UW Press: Global Russian Cultures

“Offers a much-needed remapping of 'Russian culture' as a global phenomenon and radically opens up the question of who produces and owns it, how it is sold and consumed, and how it is 'weaponized' today.”
—Andy Byford, author of Literary Scholarship in Late Imperial Russia

Is there an essential Russian identity? What happens when "Russian" literature is written in English, by such authors as Gary Shteyngart or Lara Vapnyar? What is the geographic "home" of Russian culture created and shared via the internet? Global Russian Cultures innovatively considers these and many related questions about the literary and cultural life of Russians who in successive waves of migration have dispersed to the United States, Europe, and Israel, or who remained after the collapse of the USSR in Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the Central Asian states.

The volume's internationally renowned contributors treat the many different global Russian cultures not as "displaced" elements of Russian cultural life but rather as independent entities in their own right. They describe diverse forms of literature, music, film, and everyday life that transcend and defy political, geographic, and even linguistic borders. Arguing that Russian cultures today are many, this volume contends that no state or society can lay claim to be the single or authentic representative of Russianness. In so doing, it contests the conceptions of culture and identity at the root of nation-building projects in and around Russia.

Contributors: Philip Ross Bullock, Vitaly Chernetsky, Miriam Finkelstein, Yelena Furman, Michael S. Gorham, Natalya Kosmarskaya, Artyom Kosmarski, Ilya Kukulin, Alex Moshkin, Kevin M. F. Platt, Maria Rubins, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Dirk Uffelmann, Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, Adrian Wanner

Kevin M. F. Platt is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths and History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution.

“Rich and multifarious . . . [and] sure to provide food for thought to anyone interested in a better understanding of what Russian culture is, or what Russian cultures are, today.”
—Australian Slavonic and East European Studies