Join us on September 27th for the 14th Annual Hongor Oulanoff Lecture in Russian Literature.This year's lecture features Edyta Bojanowska from Yale University, with her lecture: ""Imperial Comparisons in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'".
This event will be hosted in the Barbie Tootle Room of the Ohio Union, with food served at 5:30PM, and the lecture following from 6:00PM to 7:30PM.
Read below to see Dr. Bojanowska's abstract and to learn more about the Hongor Oulanoff Lecture!
“Imperial Comparisons in Tolstoy’s War and Peace”
Edyta Bojanowska, Yale University
"Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, about Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign, is well-known for its national mythology, but less so for its imperial one. Yet both myths interweave in Tolstoy’s dense historical canvas and his fictional characters’ human dramas. Using a postcolonial lens, this talk examines Tolstoy’s comparisons between the French and Russian empires and their Orientalisms. Balancing between alternately denying and affirming Russia’s imperial status, between rejecting some imperial attitudes and reinforcing others, War and Peace navigates the national and imperial contradictions of nineteenth-century Russia and its triangular relations to East and West. "
At Ohio State every autumn we host the Hongor Oulanoff Lecture in Russian Literature, generously endowed by our late emeritus colleague's wife Constance Oulanoff. Prof. Oulanoff (1930-2010) was one of the founding faculty of the department. Born in Prague into an emigre family, he was educated at the University of Paris in Arabic language and literature. While pursuing his studies in Europe he also assisted his father, Badma Badmanovich Oulanoff, with the Kalmyk refugee question, and they were instrumental in facilitating the emigration of Kalmyks to the U.S. in the 1950s. Hongor then studied at Harvard, where he received his PhD in Russian Literature in 1960. Hongor's published work is primarily on the prose of the 1920s, including on Veniamin Kaverin.
Be sure to check on our website for more information about the Oulanoff and other lectures, and to keep up to date with all of our events!
Email Ernst.150@osu.edu for more information about this lecture, or for general inquiries about the SEELC at OSU.
