Final call for papers: Empire in Russian and Soviet Literature (ASEEES 2011)

[Peter Weisensel]

Dear Professor Bojanowska,

I was pleased to receive your message via SEELANGS soliciting paper
proposals about the literature of the Russian core and its peripheries. I
will respond by proposing a paper for one of your panels at the 2011 ASEEES
Washington conference. The paper proposal (that follows below) will be a
summation of a chapter from my book-length manuscript on "Central Asia
Through Russian Eyes" that I am preparing for publication. I realize that my
paper may be a "back-up" for others at this stage, but I will make the
proposal and hope for the best. I will also add that I am trained in history
and not literature. I take a position that may be controversial in a
literary circle, but it will stimulate discussion. My research, however,
fits nicely into the growing consensus, at least as I see it, that Russian
culture does not easily fit into the Saidian Orientalist discourse.

The paper will analyze an early nineteenth-century image of the Asian
(Khivan) as presented in the book, Puteshestvie v Turkmeniiu i Khivu v 1819
g. (SPb., 1822) by Nikolai Nikolaevich Murav'ev (later Murav'ev-Karskii), a
book founded on experiences during a diplomatic expedition in 1819, and one
that Orientalists of the time considered one of the three best books about
Central Asia in Russian. Building on the ideas of Vico and the contemporary
American philosopher, Margaret Urban Walker, I propose that Murav'ev's image
of an Khivan Asian reflects the contemporary context of ideas and not as
much an a priori East-West bifurcation. Murav'ev's infatuation is with the
ideas of J.-J. Rousseau, an infatuation for which many officers shared
before and after the Decembrist revolt. Murav'ev's attraction for Rousseau
was however indiscriminate, because both the rationalist democracy in
Rousseau's Social Contract and his romanticism in Julie, Or the New
Heloise drew
him. Murav'ev speaks at length about the "Khivan people," not Asian
inferiors, while describing the political regime in Khiva, an approach that
is linked to the Social Contract. Interestingly and contrarily, much of the
first volume of the Puteshestvie is laden with sentimentalist and romantic
elements consistent with Julie: extended narrations of his fears of being
abandoned, the terror of falling into slavery, the usefulness, honor and savoir
faire of his guide, Seid. In the end Murav'ev predicts that Russia one day
will have to conquer Khiva if she is to have open access to trade with Asia,
but the explanation is economic pragmatism not culture, and certainly not
race.

Thank you for considering my proposal and I will look forward to hearing
your decision.

Peter Weisensel
Professor of History
Macalester College
Saint Paul, Minnesota





On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:26 AM, Edyta Bojanowska
<bojanows at rci.rutgers.edu>wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> This is a final call for papers on the theme of empire in Russian and
> Soviet Literature for ASEEES 2011.  I copy below the original call from
> November.  I thank all colleagues who already responded for their enthusiasm
> and support.  Kathryn and I are very excited about this event!
>
> If you have already volunteered, please be sure to send me your final title
> and a brief description by the extended deadline of January 3 (not 1st).
> On January 4, I will finalize the roster and begin writing up panel
> proposals. Based on initial responses, we have a complete roster for a
> series of three panels, but the call remains open for new proposals in case
> some spaces open up.  If they do, papers on the 19th century would be
> particularly welcome.
>
> Best regards,
> Edyta Bojanowska
>
> ***********************
>
> Call for papers: Empire in Russian and Soviet Literature (ASEEES 2011)
>
> We would like to organize a block of 2-3 panels and a roundtable for the
> 2011 ASEEES Convention in Washington, D.C. that would showcase the recent
> work on the theme of empire in Russian and Soviet literature.The idea is to
> schedule all the panels continuously on the same day and in the same
> room.Our goal is to create a coherent forum that would foster conversation
> and exchange of ideas, get together both junior and senior scholars who work
> on this topic, and reflect on the current state and future direction of the
> literary studies of empire. It would be great for all of us to get to know
> one another and perhaps set up an email list that would connect us beyond
> conferences. We have heard brilliant presentations on imperial themes over
> the last few years and we think the time is ripe for this event.
>
> If you are interested in presenting, please send me the title of your
> presentation and a brief description by January 1, 2011 (the address is
> bojanows at rci.rutgers.edu <mailto:bojanows at rci.rutgers.edu>).Please also
> email me if you'd be interested in serving as a discussant or a chair.The
> panels would ideally cover a range of historical periods, authors,
> approaches, and geographical contexts. We are open to any themes, but these
> could include: relations between the Russian core and its peripheries;
> representations of imperial ethnicities, spaces, and temporalities; how
> peripheries "write back"; how various authors and texts "talk to" one
> another on imperial issues and what points of controversy and consensus
> emerge (if any); the relationship between Russian and Western European
> imperial discourses; interactions between empire, nation, class, and gender;
> relations between the state, public sphere, and literary discourses of
> empire; the problem of translation in the imperial context; continuities and
> contrasts between treatments of empire in the Tsarist and Soviet periods;
> approaches to coloniality; the conceptual range of the civilizing
> mission(s); the relevance of post-colonial theory to the Russian/Soviet
> evidence or what this evidence brings to post-colonial theory.
>
> We look forward to hearing from you.
>
>  Edyta Bojanowska (Rutgers Univ.) and Kathryn Schild (Tulane Univ.)
>
> --
> Edyta Bojanowska
> Assistant Professor of Russian Literature
> Dept. of Germanic, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures
> Rutgers University, 195 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08901
> ph: (732)932-7201, fax: (732) 932-1111
> http://german.rutgers.edu/faculty/profiles/bojanowska.htm
>
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-- 
Peter Weisensel
Professor
Department of History
Macalester College

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