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Papers by Elizabeth Stern
Elizabeth H. Stern; Irina Klyagin. Stanford Slavic: New Studies in Modern Russian Literature and... more Elizabeth H. Stern; Irina Klyagin.
Stanford Slavic: New Studies in Modern Russian Literature and Culture
Volume 46, Part II. Stanford 2014.
Conference Presentations by Elizabeth Stern
Princeton University, October 17-18, 2014 Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference P... more Princeton University, October 17-18, 2014
Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Princeton University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Keynote Speaker: Catriona Kelly (University of Oxford)
“You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things that scribblers write.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
"Dumpster Diving and Sustainability: Managing the Limited Resources of
Culture" is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to marginal and outmoded art in all of its manifestations and returns in Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian cultures. The conference aims at exploring our repeated turn to the afterlives of ‘bad’ or exhausted cultural forms as a way to cope with and interpret artistic and social changes.
In his literary studies, Iurii Tynianov famously pointed out a particular tendency of literary evolution: a literary or artistic fact that appears worthless at one historical moment may, at another, become a productive element of an aesthetic order. Taking Tynianov’s observation as a point of our departure, we want to understand the overall function and impact of ‘bad art’ on contemporary artists and societies, as well as on our own disciplines, both as a fetishized avant-garde commodity and as a recontextualization of historical forms/norms.
Our contention is that ‘bad art’ is a ubiquitous feature of artistic production with its own intrinsic laws. With this in mind, this conference proposes a critical interrogation of the ‘bad.’ The goal is not so much to deconstruct or vindicate ‘bad art’ but rather to acknowledge the ‘bad’ as an inalienable value that continues to sustain itself through various means of cultural recycling.
We invite submissions from humanities and social science scholars. A short selection of sample topics below indicates some potential areas of inquiry:
• On the Invention of Bad Writing (Vasilii Rozanov, Valentin Kataev)
• Art as Commodity: Lubok, Feuilleton, Pulp
• The Aesthetic Education of Men: The Prostitute as Guardian in Literature and Film (Crime and Punishment, Resurrection, Interdevochka, Wiktor Grodecki’s Czech Films)
• Gastronomical Phenomenology (Mikhail Bakhtin, Soldier Chonkin, Soldier Švejk)
• Author as ‘Holy Fool’ from Venedikt Erofeev to Kirill Medvedev
• Authorship and Pastiche (Dmitry Prigov, Ilia Kabakov)
• The Importance of Being Earnest: Gogol’s “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”
• Serialized Novels, TV Series, and the Epic
• Eurovision, Balkan Beats, and the Construction of National Identity in Post-Socialist Europe
Organizing Committee:
David Hock
Elizabeth Stern
Philip Gleissner
Thesis Chapters by Elizabeth Stern
The Genesis and Afterlives of Stalinist Drambalet" explores the fraught history of an under-inves... more The Genesis and Afterlives of Stalinist Drambalet" explores the fraught history of an under-investigated genre of Soviet ballet, known as drambalet (dramatic ballet). Utilizing a range of little-studied archival sources, this dissertation provides detailed case studies at particular moments of cultural flux to show how the development of drambalet was less predetermined than has been perceived. It argues that drambalet's genesis was a response to complex and contradictory forces operating in early Soviet culture, and that it was deeply connected to the parallel development of Socialist Realism. In order to assess ballet's response to cultural policy, particular attention is given to ideological discourse and the political behaviors of those working for major arts institutions. In doing so, this dissertation challenges a reductive view of drambalet as little more than propaganda for an oppressive regime. Introduction II provides a brief overview of the debates on ballet reform during the Soviet 1920s by focusing on several influential critics and two proposed dance genres: the dance symphony and choreographic drama. Chapter 1 centers on GATOB's (the former Mariinsky Theater) response to its acute repertoire crisis during the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32). It highlights the challenges inherent in verbalizing the nonverbal art of ballet, focusing on theorizations of the ballet libretto, the libretto competition of 1929, and several "failed" ballets. Chapter 2 functions as an in-depth case study of The Flames of Paris (1932), analyzing this pivotal ballet as a model drambalet and as a response to Socialist Realism. Chapter 3 examines the transplantation of Socialist Realism as doctrine and drambalet as its attendant choreographic practice to the German Democratic Republic in the early 1950s. Drambalet and Socialist Realism were profoundly tested by this new set of historical and cultural conditions, and both were, ultimately, renegotiated. The epilogue touches upon the peculiar post-Soviet afterlife of drambalet. It shows how certain problems with the genre persist; it also raises a number of provocative questions about what the uncanny return of Stalinist drambalet might reveal about post-Soviet culture.
Elizabeth H. Stern; Irina Klyagin. Stanford Slavic: New Studies in Modern Russian Literature and... more Elizabeth H. Stern; Irina Klyagin.
Stanford Slavic: New Studies in Modern Russian Literature and Culture
Volume 46, Part II. Stanford 2014.
Princeton University, October 17-18, 2014 Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference P... more Princeton University, October 17-18, 2014
Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Princeton University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Keynote Speaker: Catriona Kelly (University of Oxford)
“You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things that scribblers write.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
"Dumpster Diving and Sustainability: Managing the Limited Resources of
Culture" is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to marginal and outmoded art in all of its manifestations and returns in Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian cultures. The conference aims at exploring our repeated turn to the afterlives of ‘bad’ or exhausted cultural forms as a way to cope with and interpret artistic and social changes.
In his literary studies, Iurii Tynianov famously pointed out a particular tendency of literary evolution: a literary or artistic fact that appears worthless at one historical moment may, at another, become a productive element of an aesthetic order. Taking Tynianov’s observation as a point of our departure, we want to understand the overall function and impact of ‘bad art’ on contemporary artists and societies, as well as on our own disciplines, both as a fetishized avant-garde commodity and as a recontextualization of historical forms/norms.
Our contention is that ‘bad art’ is a ubiquitous feature of artistic production with its own intrinsic laws. With this in mind, this conference proposes a critical interrogation of the ‘bad.’ The goal is not so much to deconstruct or vindicate ‘bad art’ but rather to acknowledge the ‘bad’ as an inalienable value that continues to sustain itself through various means of cultural recycling.
We invite submissions from humanities and social science scholars. A short selection of sample topics below indicates some potential areas of inquiry:
• On the Invention of Bad Writing (Vasilii Rozanov, Valentin Kataev)
• Art as Commodity: Lubok, Feuilleton, Pulp
• The Aesthetic Education of Men: The Prostitute as Guardian in Literature and Film (Crime and Punishment, Resurrection, Interdevochka, Wiktor Grodecki’s Czech Films)
• Gastronomical Phenomenology (Mikhail Bakhtin, Soldier Chonkin, Soldier Švejk)
• Author as ‘Holy Fool’ from Venedikt Erofeev to Kirill Medvedev
• Authorship and Pastiche (Dmitry Prigov, Ilia Kabakov)
• The Importance of Being Earnest: Gogol’s “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”
• Serialized Novels, TV Series, and the Epic
• Eurovision, Balkan Beats, and the Construction of National Identity in Post-Socialist Europe
Organizing Committee:
David Hock
Elizabeth Stern
Philip Gleissner
The Genesis and Afterlives of Stalinist Drambalet" explores the fraught history of an under-inves... more The Genesis and Afterlives of Stalinist Drambalet" explores the fraught history of an under-investigated genre of Soviet ballet, known as drambalet (dramatic ballet). Utilizing a range of little-studied archival sources, this dissertation provides detailed case studies at particular moments of cultural flux to show how the development of drambalet was less predetermined than has been perceived. It argues that drambalet's genesis was a response to complex and contradictory forces operating in early Soviet culture, and that it was deeply connected to the parallel development of Socialist Realism. In order to assess ballet's response to cultural policy, particular attention is given to ideological discourse and the political behaviors of those working for major arts institutions. In doing so, this dissertation challenges a reductive view of drambalet as little more than propaganda for an oppressive regime. Introduction II provides a brief overview of the debates on ballet reform during the Soviet 1920s by focusing on several influential critics and two proposed dance genres: the dance symphony and choreographic drama. Chapter 1 centers on GATOB's (the former Mariinsky Theater) response to its acute repertoire crisis during the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-32). It highlights the challenges inherent in verbalizing the nonverbal art of ballet, focusing on theorizations of the ballet libretto, the libretto competition of 1929, and several "failed" ballets. Chapter 2 functions as an in-depth case study of The Flames of Paris (1932), analyzing this pivotal ballet as a model drambalet and as a response to Socialist Realism. Chapter 3 examines the transplantation of Socialist Realism as doctrine and drambalet as its attendant choreographic practice to the German Democratic Republic in the early 1950s. Drambalet and Socialist Realism were profoundly tested by this new set of historical and cultural conditions, and both were, ultimately, renegotiated. The epilogue touches upon the peculiar post-Soviet afterlife of drambalet. It shows how certain problems with the genre persist; it also raises a number of provocative questions about what the uncanny return of Stalinist drambalet might reveal about post-Soviet culture.