We would like to invite you to a special guest lecture by Maria Rubins of University College London who will present a talk titled
Beyond Homeland(s) and Diaspora: Russian-Israeli Literature at Multiple Crossroads
Thursday, June 12, 2025
at 5:00 p.m.
3 OZN
Where?
Dobra 55, room 1.110
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)
What?
In the last several decades, we have witnessed such an intense globalization of Russian literature that some scholars prefer to talk today about Russian literatures in plural. Others question even the appropriateness of the word “Russian,” proposing to use only the term “Russophone” to highlight linguistic rather than any national and geographic affiliation.
The largest center within this expanding global Russian literature is located in Israel, where a vibrant Russophone community has continuously existed for at least 50 years, while the presence of Russian writing in the Middle East can be traced back to the Ottoman rule and British mandate Palestine.
Russian-Israeli literature is a coherent and dynamic phenomenon, defined by its complex links to several geocultural contexts: country of origin (Russia or, as the case may be, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other former Soviet states); Israel as the “historic homeland”; and diaspora. This peculiar triangulation accounts for a frequent reinterpretation in this literary corpus of such basic dichotomies as exile/return, homeland/adopted country, native/foreign, insider/outsider, assimilation/estrangement, and even East/West.
This lecture will examine the transnational, hybrid and translingual character of contemporary Russian-Israeli writing and its unique position within the evolving landscape of Russophone literature on the one hand, and Israeli culture on the other.
Who?
Maria Rubins is Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London. Her research interests include modernism, exile and diaspora, bilingual writing, Russian-French cultural relations, and Hebrew, Arabic and Russophone literatures in Israel. Her books include Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures: Ecphrasis in Russian and French Poetry (2000), Russian Montparnasse: Transnational Writing in Interwar Paris (2015), and Redefining Russian Literary Diaspora, 1920-2020 (2021). She is a translator of fiction from English and French into Russian, including books by Elizabeth Gaskell, Judith Gautier, Maurice Dekobra and Irène Némirovsky. Maria Rubins is the editor of several book series, including “Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics” at Brill and the Fringe series at UCL Press.
For more information visit: www.mariarubins.com.
The event is a part of the grant “Tandems for Excellence – 3rd edition” funded by IDUB UW and titled Soviet-Born World Literature: Towards a Post-Cold War Comparative Framework, directed by prof. Karolina Krasuska.
