Northwestern Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought Call for papers: “Religion, Nationalism, and Dissidence”
Editors: Jimmy Sudário Cabral (Federal University of Juiz da Fora) and Susan McReynolds (Northwestern University)
Northwestern Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought invites article submissions on the topic “Religion, Nationalism, and Dissidence.”
Literature in Russia has always been a serious affair. In the nineteenth century, when some other European countries had highly developed autonomous spheres for political, philosophical, and spiritual discourse, Russian society relied on the novel as its primary space for inquiry into “accursed questions” (prokliatye voprosi).
The impassioned debates about ethics, human rights, freedom, and national identity that dominated Russian literary life in the 1860s and 1870s remain relevant today, in our time of twenty-first-century upheavals. Artists such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy experienced first-hand the abuses of autocratic power, upsurges of nationalism, and changing attitudes towards religion that would eventually lead to the conflagrations of the twentieth century. Under these conditions their writings, otherwise so different (Dostoevsky’s late militant nationalism and Tolstoy’s universalist pacificism, for example), articulated a kind of instinctual defense of humanism—the intrinsic value of human life and personality, and freedom of conscience—against the threats posed by distinctively modern forces.
The spirit of dissidence evinced in their writings—the artist’s conviction that he holds the right and even duty to defend human dignity against power and violence—may be the most lasting and far-reaching legacy of Russia’s age of Realism. In this issue we return to the unique nexus of aesthetics, politics, and religion characteristic of Russian literature.
Submissions might explore how the dissident, subversive spirit born under Russian autocracy inspired twentieth-century artists and thinkers confronting totalitarianism and world war. Emmanuel Levinas, the Jewish-Lithuanian philosopher raised on Russian literature, cites The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and Life and Fate (written 1959, published 1980) as two of his greatest influences. By citing Dostoevsky’s late masterpiece, written alongside the calls for holy war he was publishing in his Diary of a Writer, and the work of Vassily Grossman, a Russian-educated Ukrainian Jew, as his inspiration, Levinas gestures towards the enigmatic gift and challenge of Russian culture presents to the world: the ground of thinking against catastrophe, defending the human against war and totalitarianism; and simultaneously a prophesy or warning of the dangers of nationalism and religion when they are put in the service of violence and conquest.
We welcome essays dealing with the following themes:
- Russian Literature and War
- Russian Literature and Dissidence
- Russian literature and Nationalism
- Russian literature and Ethics
Deadline for submission: April 1st, 2025 to Jimmy Sudario Cabral (jimmy.sudario@ufjf.br) and Susan McReynolds (s-mcreynolds@northwestern.edu)