Writers have always been conscious of the contribution that clothes can make to their work—as mat... more Writers have always been conscious of the contribution that clothes can make to their work—as material objects, as outward signs of inner character, and as metaphors, especially for language itself. In the early 20th century, however, a time of rapid technological change, as well as of industrialization, globalization, and urbanization, literary interrogations and descriptions of dress evolved to respond to the new ways in which garments were designed, made, marketed, and sold, and to fashion’s increasing pervasiveness in society. Particularly sensitive to these changes were many of the writers associated with modernism, who shared with the nascent fashion industry a preoccupation with questions of novelty and the presentation of the self. Russia was no exception, and there poets, playwrights, and novelists explored and exploited the meanings of clothes and fashion in order to address the urgent questions concerning sex, gender, and race that were thrown up by life in the modern cit...
The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that 'fai... more The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that 'faith is nonsense', does not know how truly he speaks; later it may come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith. G. K. Chesterton 1 N onsense gets everywhere. Even at the peak of the Russian realist tradition, in Anton Chekhov's grimly unfantastical novella The Peasants (1897), we are reminded that some words have nothing to do with communicating a message or representing the world but are no less important for that. The devout peasant Olga, whose life starts off bad and gets worse, takes comfort in the Bible precisely because it seems so divorced from reality: She read the Gospels every day aloud, like someone reading the lesson in church, not understanding much of them. But the holy words moved her to tears and she almost swooned with delight as she brought out such things as 'whosoever' or 'until I bring thee word' [.. .] When she said words from the Bible, even without understanding them, she looked compassionate, radiant and deeply moved. 2
Public engagement, impact, and knowledge exchange are concepts that today rank highly on research... more Public engagement, impact, and knowledge exchange are concepts that today rank highly on research agendas across the UK. Yet the discussion of what constitutes engagement, on the politics and practicalities of building collaborations with non-academic partners, and on the ethics of conducting such work are still at their very earliest stages. Emerging from a British Academy-funded workshop, “Slavic Studies Goes Public: Creating an ECR Network in the Public Humanities,” this series of essays and critical-creative works — collaborations at the boundary of academic writing and artistic practice — explores what we see as some of the most important questions relating to public engagement in our field. What institutional factors and politics inform and determine the “who” of our public engagement work? How can the us/them dichotomy be rethought and with it the idea of “giving voice” to “voiceless” communities? How can those leading projects be sure that the legacy or change is desired by ...
People often now ask what our food means. But what happens when our food literally spells somethi... more People often now ask what our food means. But what happens when our food literally spells something out? A form of popular creativity often treated with derision – namely, salads in which ingredients form pictures or words – is here read as an instructive example of the production and reproduction of patriotic ideology on the Russian internet. After a brief consideration of connections between salads and discourses of nation and class, this article considers pictorial salads in the context of postmodernism in art, architecture and politics. I propose that the way in which images of these salads are shared and discussed is typical not only of the antagonistic, politicised space of the Russophone internet, but also of the online “prosumption” of images in general, which, I ultimately suggest, does not empower and liberate, but rather replicates the constrictive scopic regime of Socialist Realism.
Vasilii Kamenskii was rather fond of telling the story of his life. 1 For this self-indulgence he... more Vasilii Kamenskii was rather fond of telling the story of his life. 1 For this self-indulgence he can perhaps be forgiven: the Russian Futurist poet, best known for his groundbreaking ferro-concrete poem Tango s korovami (Tango with Cows, 1913), had an unusual fate, encompassing a multitude of adventures, acquaintances and identities: orphan, railwayman, revolutionary; actor, playwright, poet; aviator, party organizer, provincial grandee; amputee, stroke victim, outsider artist. What is most interesting, however, about Kamenskii's multiple forays into lifewriting is not so much the stories they contain, as what they reveal about the problematics of Russian literary history and identity in the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular the thorny question of the transition between the Modernist avant-garde and Socialist Realism, the official aesthetic doctrine of the Stalinist 1930s and beyond. 2 1 Savvatii Gints, Kamenskii's friend and biographer, relates that Kamenskii liked to tell stories from his own life, often with a degree of fictional licence. See Savvatii Gints, Vasilii Kamenskii (Perm: Permskoe knizhnoe izdatelʹstvo, 1984), p. 185. I am grateful to Petre Petrov and two anonymous reviewers at MLR for their comments on an earlier version of this article. 2 Kamenskii wrote two autobiographies, numerous semi-autobiographical poems and prose sketches, two memoirs of Vladimir Maiakovskii and a long verse reminiscence of him, multiple novels, plays and poems about Aleksandr Pushkin, Stepan Razin and Emelʹian Pugachev. Following the practice of Laura Marcus, amongst others, I will use of the terms lifewriting and auto/biography here because Kamenskii's memoirs offer no clear-cut discernment between biography and autobiography
Writers have always been conscious of the contribution that clothes can make to their work—as mat... more Writers have always been conscious of the contribution that clothes can make to their work—as material objects, as outward signs of inner character, and as metaphors, especially for language itself. In the early 20th century, however, a time of rapid technological change, as well as of industrialization, globalization, and urbanization, literary interrogations and descriptions of dress evolved to respond to the new ways in which garments were designed, made, marketed, and sold, and to fashion’s increasing pervasiveness in society. Particularly sensitive to these changes were many of the writers associated with modernism, who shared with the nascent fashion industry a preoccupation with questions of novelty and the presentation of the self. Russia was no exception, and there poets, playwrights, and novelists explored and exploited the meanings of clothes and fashion in order to address the urgent questions concerning sex, gender, and race that were thrown up by life in the modern cit...
The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that 'fai... more The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that 'faith is nonsense', does not know how truly he speaks; later it may come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith. G. K. Chesterton 1 N onsense gets everywhere. Even at the peak of the Russian realist tradition, in Anton Chekhov's grimly unfantastical novella The Peasants (1897), we are reminded that some words have nothing to do with communicating a message or representing the world but are no less important for that. The devout peasant Olga, whose life starts off bad and gets worse, takes comfort in the Bible precisely because it seems so divorced from reality: She read the Gospels every day aloud, like someone reading the lesson in church, not understanding much of them. But the holy words moved her to tears and she almost swooned with delight as she brought out such things as 'whosoever' or 'until I bring thee word' [.. .] When she said words from the Bible, even without understanding them, she looked compassionate, radiant and deeply moved. 2
Public engagement, impact, and knowledge exchange are concepts that today rank highly on research... more Public engagement, impact, and knowledge exchange are concepts that today rank highly on research agendas across the UK. Yet the discussion of what constitutes engagement, on the politics and practicalities of building collaborations with non-academic partners, and on the ethics of conducting such work are still at their very earliest stages. Emerging from a British Academy-funded workshop, “Slavic Studies Goes Public: Creating an ECR Network in the Public Humanities,” this series of essays and critical-creative works — collaborations at the boundary of academic writing and artistic practice — explores what we see as some of the most important questions relating to public engagement in our field. What institutional factors and politics inform and determine the “who” of our public engagement work? How can the us/them dichotomy be rethought and with it the idea of “giving voice” to “voiceless” communities? How can those leading projects be sure that the legacy or change is desired by ...
People often now ask what our food means. But what happens when our food literally spells somethi... more People often now ask what our food means. But what happens when our food literally spells something out? A form of popular creativity often treated with derision – namely, salads in which ingredients form pictures or words – is here read as an instructive example of the production and reproduction of patriotic ideology on the Russian internet. After a brief consideration of connections between salads and discourses of nation and class, this article considers pictorial salads in the context of postmodernism in art, architecture and politics. I propose that the way in which images of these salads are shared and discussed is typical not only of the antagonistic, politicised space of the Russophone internet, but also of the online “prosumption” of images in general, which, I ultimately suggest, does not empower and liberate, but rather replicates the constrictive scopic regime of Socialist Realism.
Vasilii Kamenskii was rather fond of telling the story of his life. 1 For this self-indulgence he... more Vasilii Kamenskii was rather fond of telling the story of his life. 1 For this self-indulgence he can perhaps be forgiven: the Russian Futurist poet, best known for his groundbreaking ferro-concrete poem Tango s korovami (Tango with Cows, 1913), had an unusual fate, encompassing a multitude of adventures, acquaintances and identities: orphan, railwayman, revolutionary; actor, playwright, poet; aviator, party organizer, provincial grandee; amputee, stroke victim, outsider artist. What is most interesting, however, about Kamenskii's multiple forays into lifewriting is not so much the stories they contain, as what they reveal about the problematics of Russian literary history and identity in the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular the thorny question of the transition between the Modernist avant-garde and Socialist Realism, the official aesthetic doctrine of the Stalinist 1930s and beyond. 2 1 Savvatii Gints, Kamenskii's friend and biographer, relates that Kamenskii liked to tell stories from his own life, often with a degree of fictional licence. See Savvatii Gints, Vasilii Kamenskii (Perm: Permskoe knizhnoe izdatelʹstvo, 1984), p. 185. I am grateful to Petre Petrov and two anonymous reviewers at MLR for their comments on an earlier version of this article. 2 Kamenskii wrote two autobiographies, numerous semi-autobiographical poems and prose sketches, two memoirs of Vladimir Maiakovskii and a long verse reminiscence of him, multiple novels, plays and poems about Aleksandr Pushkin, Stepan Razin and Emelʹian Pugachev. Following the practice of Laura Marcus, amongst others, I will use of the terms lifewriting and auto/biography here because Kamenskii's memoirs offer no clear-cut discernment between biography and autobiography
Uploads
Papers by James Rann