The emergence of literary ethnography in the Russian Empire: from the far east to the pale of settlement, 1845-1917

Berkovich, Nadezda

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Description

Title

The emergence of literary ethnography in the Russian Empire: from the far east to the pale of settlement, 1845-1917

Author(s)

Berkovich, Nadezda

Issue Date

2016-07-08

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Murav, Harriet

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Murav, Harriet

Committee Member(s)

• Avrutin, Eugene
• Tempest, Richard
• Finke, Michael

Department of Study

Slavic Languages and Literatures

Discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Literature
• Ethnography
• Russian
• Yiddish
• Dostoevsky
• Gogol
• An-sky

Abstract

This dissertation examines the intersection of ethnography and literature in the works of two Russian and two Russian Jewish writers and ethnographers. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Korolenko, Vladimir Bogoraz, and Semyon An-sky wrote fiction in the genre of literary ethnography. This genre encompasses discursive practices and narrative strategies in the analysis of the different peoples of the Russian Empire. To some extent, and in some cases, these authors' ethnographic works promoted the growth of Russian and Jewish national awareness between 1845 and 1914. This dissertation proposes a new interpretive model, literary ethnography, for the study of the textualization of ethnic realities and values in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth-century. While the writers in question were aware of the ethnographic imperial discourses then in existence, I argue that their works were at times in tune with and reflected the colonial ambitions of the empire, and at other times, contested them. I demonstrate that the employment of an ethnographic discourse made possible the incorporation of different voices and diverse cultural experiences. My multicultural approach to the study of the Russian people, the indigenous peoples of the Russian Far East, and the Jews of Tsarist Russia documents and conceptualizes the diversity and multi-voicedness of the Russian Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, my dissertation contributes to the field of Russian and Jewish studies by primarily examining works that are either unpublished, less well-known, or have been ignored by scholars.

Graduation Semester

2016-08

Type of Resource

text

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Nadezda Berkovich

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