BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Of Men and their Demons: Masculinity in Dostoevskii's Besy - Conno
 r Doak (University of Bristol)
DTSTART:20131029T170000Z
DTEND:20131029T190000Z
UID:TALK47777@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mel Bach
DESCRIPTION:Critics have long considered Besy to be Dostoevskii's most pol
 itical novel\, a judgement that has distracted attention from the sexual d
 eviance and gender reversals also present in the work.  My talk argues tha
 t Dostoevskii's Besy  presents a genealogy of shifting masculinities in ni
 neteenth-century Russia. The novel critiques both the sentimental men of t
 he 1840s generation­—presented as effete performers who have voluntaril
 y renounced their manliness—and the radical men of the 1860s—presented
  as hypermasculine in their taste for violence. More intriguingly\, Dostoe
 vskii struggles to provide an alternative\, positive vision of masculinity
 . Even Ivan Shatov is a cuckold with a naïve faith in humanity\, and the 
 converted Stepan Verkhovenskii retains his effeminacy and emotionalism in 
 the closing chapters. My study places Dostoevskii in the context of broade
 r European anxieties about masculinity in the second half of the nineteent
 h century\, and argues that his work resists the essentialism seen in thin
 kers such as Max Nordau\, Cesare Lombroso and Richard von Krafft-Ebing\, w
 ho share his anxieties about gender and sexual deviance\, but who propose 
 different solutions.
LOCATION:Latimer Room\, Clare College
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR