20th cent. Lit course "Women in Russian Lit"

[Furman, Yelena]

I second Alina Israeli's suggestion re: Helena Goscilo's work in this regard.  I particularly recommend looking at her Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost' and her edited collection, Fruits of Her Plume.  Both are invaluable resources and discuss a lot of specific Russian women writers.  
In my 20th century course - a general course with a women writers component - we are reading Petrushevskaia's Time: Night and short stories by Ulitskaia.  In my contemporary Russian women's fiction course, which obviously goes more in-depth on this subject, we also read Valeriia Narbikova, Yuliya Voznesenskaia, Marina Palei, and Svetlana Vasilenko. 
All of these are obviously glasnost'/post-Soviet writers; given that this period witnessed a veritable explosion of women's writing, it seems fitting that so many suggestions for readings come from this time.
If you want further suggestions, I would be more than happy to discuss them off list (yfurman at humnet.ucla.edu).  
Best, Lena
________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of trubikhina at AOL.COM
Sent: Tue 5/29/2007 8:16 AM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] 20th cent. Lit course "Women in Russian Lit"




 Dear colleagues,

I am wondering if you could offer me some pragmatic and helpful suggestions. This summer I am working to develop an undergraduate course called "Women in Russian Literature." The specifics of our situation is that this is the only way at present time that we can quickly get a course in 20th-century Russian Literature that we sorely need through curriculum committees (it already exists on the books) and also enroll it (by cross-listing with Women Studies and English).
Therefore, we have a double goal: there should be a women studies component to it BUT PRIMARILY it should be a course in 20th-century Russian Literature.  Women can be both authors (I am certainly planning to include Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, and Gippius) and characters/subject/conceptual focus, which makes it easier to include the most important 20th-century male authors.

I was wondering if you could help me by offering suggestions
a) about the specific texts/authors to use (other than the three women authors mentioned above) that would be both the highlights of 20th-century R.Lit. and/or have important women characters/protagonists (OR concept of femininity at the work's center, like, e.g., Blok's Russia=eternal femininity concept).
b) a theoretical perspective that a course aimed at fulfilling such a dual purpose could use.

I will be grateful for and looking forward to all suggestions, on or off the list,

Julia







-------------------
Julia Trubikhina

Assistant Professor of Russian
Russian Program Coordinator
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Montclair State University
Dickson Hall, Room 138
Montclair, NJ 07043










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