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SUMMARY:Tolstoy\, Gender\, and the Family - Ani Kokobobo (University of Ka
 nsas) and Anna Berman (McGill University)
DTSTART:20190118T160000Z
DTEND:20190118T180000Z
UID:TALK116914@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:53971
DESCRIPTION:Please join us for two short talks by *Anna Berman* and *Ani K
 okobobo* that will establish a dialogue around questions of family and gen
 der in Tolstoy’s novel _Anna Karenina_.\n\n*Anna A. Berman* takes as her
  starting point Tolstoy’s ardent admiration of the English family novel 
 whose model he drew on heavily when writing _Anna Karenina_. Yet his visio
 n of happiness did not match the English ideal of an heir and a landed est
 ate that traditionally marks narrative closure. Berman's talk will explore
  the ideology around marriage and family that Tolstoy wrestles with in Ann
 a Karenina\, contextualizing it among both the literary precedents he was 
 responding to and also the broader societal debates taking place in Russia
 's periodical press. She will argue that in _Anna Karenina_\, Tolstoy resh
 aped the genre of the family novel to fit Russian realities\, with narrati
 ve form deeply influenced by the form of the family.\n\n*Ani Kokobobo* is 
 at work on a book on Tolstoy and his understanding of gender/sexuality and
  draws on this project in raising a deceptively simple question: Why does 
 Anna die\, while Levin lives? As Tolstoy's core protagonists\, Levin and A
 nna are both actively burdened by suicidal ideation that they verbalize in
  practically identical ways through questions that mirror ones raised by t
 he author himself in his diary. Yet\, in asking why Anna dies while Levin 
 lives\, we are also asking\, why does the woman die while the man lives? A
 nd do gender and gender identity\, as conceived by Tolstoy in a nineteenth
 -century Russian setting\, influence these two outcomes? As Kokobobo shows
 \, Tolstoy does not merely raise the questions of why a woman dies from de
 spair while the man lives\; rather\, this question\, if asked in gendered 
 terms\, launches a broader discussion with significant contemporary implic
 ations about gender\, sex\, and the extent to which both are less a biolog
 ical reality\, and more a performance and construct originating in the war
 ped realm of sexuality.\n\n*Speakers’ bios*:\n\n*Anna A. Berman* is an A
 ssociate Professor in the Department of Languages\, Literatures\, and Cult
 ures at McGill University.  Her research focuses on the nineteenth-century
  Russian and English novel and issues of kinship and family.  She is the a
 uthor of _Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Path to Universal Brothe
 rhood_ (2015) and has also published articles on Tolstoy\, Dostoevsky\, Ru
 ssian opera\, the relationship of science and literature\, and the family 
 novel as a genre.  For the academic year 2018-19 she is a Visiting Fellow 
 Commoner at Trinity College\, Cambridge.\n\n*Ani Kokobobo* received her BA
  from Dartmouth (2005) and PhD from Columbia University (2011). She is cur
 rently Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Slavic 
 Department at the University of Kansas as well as editor of the _Tolstoy S
 tudies Journal_. She has published a monograph _Russian Grotesque Realism:
  The Great Reforms and Gentry Decline_ (Ohio State University Press)\, as 
 well as two edited volumes: _Russian Writers and the Fin de Siecle — The
  Twilight of Realism_ (Cambridge University Press\, 2015) and _Beyond Mosc
 ow: Reading Russia’s Regional Identities and Initiatives_ (Routledge). S
 he has written over 20 academic articles and her writing for the public ha
 s appeared in _The Washington Post_\, "Salon.com":http://salon.com/\, _The
  New Republic_\, _Business Insider_\, and _Los Angeles Review of Books_.\n
LOCATION:Latimer Room\, Clare College
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