Soviet period, 1992-2015. The panel shows how post-Soviet filmmakers approached time-honored Russian literature by Pushkin and Dostoevsky, and the Soviet classic, “Quiet Flows the Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov, and re-interpreted these works for the new, post-Soviet period. The papers examine new beliefs about history and the canon implicit in the filmmakers’ revisions and also trace new film techniques in the updated films.

Papers:

“Making of a Dream: An Animated Film Adaptation of Dostoevsky’s ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’” – Irina Karlsohn, Dalarna U (Sweden) / Uppsala U (Sweden)

“Proshkin’s Post-Soviet Projection of Pushkin’s Prose: Catherine the Great in the film ‘Russkii Bunt’” – Amanda Fairchild Murphy, Nazarbayev U (Kazakhstan)

“Reclaiming Soviet Classics: Desire for Repetition or Change?” – Irina Makoveeva, Council on International Education Exchange (CIEE)

Discussant: Milla (Lioudmila) Fedorova, Georgetown U

Chair: Sabina Amanbayeva, Oklahoma City U

 

Cosmic Dreams and Communal Nightmares: Russian Science Fiction and Horror

12:00 to 1:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 5, Sierra G

This panel explores the spaces and influences of 20th-21st century Russian science fiction and horror literature: from the utopian dreams of space exploration and collective world-building to their nightmarish disintegration within the Soviet kommunalka and into post-Soviet reality. The first paper discusses the phenomenon of collective vampirism within the utopian society on Mars in Bogdanov’s “Red Star.” The second paper analyzes Petrushevskaya’s engagement with Poe in her short story “Chocolates with Liqueur” as a manifestation of what the author terms the domestic gothic. Finally, the third paper notes the influences of Russian Cosmism on Pelevin’s parodic revisioning of the Soviet space race in “Omon Ra.”

Papers:

“Communal Vampirism in Alexander Bogdanov’s ‘Red Star’” – Irina M. Erman, College of Charleston

“Transforming Poe and the Domestic Gothic in Petrushevskaya’s ‘Chocolates with Liqueur’” – Meghan Vicks, U of Colorado at Boulder

“Viktor Pelevin’s ‘Omon Ra’ and Russian Cosmism – Ritsuko Kidera, Doshisha U (Japan)

Chair: Oksana Husieva, U of Kansas

Thanks to Vadim Shneyder, North American Dostoevsky Society Readers Advisory Board member and Assistant Professor at UCLA, for compiling the list!

Live Tweets from the XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium

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by Vladimir Ivantsov

Below are summaries of selected papers. These summaries are based on live tweets from the IDS 2019 conference and only partially reflect the content of the papers delivered. All the tweets were collected from the hashtag #ids2019, with thanks to prolific conference livetweeters Dr Katia Bowers (on the Society account @DostoevskySoc) and Dr Brian Armstrong (tweeting on his personal account @wittstrong).

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Robin Miller and her Double!

Robin Miller gave a wonderful keynote on “Dostoevsky Writ Small.” (She was the first speaker of the first plenary session). Miller: The “raw life” of the animals, large and small, come to represent “the totality of the universe.” In The Brothers Karamazov “each small thing opens a portal … that creates an aura of the mystical, the fantastic,” into the whole of the universe … “these are the building blocks of Dostoevsky’s fantastic realism.”

Related to Miller’s talk was Zora Kadyrbekova’s paper on animal studies approach to The Idiot. She has argued that animals in the novel help lead or illuminate key themes in the novel and reveal or clarify a character’s moral/spiritual standing. Kadyrbekova: by calling a donkey a human Dostoevsky does not challenge the donkey’s species identity, rather he elevates that donkey to the level of a human, both capable of kindness and selfless service. Dostoevsky does not let the animal’s utility in the novel overtake their animalness, he respects animals’ subjectivity.

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Bakhtin on Love, from Emerson’s slide

Caryl Emerson’s keynote entitled “Bakhtin’s Dostoevsky and the Burden of Virtues” reconsidered the reading of Bakhtin in the Creation of a Prosaics book (co-authored by Emerson and Morson) predicated on Bakhtin’s theoretical understanding of the grace virtues faith, hope and love.

In his keynote, Vladimir Zakharov discussed the beautiful digitization project of Dostoevsky’s notebooks and manuscripts that is underway right now (you can check it out here: http://dostoevsky-archive.ru). Zakharov shares the great resource site from Petrozavodsk State University that has the digitized corpus of the Dostoevskys (not just FMD but also his brother, wife, daughter, etc.) as well as other Russian writers: http://philolog.petrsu.ru.

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Vladimir Zakharov’s keynote

In her paper “Metaphors in the House of the Dead and the Discourse of Peasant Liberation,” Cecilia Dilworth, drawing on Paperno, has made the point that the discourse around emancipation is characterized by particular narrative markers, including Christian imagery and resurrection from the dead. The emancipation language of resurrection did not just apply to the serfs being freed from slavery, but also to the Russian nation being freed from the barbarism of the past; and Notes from the House of the Dead should be read in this context, against the backdrop of emancipation discourse and its contemporaneous Russian cultural context.

Greta Matzner-Gore spoke on “Dostoevsky’s Poetics of Improbability and the Ending of Crime and Punishment.” Matzner-Gore: “the language and logic of statistical theory plays a significant role in the poetics of Crime and Punishment.” Greta has claimed that Dostoevsky chose so many coincidences precisely because they violated statisticians’ norms and laws. Hence, the controversial epilogue of Crime and Punishment does accord with the novel’s aesthetic structure because of its improbability.

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Satoshi Bamba’s paper

Satoshi Bamba’s paper placed the faces of The Idiot in the context of the physiognomic tradition. As Bamba observed, Bakhtin claims that Dostoevsky began not with ideas but with idea-heroes of dialogue (with voices), but we might add he also began with idea-faces.

Bilal Siddiqi spoke on “Materiality in The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov.” Siddiqi: Ivan Karamazov’s slipping away of reality is described through objects that are immaterial, imagined everyday objects. The breaking, missing, failure of everyday objects precisely by virtue of their everydayness signals to Ivan that he is losing his grasp on reality. The obtrusive object can be a source for awakening future events in Myshkin; examples: the pistol, the Chinese vase, and the knife. These objects and their function suggest that Dostoevsky is weaving into that novel a premonitory Myshkin who can see the future to some extent. Does this mean Myshkin carries with him an ability to see an unknown future truth? Perhaps.

For the full twitter narrative, click here. This Wakelet was created by Katia Bowers.

Vladimir Ivantsov is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Williams College. His research interests include Dostoevsky, his perception in Russian and world culture, and literature and philosophy (especially existentialism and posthumanist criticism). He is a member of the North American Dostoevsky Society Readers Advisory Board.

Reflections on the XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium

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compiled by Vladimir Ivantsov and Katya Jordan

The XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium took place at Boston University in July 2019. The Symposium is the triennial meeting of the International Dostoevsky Society; scholars gathered from all over the world for 5 days of papers and discussions of all aspects of Dostoevsky’s works. More information about the XVII Symposium can be found here and you can view the program here.

Here are some reflections collected from participants of the XVII Symposium:

Thanks to the two Russian museums that provided the exhibition. Feinberg’s colourful breakfast scene (1948) could be a Hollywood design for Little Women or Washington Square (no harm in that), while recent artists (Guriev and Zykina) envision Myshkin as a Byzantine Christ and St Petersburg as the desert of temptation. Khruslov’s shimmering Myshkin dominates Rogozhin like a powerful resurrection figure. From now on, Nastasya Fillipovna is Vil’ner’s proud, defiant, child! Thanks again.

– George Pattison

 

A luminous gathering, evidence that Bakhtin was right (!) — those who learn their basic vocabulary from great literature will never be entirely without hope or the ability to express it.   A huge thanks to the tireless organizers.

– Caryl Emerson

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An impromptu toast to Vladimir Zakharov during the opening remarks

This was the most intellectually stimulating Symposium I have ever attended. The plenary talks demonstrated the full range of possibilities for Dostoevsky scholarship: meticulous analysis of drafts; engagement both with the great moral questions and with the tiny detail; digital publication and textual analysis; the writer’s biography; the problem of paradox. The talks about digital analysis reminded me of how much fun this can be, and how much potential it offers for future readings.  And I am in awe of the resources that our Russian colleagues have posted online.

The book presentations were memorable—the authors had to talk extremely fast to share over twenty books within one short hour. Everyone left Thursday’s session smiling, in a congratulatory mood and with a long reading list. As is often the case, the most exciting parts of the Symposium were those animated exchanges during the question-and-answer period and the longer, deeper conversations that they led to.

Tuesday’s plenary session featuring Caryl Emerson and Gary Saul Morson made me recall why I chose to study Dostoevsky, and inspired me to keep on reading, thinking, and talking to people about his works. Well actually, when I think about it, everyone did that. Fortunately, it is a job that will never be done.

– Carol Apollonio

 

The six days with colleagues in Boston have been fabulous; It is difficult to put hierarchy among so many good things that we have experienced during the days of the conference: conversations between us, presentations, smiles of complicity, toasts, good food, pub, Alumni Boston University castle the first evening, our last night in the restaurant on the top of the hub with all so radiant faces … And then Museum Of Fine Arts -Egypt, China, Renaissance, Impressionists, and even a corner with an entire chapel of Catalan Romanesque. My heart still vibrates from all these lovely impressions. Thank you for everything and CONGRATULATIONS for such a wonderful organization.

Warmly,

~ Tamara Djermanovic

 

Besides all those wonderful sessions and events, I would like to mention our tour to the MFA Boston. I was astonished not only by its wonderful collection of European art, but also by its terrific Asian collection, which is competable with Chinese national museums. I want to thank all colleagues, who organized this tour, and especially Anna Weinstein, who answered so many our random questions on our way there (cf. Sergey Kibal’nik’s anecdote about the drowning boy at the closing banquet).

Best regards,

~Xuyang Mi (Сюйян Ми)

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Robin Feuer Miller introduces a panel thinking about economics in Dostoevsky’s works: Vadim Shneyder, Jillian Porter, Jonathan Paine and discussant William Mills Todd, III

I would like to single out a particularly interesting paper I heard during Session 3A: Dostoevsky the Thinker (unfortunately I missed the first two presenters). Olena Bystrova of the Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University gave a paper titled “‘На мгновение’ и ‘вдруг’ как слова-фиксаторы фотографического мышления Ф. Достоевского” [“For an Instant” and “suddenly” as Fixer Words in Dostoevsky’s Photographic Thought]. Dr. Bystrova prefaced her paper with a brief presentation about the city of Drohobych in Ukrainian Galicia near the Polish border, in which she discussed the city’s multiethnic and multiconfessional history and its traditional economic basis in salt production (the name of the region of Galicia may come from the Greek word for salt–halas). Among the famous people who called Drohobych home were the Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz and the Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko.

The main argument of Bystrova’s paper was that Dostoevsky’s responded to photography in his techniques for representing vision and time. To develop her concept of photographic thinking, Bystrova drew on the ideas of the Ukrainian poet and critic Maik Iohansen (1895–1937), who argued that the significance of photography lay in its capacity to fix an instantaneous moment in time.

Decades before Iohansen, Dostoevsky showed an interest in the capacity of the photograph to capture what is hidden, unnoticed, and momentary. At the same time, Dostoevsky contrasted the rarity with which a photograph—a fundamentally analytical technique—managed to capture a realistic likeness to the work of representational art, which could synthesize from a mass of impressions to reveal the truth of the whole.

Describing the scene in The Idiot where Myshkin breaks the Chinese vase, Bystrova claimed that Dostoevsky’s narrative technique consists of a series of verbal snapshots, sometimes tellingly divided by ellipses. Both “Suddenly” and “for a moment” are lexical markers of Dostoevsky’s photographic thinking according to Bystrova: “suddenly” marks the succession of individual photographic images, while the intermittent stillness of “for a moment” refers to the photograph’s capacity to fix an individual moment in time and break it out of the continuum of duration.

I thought this was a thought-provoking and compelling argument that demonstrated the sensitivity of Dostoevsky’s poetics to the most variegated historical developments.

Best,

~ Vadim Shneyder

 

At the opening reception, Bill Todd reflected with Gary Saul Morson on his review (nearly four decades ago) of two seminal monographs in the history of Dostoevsky scholarship: Gary Saul Morson’s own The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (from U of Texas P in 1981) and Robin Feuer Miller’s Dostoevsky and The Idiot: Author, Narrator, and Reader (from Harvard UP in 1981). It’s amazing to think of the sustained engagement with Dostoevsky’s work and with each other’s work that they and many other scholars exhibit; it’s also an excellent source of inspiration. 

~ Brian Armstrong

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Armstrong’s photo of Morson and Todd in discussion

I was particularly moved by Professor Caryl Emerson’s keynote address. With her customary eloquence and grace, Caryl offered generous reflections on Bakhtin, virtue, and that difficult and necessary attitude toward love espoused by Dostoevsky’s Zosima—деятельная любовь. Caryl reminds us that dialogue requires patience, and her carefully measured words encourage us to “slow down to better see what’s there.” In times of unchecked aggression and unbridled violence, Caryl’s wisdom remains balm for the living.

~ Justin Trifiro

 

The International Dostoevsky Symposium in Boston was one of the great joys of the summer. Thanks to all who made it such a success. I learned much from each presentation. I was especially intrigued by Anna Bermans’s insight into the paucity of descendants in Dostoevsky’s fiction. Yet I couldn’t help thinking of a wonderfully imaginative and moving poem by Robert Hass in which he imagines “the great-grandson / Of the elder Karamazov brother who fled to the Middle West / With his girlfriend Grushenka.” The poem is entitled, “I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name is Dmitri.”

You can hear Hass read the poem here.  And can read the poem here.

~ Paul Contino

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Old and New Presidents of the International Dostoevsky Society: Vladimir Zakharov and Carol Apollonio

Я совершенно согласен с теми словами, которые произнёс Вильям Тодд в завершающий день Симпозиума: из всех прошедших именно этот отличался наиболее высоким научным уровнем. Я был впечатлен и докладами высокого научного уровня, и острыми, но благожелательными дискуссиями, и самой замечательной интеллектуальной атмосферой в Бостоне, которая сопровождала все дни конференции. Особо же мне хотелось поблагодарить Кэрол Аполлонио, за очень деятельную помощь и Юрия Корригана, который очень чутко откликался на пожелания (в том числе, технического характера), как и в целом американских коллег за проявленное ими замечательное гостеприимство. Было бы очень хорошо издать (в том числе, и в «устаревающем» бумажном формате) хотя бы избранные материалы этого Симпозиума.

~ Иван Есаулов (Москва)

 

ХVІІ Конгресс IDS был третьим форумом (после Неаполя и Гранады), на котором я присутствовал.

Могу с уверенностью сказать, что организация, выбор докладов и сопутствующая программа были безупречны.

Я чрезвычайно горжусь и доволен возможностью общения с представителями американской русистики и русской достоевистики. Я знал многих из них раньше, но познакомился с некоторыми из моих коллег сейчас.

Я искренне надеюсь, что наши встречи и сотрудничество продолжатся. Спасибо всем!

С уважением,

~ Проф. д-р Людмил Димитров (София)

Presenters (clockwise from top left): Denis Zhernokleyev, Benamí Barros
Garcia, Zora Kadyrbekova, Bilal Siddiqi, Katya Jordan

 

17 симпозиум IDS был замечательно организован, царила тёплая атмосфера дружбы и любви. Именно такие взаимоотношения между людьми проповедовал Достоевский. Их выразил и тост на прощальном банкете – «За любовь!».

Хорошо то, что каждый день начинался с пленарных заседаний: можно было прослушать много докладов ведущих достоеведов. Особенно понравились доклады Р. Фойер Миллер, К. Эмерсон, В. Захарова, Б.Тихомирова, Ю. Корригана, С. Алое, К. Аполлонио, Б. Барроса.

Очень понравились экскурсии.

Такие встречи вдохновляют на новые творческие достижения и открытия.

~ Галина Федянова, Тамара Баталова

 

Дорогие коллеги!

Бостонская конференция была действительно прекрасной, рабочей и дружеской. Программа была замечательной и секции организованны очень хорошо. Нам, конечно, открылась возможность поговорить со старыми знакомыми и, одновременно, познакомится с новыми коллегами. Техническая поддержка была на высоком уровне (напитки, еда, Интернет связь, экскурсия, музей и проч.). Новое прочтение романа «Идиот» показалось плодотворным (разные взгляды на один роман или на одну тему – это и есть суть симпозиума!). Мне очень понравились дискуссии, которые велись после каждого доклада, а общения и комментарии к докладам не раз продолжались в течение обеда и кофе брейка.

Спасибо организаторам!

~ Ясмина Войводич

 

More presenters (clockwise from top left): Deborah Martinsen, Greta
Matzner-Gore, Justin Trifiro, Sarah Hudspith, Cecilia Dilworth

 

[…] Особый интерес вызвал доклад К. Эмерсон, который ознаменовал существенные изменения в восприятии северо-американскими учеными концепции творчества Достоевского, выдвинутой в ранней книге М.М. Бахтина «Проблемы поэтики Достоевского» (1929): интерпретация произведений писателя вне религиозно-этических категорий была со стороны русского философа, как это явствует из его собственных позднейших свидетельств, вынужденным шагом, который, следовательно, напрасно добровольно повторяют некоторые современные исследователи, слишком доверившиеся постмодернистским представлениям о безусловной относительности бахтинского «диалога».

Больше всего секционных заседаний было посвящено, естественно, проблемам интерпретации романа «Идиот», и в центре внимания докладчиков зачастую оказывался его главный герой, князь Мышкин. В докладах была представлена и первоначальная тенденция восприятия этого героя как безусловного представления писателя о «положительно прекрасном человеке», и тенденция к дегероизации Мышкина, отчетливо проявившаяся в последние десятилетия изучения творчества Достоевского.

Все же в большинстве докладов звучало, как представляется, своего рода новое и во всяком случае более взвешенное представление об этом одном из загадочных образов Достоевского как о «положительно прекрасном человеке», который, тем не менее, все равно, хотя бы вследствие своей человеческой природы, не в силах разрешить трагические противоречия жизни, мучительно переживаемые другими его героями. Кое-что князь Мышкин все же оказывается способен сделать: заронить в душу каждого из них частицу добра и света, которые согревают их в минуты этих переживаний, – причем не только при личном общении с ним.

[…] Охарактеризовать все доклады, заслуживающие упоминания, к сожалению, невозможно, потому что все, что было в программе Симпозиума […] в том или ином отношении заслуживало внимания. Однако поскольку некоторые секционные заседания проходили одновременно, то и возможности прослушать их все не было. И это, может быть, единственный, хотя и исключительно вынужденный, недостаток Симпозиума.

Впрочем, если попытаться взглянуть на него критически, чтобы более целенаправленно работать на совершенствование этого замечательного форума в дальнейшем, то, наверное, далеко не все было так радужно и безоблачно. Очевидно, по-прежнему сказывалась во время работы бостонского Симпозиума одна и та же застарелая проблема в деятельности Международного общества Достоевского. Англоязычное и русскоязычное изучение его творчества – это, как и раньше, во многом параллельные миры. […]

Выступавшие с заключительными словами участники Симпозиума единодушно отметили, что он был организован великолепно и прошел на высоком научном уровне. Были высказаны также надежды на то, что грядущий в 2021 году 200-летний юбилей Достоевского будет отмечен и в России, и за рубежом достойно и содержательно.

Full text is forthcoming in Russkaia Literatura.

Полный текст будет опубликован в журнале Русская литература.

~ С.А.Кибальник

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Dostoevsky authors with their books!

Vladimir Ivantsov is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian at Williams College. His research interests include Dostoevsky, his perception in Russian and world culture, and literature and philosophy (especially existentialism and posthumanist criticism). He is a member of the North American Dostoevsky Society Readers Advisory Board. 

Katya Jordan is an Assistant Professor of Russian at Brigham Young University. Her research centers on cultural underpinnings of silence in Russian literature. She is a member of the North American Dostoevsky Society Readers Advisory Board.

The photographs that appear in this post are from the personal collections of Carol Apollonio and Katherine Bowers, unless specified otherwise, and appear with the photographers’ permission.

‘To Uncover the Secret of the Person, While Preserving the Secret as a Secret’ – A Review of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society’s International Symposium “The Anthropology of Dostoevsky”

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by Peter Winsky

In his letter of August 16, 1839, Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to his brother Mikhail Mikhailovich that “the person is a mystery…I am studying that mystery because I want to become a person.”[1] In similar fashion, scholars from around the globe gathered for the International Symposium on “The Anthropology of Dostoevsky” to continue Dostoevsky’s quest to understand the enigmas encrypted into the human being. Organized and held by the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society between October 23-26, 2018 at the Sofia University of St. Kliment Ohridski, the Symposium addressed the question of the person as a problem and subject of investigation in Dostoevsky’s world. The gathering was held in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the novel The Idiot.

According to Professor Emil Dimitrov, the chief architect and mastermind of both the Symposium and Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society and one of the most engaging and passionate organizers of an intellectual gathering one could possibly meet, “the question of Dostoevsky’s anthropology is not ‘What is the person?’ (that is, in the way according to Kant), but ‘What is the person capable of?’ It is the testing of the ultimate foundations of the person and humanity, the testing of the boundaries of this humanity, on the other side of which the person becomes something else – subhuman or superhuman (the Man-God, according to Kirillov)… In the spirit of Heidegger, I can say that the purpose of our Symposium is to uncover the secret of the person according to Dostoevsky, while preserving the secret as a secret.”[2] To achieve this, Professor Dimitrov built a magnificent series of events to compliment the presentations at the conference, and in doing so brought together professionals from varied disciplines, not only literature or philosophy scholars, via the particularly welcoming and friendly Bulgarian culture and lifestyle.

The morning of the first day of the Symposium opened with a panikhida, an Orthodox requiem service, for Fyodor Mikhailovich in the rotunda church of Saint Sofia, constructed between the 4th and 6th centuries. Following the service, the participants transferred to the main hall of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for the official opening of the Symposium, marked by short welcoming speeches from Professor Dimitrov and Yordanka Fandakova, the mayor of Sofia.

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Opening Remarks from Yordanka Fandakova. Image Credit: Emil Dimitrov

Following the opening greetings, Dr. Sergei Sergeevich Khoruzhy, founder of the Institute of Synergetic Anthropology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and professor, mathematician, and philosopher, delivered the plenary address for the Symposium entitled “The Eschatology of Dostoevsky in the Context and Light of the Contemporary Renaissance of Eschatology.” Over the course of his remarks Professor Khoruzhy mused on the foundations of Dostoevsky’s eschatology as a personal and anthropological question through the lens of certain episodes in the novels such as Marmeladov’s Confession and Versilov’s Dream. The second half of the talk addressed the apparent ‘realizations’ of the apocalyptic situations of which Dostoevsky had prophesied (i.e. the Revolution), and possible connections of his visions and to contemporary manifestations such as global terrorism.

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Plenary Address by Sergei Sergeevich Khoruzhy.  Image Credit: Emil Dimitrov

Following Professor Khoruzhy’s captivating presentation the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society provided a cocktail reception amid an exhibition of sketches and paintings inspired by The Idiot entitled “I was Happy in a Different Way…” After the reception, the conference began in earnest with two sessions exploring the anthropocentric universe of Dostoevsky. Panels on topics ranging from varieties of philosophical discourse in Dostoevsky, such as through Hegelian influence, to literary evaluations of The Idiot, including this author’s presentation on questions of narrative construction through the lens of Orthodox Personalism, to comparative analyses with novels like Zamyatin’s We or Ivan Bazov’s Under the Yoke, continued for the following two days. These presentations mapped and investigated the macro- and microcosmic pockets of personal being and its reverberations throughout the author’s oeuvre.

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Lazar Milentievich and Emil Dimitrov during Session One. Image Credit: Emil Dimitrov

The Symposium was not confined to the academic sphere of presentation and discourse. Every evening Professor Dimitrov engaged the participants with an assortment of cultural activities, ranging from a performance of Bulgarian Orthodox singing in the Museum of Iconography in the basement of the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, to a dinner accompanied by Bulgarian folk dancing and singing, and finally the first ever screening of Akira Kurosowa’s film adaptation of The Idiot with Bulgarian subtitles.

The film was presented by members of the Japanese Society of Akira Kurosawa and the Dostoevsky Society of Japan. Select members also spoke during a round table event that showcased rare interviews with Kurosawa on his work translating the novel into cinema. The history of the lost footage from the film, which exists because of the demands of the studio on the director to make the movie under 3 hours, was also discussed. These presentations, which comprised the closing panel for the conference, truly reinforced the universality of Dostoevsky’s art as it penetrates not merely across linguistic and national boarders, but across cultural codes and mediums as well. If the task of the Symposium was, as Professor Dimitrov noted, an engagement with and evaluation of the boundaries of the person and an inquisition into its mystery, then this final discussion showed that the riches of the mines of personal being in Dostoevsky’s work are far from being uncovered.

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Presentation by the Japanese Society of Akira Kurosawa. Image Credit: Emil Dimitrov

On the last day of the conference, the participants of the Symposium set out together for the Rila Monastery, located 73 miles south of Sofia. During the excursion the group wandered beneath the breathtaking frescos of the central church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, the museum of religious artifacts, and were greeted by the Hegumen of the monastery. From the beautifully tree-lined valley in which the monastery is situated the conference ended at a vineyard and winery near the Greek border where Professor Dimitrov toasted the participants, the forthcoming publication of the conference proceedings, and a future International Symposium of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society. The curtain was drawn on the conference in the same way in which it was revealed, with the joyful spirit of academic cooperation and exploration into the mysteries of Dostoevsky’s profoundly personal worldview.

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Participants of the Symposium at the Rila Monastery. Image Credit: Katja Winsky

[1] F.M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridsati tomakh. vol. 28(I), ed. Bazanov et. al., (Leningrad: Nauka 1972-90), 63. Translations are the author’s own.

[2] Emil Dimitrov, “Osnovnoi voproc antropologii Dostoevskogo- ‘Kak chelovek vozmozhen?’” translated by the author (accessed, 2 Feburary, 2019).

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The author presenting his paper. Image Credit: Katja Winsky

Peter Gregory Winsky is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California Los Angeles in the Department of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages and Cultures. He is writing his dissertation on the poetics of Dostoevsky’s late novels through the lens of Orthodox Personalism, with a particular interest in the relation of beauty, metanoia, and noetic vision to ‘higher realism.’ He presented a paper at the Symposium, titled ‘“I Opened to My Beloved, but My Beloved had Withdrawn” – The Anthropological Foundations of Myshkin’s Failure in Идиот.” 

CFP: Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin Panel Stream at AATSEEL 2020

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This is a call for proposals to participate in the “Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin” stream at AATSEEL 2020 in San Diego. 

Since the 1980s, the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin have dominated approaches to Dostoevsky’s art and found productive applications in a vast variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.  Without questioning either the legacy of this impact or the originality of the theories themselves, it is arguable that the firm hold of Bakhtinian paradigms over Dostoevsky studies at this point in time leads mostly to rote readings that reach predictable conclusions.  This panel stream proposes that both Dostoevsky studies and the Slavic field more broadly stand to benefit from a more critical assessment of Bakhtin and a more robust, imaginative, and forward-looking debate about alternatives and future directions.

The stream seeks to initiate a vibrant scholarly conversation that would be structured around two specific questions.  First, for all the acuity of his theoretical modeling, how may Bakhtin have been wrong about Dostoevsky?  To what extent may Bakhtin’s influential readings of specific works by Dostoevsky be actually seen as misreadings?  Just how “unfinalized” are Dostoevsky’s novelistic discourses and how open-ended is his “polyglossia”?  To what extent may an implied reader that Bakhtin posits, and whose reading experience he claims to be reflecting, be too idiosyncratic to serve as a viable model of the reader of Dostoevsky’s fictions?

Second, what new vision of Dostoevsky’s art might emerge if we move beyond Bakhtin and no longer treat his exegeses as inviolable essential “truths” about the writer or an inescapable point of reference? What aspects of Dostoevsky’s fictional universe – neglected narrative, ethical, psychological, and ideological dimensions – might then come into view?  What new theoretical perspectives might productively assist us in this task?  How might Dostoevsky’s work be made relevant to current debates within the humanities?

For more information about this stream, please contact Edyta Bojanowska. Details about panel streams at AATSEEL 2020 can be found here. Proposals for “Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin” are due by May 1 (early deadline) via the AATSEEL membership portal – indicate that your proposal is for this stream in your abstract. For more information, please visit the AATSEEL website.