Performative Selves: The Americanization of Post-Soviet Jewish Women Writers

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and ensuing waves of emigration, Jewish communities in several parts of the world have witnessed significant transformations. In this context, literary and cultural studies is witnessing the emergence of a generation of post-Soviet Jewish fiction writers in the United States: Born in the 1970s in today’s Russia or Ukraine, these are English-writing authors like Gary Shteyngart, Anya Ulinich, Sana Krasikov, Lara Vapnyar, and others, whose coming-of-age narratives trace their socialization in both “Eastern” and “Western” cultures.
By taking a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, the dissertation project attempts a systematic analysis of post-Soviet Jewish American fiction. The basic argument is that this new current of neorealist and often ironic literature has its discursive share in the complex formation process of post-Soviet Jewish American ethnic identity. “[We] have to think of what kind of image [we] want to project. Everyone already thinks we’re bandits and whores. We’ve got to rebrand ourselves.” This meta-fictional claim, voiced by one of Gary Shteyngart’s Russified protagonists, will be read as a performative gesture that points to a carefully designed and affirmative politics of self-representation on the part of the writers under discussion. Placing the texts within a transnational ethno-cultural context, and in relation to several intersecting identity categories (race, nationality, gender), the project analyzes how post-Soviet Jewish American novelists aesthetically subvert, negotiate, and re-affirm the discourses into which they write themselves.

Research Field: American Studies
Supervisors: Maria Diedrich (American studies, WWUM), Alfred Sproede (Slavic studies WWUM), Paul Spickard (ethnic studies, UCSB)

• Current Projects

  since 2016

  Lecturer, Englisches Seminar, WWU Münster

• Academic CV
  2014	PhD, Graduate School Practices of Literature, WWU Münster
  2014	Visiting Research Student, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  06/2020 - 06/2011	Research assistant, Slavic-Baltic Seminar, Münster University
  since 04/2010	Scholarship holder of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (affiliated with the German Green Party)
  10/2009 - 03/2010	Research and teaching assistant, American Studies Department, Münster University
  since 10/2009	Member of the Graduate School “Practices of Literature,” Münster University PhD candidate in American literary and cultural studies
  01 - 07/2009	ERASMUS scholarship Graduate studies and dissertation preparation at Vienna University, Austria Jewish studies and history
  since 12/2008	Editorial assistant for FORECAAST (Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies)
  11/2008	First state examination in English and philosophy, Münster University Graduation thesis: Filming The Scarlet Letter: From Nathaniel Hawthorne to Wim Wenders
  2006 - 2008	Student assistant at the American Studies Department, Münster University, chaired by Professor Maria Diedrich
  2002 - 2008	Undergraduate and graduate studies at Münster University and Concordia University Montreal, QC, Canada. English, philosophy, history
  Conference Papers & Presentations
  06/2018	Domestic Sexual Violence in War: Sandra Uwiringiyimana’s Literary Self-Recreation in the Context of Gender, Race, and the UN Refugee Regime. Ethnicities and Kinship: Eleventh Biennial MESEA Conference (MESEA), University of Graz, Austria, June 2018
  05/2017	"Post-Soviet Jewish American Fiction Writers and Their Engagement with Race" Titel der Veranstaltung: American Colors: Across the Disciplinary Spectrum - The Twenty-Fifth Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS) Held by: NAAS Place and Time: University of Southern Denmark, Odense, 22. - 24. Mai 2017 Link
  07/2016	Re-Framing the "Nation of Immigrants" and the "Einwanderungsland" in U.S.- and German-Based Post-Soviet Jewish Literature: Yelena Akhtiorskaya and Olga Grjasnowa Conference: Re-Framing American Jewish History and Thought: New Transnational Perspectives Held by: School of Jewish Theology Potsdam Place and Time: Potsdam & Berlin, July 20-22 2016
  10/2015	"The Jewish Origins of the American Self and the Case of (Post-Soviet) Jewish Migrant Fiction in the U.S. - and Beyond?", Conference: Transnational Perspectives on American Jewry. School of Jewish Theology Potsdam, Potsdam & Berlin
  08/2015	"Into the Affiliative Post-Racial Future? The Problem of Adoption in Anya Ulinich’s Petropolis (2007)", Conference: Transnational and Transracial Adoption in North American Culture. Finnish American Studies Association (FASA), University of Turku
  12/2014	"Re-Negotiating the Americanization of Tevye: Intertextuality and Meta-Fiction in Nadia Kalman’s The Cosmopolitans". Conference: The New Wave of Russian-Jewish Cultural Production. Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York City
  05/2014	Panel Chair "Border Crossing in European (and Other) Spaces" & Paper "Eastern Europe Unbound? Tracing the Jewish American Debate over 'the East' in Post-Cold War Discourse" Conference:  Crossing Boundaries in a Post-Ethnic Era - 9th Biennial Conference of the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas (MESEA) Held by: MESEA Place and Time: University of Saabrücken (Germany), May 29 - June 1st, 2014
  11/2012	Panel Chair "The Double and the Uncanny." PGF 2012: Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies. Marburg University.
  06/2012	“Multicultural Conservatives: Russian Jewish Women Writers Forge the Contemporary American Self.” 59th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies. University of Mainz.
  05/2011	“Race and the Politics of Representation: Reading Blackness in Petropolis.” 22nd Annual Conference of the American Literature Association. The Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA.
  11/2010	“The Russian Jewish Female Voice Re-Visited: Shifting Homes in Petropolis, U.S.” PGF 2010: Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies. Leipzig University
  10/2010	“Re-Visiting the Russian Jewish Female Voice: Finding Home in Petropolis, U.S.” Hotspots in Literary / Cultural Studies and Linguistics. Lecture Series. Münster University.
  06/2010	“‘The Unbearable Whiteness of Being’: Negotiating Hybridity in Post-Soviet Jewish American Narrative.” Travel, Trade, and Ethnic Transformations: Seventh Biennial MESEA Conference. University of Pécs, Hungary.
  10/2009	“Extending the Transnational: Post-Soviet Jewish American Literature.” Hotspots in Literary / Cultural Studies and Linguistics. Lecture Series. Münster University.
  Publications
  forthcoming	“‘The Unbearable Whiteness of Being’: Negotiating Hybridity in Post-Soviet Jewish American Narrative.” Mobile Narratives: Travel, Migration, and Transculturation. Ed. Eleftheria Arapoglou, Mónika Fodor, and Jopi Nyman. New York: Routledge, 2014. 213-25.
  Service & Committees
  04 - 12/2011	Board member, Graduate School “Practices of Literature,” Münster University
  2010	Research and editorial assistant, funding proposal for the inception of the Graduate School "Literary Theory as Theory of Society," sponsored by the Hans Böckler Foundation
  11/2009 - 03/2011	Selection committee member, Graduate School “Practices of Literature,” Münster University
  2002 - 2008	Student representative, English Department / American Studies
  Academic Memberships
  	German Association for American Studies (GAAS)
  	The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas (MESEA)

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