Matters of Humanities
Within the podcast series Matters of Humanities, we showcase the voices of researchers at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University.
Serie 1: History of Islam in Europe
Arabist Maurits Berger talks about the history of the Islam in Europe: going back to the first Muslim who set foot in Europe, and seeing what kind of interactions have taken place between Muslims and Europeans since then.
Serie 2: Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature
Senior lecturer Otto Boele examines eight notorious texts in Russian literature, paying particular attention to the commotion that they created.
Serie 3: Name that Language
Dr. Kate Bellamy and Dr. Andrew Wigman host the pilot podcast ‘Name That Language’, the podcast in which, with the help of an expert from the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), they explore the ins, outs, ups, and downs of one of the world’s 7000 or so languages. The catch? You won't hear the name of the language until the very end of the interview.
Serie 4: Muslim Futures
In this first ever podcast from LUCIS, hosts Yasmin Ismail & Sara Bolghiran explore what it means to imagine Muslim futures. Over 6 episodes we explore questions around what it means to imagine, the politics of imagination and what it would mean to engage with Muslims from the perspective of futures.
Matters of Humanities
Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature - Episode 7: A very dark novel
The seventh episode of the podcast is about “The Sad Detective” by Viktor Astafiev (1924-2001), published in 1986.
Did the increased openness under Mikhail Gorbachev (in power from 1985 until 1991) also have a downside? Absolutely! Some writers seemed to relish the idea of depicting Soviet society as being completely ravaged by alcoholism and domestic violence without offering a shimmer of hope for the future. An important pioneer of this “black wave” of Soviet literature was Viktor Astafiev who had made a name for himself with thick, colourful novels set in Siberia, but now seemed to adopt a new approach in his fiercely realistic urban novel “The Sad Detective”. Soon the novel became the focal point of a lively debate that involved critics and readers, liberals and nationalists, and signalled the return of anti-Semitism and Russian nationalism as entirely legitimate positions.
Sources used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":
- Clark, Katerina. 2000. The Soviet Novel. History as Ritual, 3d edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
- Graham, Seth. 2000. “Chernukha and Russian Film,” Studies in Slavic Cultures, 1, pp. 9-27.
- Parthé, Kathleen. 2004. Russia’s Dangerous Texts. Politics Between the Lines (New Haven: Yale University Press).
- Parthé, Kathleen. 1992. Russian Village Prose. The Radiant Past (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
All translations were done by Otto Boele.
© Otto Boele & Electrical Films 2024