Reconfiguring the Canon of Twentieth Century Russian Poetry, 1991-2008

Objectives

This project will investigate ways in which the contemporary Russian literary world has reshaped the canon of twentieth-century poetry, and aims to do the following:

1. To assess the extent to which the canon of twentieth-century Russian poetry, represented in print publications since 1991, has changed in comparison with the canon of the late Soviet period.
2. To analyse, through an investigation of published materials, the ways in which Russian publishers, educational institutions, and literary journals have contributed to the process of canon formation.
3. To assess which theoretical and methodological approaches to literary canon formation are most productive in the post-Soviet context of political, economic, and social change.
4. To bring together researchers in the field of Russian literature and culture through a series of collaborative workshops leading to the creation of an edited volume of essays.
5. To explore, in a co-authored volume, the relationship between post-Soviet revision of the twentieth-century poetry canon and post-Soviet Russian national identity.
6. To supervise and bring to completion two PhD theses: one on the position of the canonical Soviet poet Vladimir Maiakovskii in the post-Soviet canon; the other on the process of the canonization of Joseph Brodsky, an émigré excluded from the Soviet-era canon.