As the Dust of the Earth: The Literature of Abandonment in Revolutionary Russia and Ukraine: A book talk by the author Dr. Harriet Murav
SEENEXT Working Group
February 11, 2025
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Location
Institute for the Humanities, 153 Behavioral Sciences Building
Address
1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
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As the Dust of the Earth: The Literature of Abandonment in Revolutionary Russia and Ukraine is about poetry and catastrophe, violence and relief work, artistic literature and documentation, injury and care. The lens through which Murav discusses these topics is the Jewish concept of “hefker,” originating in property law, where it refers to objects that are ownerless and up for grabs. She explores the multivalence of the hefker concept as a legal, poetic, existential, and political/social term. The talk focuses on Victor Shklovsky, who travelled throughout the collapsing Russian Empire, tracing violence and “abandonment” (using a Russian term) everywhere he went. Shklovsky probes the larger political and social context of dispossession and rightlessness in the revolutionary period.
Harriet Murav recently retired as a Marjorie Roberts Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The author of six monographs, five co-edited books, and numerous articles on Russian and Yiddish literature and culture from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Her new project focuses on the theme of time, waiting, and wartime in contemporary Ukrainian poetry.
Date posted
Jan 16, 2025
Date updated
Jan 16, 2025