new books by Marcus Levitt, Henrietta Mondry, Julian Connolly

[Igor Nemirovsky]

Dear SEELANGS members,

 

I thought you might be interested in some of Academic Studies Press new 
Slavic titles.  I have listed them below.  If you would like to know more you 
can see our website at www.academicstudiespress.com or email at 
sales at academicstudiespress.com, to Ilana Hoffman. She is in charge of orders 
as well as review and desk copies. 
We look forward to hearing from you, 


Igor Nemirovsky, Director
Academic Studies Press

 

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts
by Marcus Levitt

ISBN 978-1-934843-68-0, 440 pp. cloth, $59.00, +20% off for SEELANGS 
members Review copies available upon request.
Publication Date: August, 2009 

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts   brings together twenty
essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading American scholar of eighteenth-century 
Russia. The essays concern a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the 
development of modern Russian literature.  The first part of the collection 
explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a 
formative role in literary life of his day. In the essays of the second part Levitt 
argues that the Enlightenment's privileging of vision played an especially 
important role in eighteenth-century Russian culture, and that 
this "occularcentrism" was profoundly shaped by indigenous religious views. 
Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative 
perspectives on a fascinating but little studied period.

 

 

The Jew's Body in Russian Culture, since the 1880s
by Henrietta Mondry 
ISBN 978-1-934843-39-0, 270 pp. cloth, $58.00 +20% off for SEELANGS 
members Review copies available upon request.
Publication Date: August, 2009 

This book explores the construction of the Jew's physical and ontological body 
in Russian culture as represented in literature, film, and non-literary texts from 
the 1880s to the present. With the rise of the dominance of biological and 
racialist discourse in the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian 
literary and cultural productions underwent a significant change, as these 
cultural practices recast the Jew not only as an archetypal "exotic" and 
religious or class Other (as in Romanticism and realist writing), but as a 
biological Other whose acts, deeds, and thoughts were determined by racial 
differences. This Jew allegedly had physical and psychological characteristics 
that were genetically determined and that could not be changed by 
education, acculturation, conversion to Christianity, or change of social 
status. This stereotype has become a stable archetype that continues to 
operate in contemporary Russian society and culture.

 

 

 

A Readers Guide to Nabokov’s "Lolita"
by Julian W. Connolly

Cloth: ISBN 978-1-934843-65-9 220 pp., $40.00 +20% off for SEELANGS 
members
Paper: ISBN 978-1-934843-66-6 220 pp., $21.00 +20% off for SEELANGS 
members

 

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is one of the most fascinating and controversial 
novels of the twentieth century.  This book seeks to guide readers through 
the intricacies of Nabokov's work and to help them achieve a better 
understanding of his rich artistic design.  Chapters include an analysis of the 
novel, a discussion of its precursors in Nabokov's work and in world literature, 
an essay on the character of Dolly Haze (Humbert's "Lolita"), and a 
commentary on the critical and cultural afterlife of the novel.  The volume 
concludes with an annotated bibliography of selected critical reading.  The 
guide should prove illuminating both for first-time readers of Lolita and for 
experienced re-readers of Nabokov's text.

 

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