WLT to Launch “The Russophone Literature of Resistance” Issue on March 1
On Wednesday, March 1, 2023, from 12:00–1:30pm est, World Literature Today, the Romanoff Center for Russian Studies at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Russian & East European Studies, and Columbia University’s Harriman Institute will co-sponsor a free Zoom webinar to launch the March 2023 issue of WLT, which features a marquee section devoted to “The Russophone Literature of Resistance.” The launch—moderated by Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia University) and Kevin M. F. Platt (University of Pennsylvania), who co-guest-edited the cover feature—will be highlighted by appearances of the writers Maria Stepanova, Mikhail Shishkin, and Ruthie Jenrbekova. Visit the event page on the Harriman Institute’s website to learn more about the participants and to register.
The eight writers included in the cover feature represent a broad swath of contemporary Russian-language cultural production, transcending the contested borders of the Russian Federation proper: they include poets, novelists, critics, essayists, translators, cinema critics, publishers, bookstore owners, academics, festival organizers, and cultural impresarios writing in Russian but often with multilingual vocabularies and transnational topoi in their poems and essays. They share Russian as their common language of creative expression, not only centered in the cultural metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg but from far-flung outposts of post-Soviet geography and neo-Russian empire—or from oppositional spaces beyond its borders. Ten translators, along with Lipovetsky and Platt, collaborated to bring the works into English.
The digital edition of the March issue, which can be read on the WLT website, will go live on February 27. To make the cover feature widely accessible to readers around the world, WLT is making the entire section free to read from March 1–31. Throughout the month, readers who are not current subscribers can take advantage of coupon code SlavicLitWLT to start an individual subscription, or share one with friends, at a 20 percent discount. In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, WLT is also (once again) making the July 2022 cover feature devoted to Odesa and Kharkiv—which included responses by Ukrainian writers to the Russian invasion and the first months of the war—freely available during the month of March.
For more information or accommodations, contact World Literature Today at 405-325-4531.
