CFP: 'Writing and Reading Russian Biography', University of Oxford, March 2014

[Polly Jones]

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

* *

*Writing and Reading Russian Biography in the 19th and 20th Centuries.*

*14-16 March 2014, University College, University of Oxford*



The significance of biography Russian culture of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is enormous yet it remains surprisingly little
examined. Biography played an important role in Soviet propaganda and in
the formation of intelligentsia and dissident identities and networks
throughout the modern period. It has also been one of the few enduringly
successful and profitable genres in Russian publishing, with the ‘Lives of
Remarkable People’ series, now in its eighth decade, just one indication of
the continuing enthusiasm for biographies.



The production and consumption of biography in any culture implicates a
wide range of ontological, epistemological and narratological questions
(the balance of fact and imagination; the relationship between private and
public lives; the nature of the self and subjectivity). In the last two
centuries, such concepts of the self and of public and private, and
institutions of literature and publishing have undergone unusually dramatic
and frequent changes in Russia and the Soviet Union and these have been
reflected—indeed, concentrated—in biographical practice. However, in most
studies of Russian literature and history, biography itself has remained
implicit or secondary, to be called upon in support of arguments rather
than the subject of analysis in its own right. Moreover, in ostensibly
international studies of biography, the Russian tradition is often omitted,
or assumed to have developed along a distinct trajectory from the West, by
retaining earlier ‘hagiographic’ models of biography, for example. This
conference will take an explicitly comparative and broadly historical
approach across two centuries, in order to identify what is distinctive
about modern Russian biography, and why, while comparing Russian practices
with other cultures.



We invite *300-word paper proposals* on the following themes in 19th and 20
th century biography, though other approaches are also welcome:



*Poetics*: fact vs. fiction/imagination; characterisation, ‘psychological
prose’

*Genres and texts*: sketches; *dokumental’nye povesti*; biographical
novels; memoirs; biographical series (*The Lives of Remarkable People*; *Fiery
Revolutionaries*)

*Biographical subjects*: autobiography; literary biography; political
biography; prosopography

*Biographers*: historians; literary writers; professional biographers

*Readers*: reading practices; reader response; critical reception; the
market for biography* *

*The uses of biography*: propaganda; commemoration; nation and community
building

*Biography and subjectivity*: public vs. private selves; exemplary/heroic
lives



Please email paper proposals and 1-page CV (with ‘biography conference’ as
the subject line) to Polly.Jones at univ.ox.ac.uk by *15 September 2013*.



Decisions on paper proposals will be notified by 15 October 2013. Full
papers should be pre-submitted to a password-protected conference website
by mid-February 2014. An edited volume or journal special issue featuring
selected contributions is planned after the conference. Depending on the
outcome of further funding applications, there may be a small amount of
funding for international applicants’ travel, but this cannot be guaranteed
at this stage, so we urge you to investigate other funding to enable you to
attend.



*Conference organiser: Polly Jones, University College, University of Oxford
*.

*Conference funding provided by: John Fell Fund, University of Oxford;
Overbrook research fund, University College Oxford. *

*Conference co-sponsored by: the Oxford Centre for Life Writing (OCLW).*

-- 
http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300185126

Dr Polly Jones
Schrecker-Barbour Fellow in Russian
University College
Oxford
OX1 4BH
tel.: 01865 276785
http://www.univ.ox.ac.uk/univ-people/dr-polly-jones

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