The emergence of literary ethnography in the Russian Empire: from the far east to the pale of settlement, 1845-1917

This dissertation examines the intersection of ethnography and literature in the works of two Russian and two Russian Jewish writers and ethnographers. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Korolenko, Vladimir Bogoraz, and Semyon An-sky wrote fiction in the genre of literary ethnography. This genre encompasses discursive practices and narrative strategies in the analysis of the different peoples of the Russian Empire. To some extent, and in some cases, these authors' ethnographic works promoted the growth of Russian and Jewish national awareness between 1845 and 1914. This dissertation proposes a new interpretive model, literary ethnography, for the study of the textualization of ethnic realities and values in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth-century. While the writers in question were aware of the ethnographic imperial discourses then in existence, I argue that their works were at times in tune with and reflected the colonial ambitions of the empire, and at other times, contested them. I demonstrate that the employment of an ethnographic discourse made possible the incorporation of different voices and diverse cultural experiences. My multicultural approach to the study of the Russian people, the indigenous peoples of the Russian Far East, and the Jews of Tsarist Russia documents and conceptualizes the diversity and multi-voicedness of the Russian Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, my dissertation contributes to the field of Russian and Jewish studies by primarily examining works that are either unpublished, less well-known, or have been ignored by scholars.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Berkovich, Nadezda

Contributors dc:contributor

• Murav, Harriet
• Avrutin, Eugene
• Tempest, Richard
• Finke, Michael

• Literature
• Ethnography
• Russian
• Yiddish
• Dostoevsky
• Gogol
• An-sky

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 Nadezda Berkovich

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/92927

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/92927