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Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: Reception, Translation and the Modernist Cultural Agenda
25-26 June 2009
A two-day conference hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London |
Organised by Rebecca Beasley (Birkbeck) and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford), with the support of Birkbeck, University of London, the University of Oxford, the British Academy, the Modern Humanities Research Association and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies
click here for a poster
Keynote Speakers: Olga Kaznina (Gorky Institute of World Literature and Art, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), Laura Marcus (University of Edinburgh), Laurence Senelick (Tufts University)
Organisers: Rebecca Beasley (School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London), Philip Ross Bullock (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford)
This major international conference will examine the profound impact of Russian and Soviet culture on British modernism. In 1915, Rebecca West declared that 'Russia is to the young intellectuals of to-day what Italy was to the Victorians', and the diverse influences of the Ballet Russes, Constance Garnett's translations, and Soviet cinema are routinely cited in studies of modernist writers as different as H.D., Wyndham Lewis, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. British modernists played a central role in the dissemination of Russian literature and culture: reviewing, editing, publishing and translating. However, there has been surprisingly little sustained attention to the structural details of this engagement. This conference aims to map an intricate and wide-ranging set of interdisciplinary relations, and will trace the transformative effect of Russian and Soviet culture from the first translations of Russian realist novels in the 1880s, to 1940, the eve of the Soviet Union 's involvement in the Second World War. This 'long modernist' perspective is intended to encourage contributions on a broad spectrum of topics, from the simple life and socialist communities of the late nineteenth century, through the cosmopolitanism of high modernism, to the early reception of Soviet literature, cinema and theatre, the impact of socialist realism, and the rise of professional Russian studies in Britain.
A limited number of bursaries are available for contributors from Central and Eastern Europe, and for British graduate students.
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| FINAL PROGRAMME |
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THURSDAY 25 JUNE: |
09:30am |
Registration and coffee: 3rd Floor Foyer, Senate House North, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU |
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10:00am |
Welcome and introduction, Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock |
Room N336 |
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| 10:15am |
PLENARY SESSION 1: |
Room N336 |
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Chair: Philip Ross Bullock
Laurence Senelick (Tufts University), ' "For God, for Tsar, and for Fatherland!" Russians on the British Stage from Napoleon to the Great War' |
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| 11:00am |
PARALLEL SESSION 1: |
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1a. Theatre
Chair: Cynthia Marsh |
Room N336 |
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Stuart Young (University of Otago), ' "Avert Your Eyes and Hold Your Noses": Non-Chekhovian Russian and Soviet Drama on the British Stage, 1900-1940'
Alexandra Smith (University of Edinburgh), 'The Alienating Experience of Modernity: Edith Craig and Nikolai Evreinov'
Liisa Byckling (University of Helsinki), 'The Chekhov Theatre Studio at Dartington Hall, 1936-38' |
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1b. Religion, spirituality, mysticism
Chair: Marilyn Schwinn Smith |
Room NG14 |
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Jeffrey R. Bibbee (University of North Alabama), 'Russophiles, Ecumenism and the Church of England: Examining the Anglican-Russian Orthodox Ecumenical Dialogue's Impact on Anglican Identity'
Michael Hughes (University of Liverpool), 'In Search of Stephen Graham in Search of. What?'
Tatiana Krasavchenko (Russian Academy of Sciences), 'English Russophiles: Stephen Graham and Maurice Baring' |
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12:30pm |
Buffet lunch provided |
Room NG15 |
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| 1:30pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 2: |
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2a. Translation and translators
Chair: Peter France
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Room N336 |
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Galina Alekseeva (State Museum-Estate of Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana), 'Constance Garnett: Leo Tolstoy's Translator'
Helen Smith (University of East Anglia), 'Edward Garnett: Reviewing the Russians'
Andrei Rogatchevski (University of Glasgow) and Richard Davies (University of Leeds), 'Leonid Andreev and the Hogarth Press'
Rebecca Beasley (Birkbeck, University of London), 'Russian Translation in British Modernism' |
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2b. Music and dance
Chair: Alexandra Smith
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Room NG14 |
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Ramsay Burt (De Montfort University), 'Nijinsky's Sacre du printemps in London: Russian Dancers as "Natural" or Modern'
Tatiana Zilotina (Case Western Reserve University), 'Leon Bakst in England'
Charlotte Purkis (University of Winchester), ' "Thought in a glow": Ultra-modernity and the Scriabinist, 1913-1931'
Philip Ross Bullock (University of Oxford), 'The Figure in the Carpet?: The Meaning and Mystery of Pushkin's English (Non-)Reception' |
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3:30pm |
Coffee |
3rd Floor Foyer |
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| 4.00pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 3: |
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3a. Mansfield, Woolf and Koteliansky
Chair: Catherine Brown |
Room N336 |
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Laetitia Rech (University of Provence), ' "There we hang asking questions in mid-air": Russian Strangeness and its Influence on the Writings of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf'
Darya Protopopova (University of Oxford), ' "Sitting on Verandah Watching Peasants Dances": Virginia Woolf and the Everyday Life of Russian Novelists (Tolstoy and Turgenev)"
Gerri Kimber (Open University), ' "Kissienka": Katherine Mansfield's Russian Obsession'
Claire Davison-Pégon (Université de Provence), 'Still point of the turning world? Koteliansky and British Modernism' |
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3b. Socialism
Chair: Ken Hirschkop |
Room NG14 |
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Charlotte Alston (University of Northumbria), 'Britain and the International Tolstoyan Movement'
Carol Peaker (University of Oxford), 'Chertkov and the Free Age Press: an Affront to English Etiquette'
Robert Henderson (Queen Mary, University of London ), 'The Free Russian Library in London, 1898-1917'
Angus Wrenn and Olga Sobolev (London School of Economics and Political Sciences), 'George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Utopia' |
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6:00pm |
ROUNDTABLE 1: comparative and translation studies today
Chair: Philip Ross Bullock |
Room N336 |
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Peter France (University of Edinburgh), Pamela Davidson (University College London), Emily Lygo (Exeter) |
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7:00pm |
PERFORMANCE: George Bernard Shaw, 'Annajanska, the Bolshevik Princess'
Followed by a wine reception |
Room N336 |
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8:30pm |
Conference dinner (Rasa Samudra, 5 Charlotte Street, for those who have booked) |
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FRIDAY 26 JUNE: |
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| 9:30am |
PARALLEL SESSION 4: |
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4a. Cinema and design
Chair: Olga Taxidou
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Room N336 |
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Caroline Maclean (Birkbeck, University of London), ' "That magic force that is montage": Eisenstein's filmic fourth dimension and H.D.'
Lara Feigel (King's College London), ' "A tractor ploughing over the audience"? The Influence of Soviet Cinema on the British Documentary Film, 1925-1942'
James Smith (University of Queensland), 'Soviet Film and British Intelligence in the 1930s: Kino Films and MI5'
Emma Minns (University of Reading), ' "To catch up with and overtake": Soviet success in pictorial statistics 1931-1940' |
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4b. Emigrés and exile
Chair:
Timothy Phillips |
Room NG14 |
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Sam Johnson (University College London), 'Anti-Jewish Violence and Myth: the Russian Pogroms of 1881-1882 in the British Narrative'
Olga Posudievskaya (National University of Dnepropetrovsk), 'The peculiarities of Russian context in Oscar Wilde's play "Vera" '
Michael Newton (University of Leiden), 'Oscar Wilde's Vera; or the Nihilist' |
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11:30am |
Coffee |
3rd Floor Foyer |
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12:00 |
PLENARY SESSION 2: |
Room N336 |
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Chair: Rebecca Beasley
Laura Marcus (University of Edinburgh), 'British Film Culture and Soviet Cinema in the 1920s' |
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12:45pm |
Buffet lunch provided |
Room NG15 |
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1:30pm |
PLENARY SESSION 3: |
Room N336 |
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Chair: Philip Ross Bullock
Olga Kaznina (Russian Academy of Sciences), 'The reception of a Russian Personality in the English Cultural Milieu' |
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| 2:15pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 5: |
Room N336 |
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5a. Visual arts
Chair: Emma Minns |
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Rosalind P. Blakesley (University of Cambridge), ' "The English are better at building railways and cooking chops than they are at art": The Peredvizhniki and Britain'
Jane Williams (University of Reading), 'A Russian interpretation of British society in mosaic'
Anthony Cross (University of Cambridge), 'Exhibiting Russia: the Two London Exhibitions of 1917 and 1935'
Tamara Galeyeva (Ural State University): ' "Split Identity": The Representation of Russian Emigrant Art at the Exhibitions in Britain, 1920-1930' |
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5b. Politics and personalities in the Soviet era
Chair: David Ayers |
Room NG14 |
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Alexander Prokopov (Russian Academy of Sciences), 'The Communist International and Great Britain in the 1920s'
Ian Patterson (University of Cambridge), 'John Rodker, Russian Agent'
Matthew Taunton (London Consortium), 'Russia and the British Intellectuals: The Significance of the Stalin-Wells Talk'
Jonathan Black (Kingston University), 'Dora Gordine and Richard Hare: A Most Unusual Anglo-"Russian" Partnership' |
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4:15pm |
Coffee |
3rd Floor Foyer |
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| 4:45pm |
PARALLEL SESSION 6: |
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6a. Literary Affinities
Chair: Grace Brockington |
Room N336 |
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Olga Ushakova (Tyumen State University), 'Russian Focuses in T.S. Eliot's Works'
Olga Tabachnikova (University of Bristol), 'Lev Shestov on Anton Chekhov: English Resonances (Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry and D. H. Lawrence)'
Marilyn Schwinn Smith (Five College Women's Research Centre), 'Pagan Affinities: Jane Harrison and Aleksei Remizov'
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6b. Cultural exchange |
Room NG14 |
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Apollon Davidson (Moscow State University), 'Russian Writers' Visit to Britain During the First World War'
Anna Vaninskaya (University of Cambridge), ' "Inspired Writer," "Subtle Critic," and "Intellectual Westerner": Korney Chukovsky in Britain' |
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| 6:15pm |
ROUNDTABLE 2: The new international modernism |
Room N336 |
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Chair: Rebecca Beasley
David Ayers (University of Kent), Grace Brockington (University of Bristol), Ken Hirschkop (University of Waterloo) |
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7:15pm |
Conclusion and final comments, Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock |
Room N336 |
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Enquiries: Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington@sas.ac.uk
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