Colloquium by Nikolai Bogomolov, Moscow State University: Silver Age as a Subculture

Date
Wed May 22nd 2013, 5:15 - 6:30pm
Location
Building 260, Room
216

Speakers): Nikolai Bogomolov, Moscow State University

Nikolai Bogomolov, Moscow State University

'Silver Age as Subculture'

May 22, 2013: 5.15pm

Pigott Hall (Building 260), Room 216

 

Omry Ronen’s book The Fallacy of the Silver Age called the applicability of the term “Silver Age” into question. Professor Bogomolov's talk attempts to offer a justification for its existence. Typically, when scholars discuss the idea of “subculture,” they have in mind the opposition of subculture to the “mainstream.” However, it seems more appropriate to use this idea to discuss the culture of a certain time as comprised of a multitude of subcultures based on ethnicity, class, religious faith, cultural tradition, etc. This talk will discuss the Silver Age as a subculture—a phenomenon with clear boundaries and its own unique structure—with the aim of identifying the different personalities of this subculture and demonstrating the importance of its various micro-levels.

 

NIKOLAI BOGOMOLOV, a specialist in 20th century Russian literature, teaches at Moscow State University, where he has chaired the Department of Literary and Art Criticism since 1994. He has received awards and grants from American Council of Learned Societies, the Soros Foundation, the Davis Center at Harvard University, and Princeton University, and has been Visiting Professor at Princeton, University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Tartu and Helsinki Universities. His research encompasses literary history, the theory of verse, archival research, early 20th century Russian modernism, émigré culture, and Soviet and post-Soviet periods of Russian literature. His publications include monographs on Russian poets Valery Briusov, Viacheslav Ivanov, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Mikhail Kuzmin (co-authored with John E. Malmstad). In collaboration with Michael Wachtel, he has also prepared, prefaced and annotated an edition of Viacheslav Ivanov's correspondence with Lydia Zinov'eva-Annibal. An international festschrift for Professor Bogomolov was published in 2011 by Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie publishing house.