Slavic Studies congratulates Laura Little, who recently defended her dissertation, which is titled “Becoming an Andegraund Poet: Elena Shvarts and the Literary Environment of the Late Soviet Era.”
We interviewed Dr. Little to find out more about her topic.
What’s your dissertation about? Please give us the elevator pitch.
My dissertation focuses on the poet Elena Shvarts (1948-2010) and her place in unofficial culture in late Soviet Leningrad. Shvarts came to produce a substantial and sophisticated body of work without access to traditional print audiences, and my study asks what circumstances facilitated her creative self-realization. I trace Shvarts’s formation and rise to recognition, interweaving discussions of the political, literary, and social environment of her youth and early adulthood with close interpretative readings of poems and declarative statements.
I apply a Foucauldian lens to the literary environment in which Shvarts came of age, framing its formal, informal, and “public-private” institutions as a heterotopian network. Highlighting the relevance of the spoken word to the milieu, I argue that readerships for samizdat (self-published) literary periodicals were created and sustained by poetry readings, seminars, café culture, and other platforms for “oral publication.” Concepts from scholarship on European pre-print culture illuminate curation practices that ensured the survival of these ephemeral texts.
My study contributes to a growing body of scholarship demonstrating the vibrancy of the socialist 1970s, when nonconformists overcame fear and surveillance to pursue independent agendas throughout Eastern Europe. In “Becoming an Andegraund Poet,” I document the innovative creative work that grew out of collective endeavors in Saint Petersburg in the 1960s and 70s, a unique environment that gave rise to Joseph Brodsky, Elena Shvarts, and other figures who merit our attention.
How did you come to this topic?
I first encountered Shvarts’s poetry in a seminar on contemporary poetry taught by Professor David Bethea. The endless metamorphoses of her imaginative world and her tendency to yoke together stylistically “high” and “low” material were fascinating to me. Thanks to Professor Alexander Dolinin, I became personally acquainted with Shvarts, and with the help and support of Slavic Studies, she traveled to Madison and led a short seminar on contemporary poetry. I was happy to be her guide during that trip, part of her last literary tour. After her death, I had the chance to interview Shvarts’s literary collaborators and acquaintances, and these encounters led me to focus on her formation and milieu.
Were there particular challenges to researching and writing that you’d like to share with us?
My dissertation was completed at a distance and “on the side” of full-time work that had little connection to the project itself. I would not recommend this approach to any grad student. On the other hand, perhaps it was good preparation for future writing projects. Due to the current state of the Humanities and relative indifference toward Russian and Slavic Studies in the United States, the conditions are not so different in many academic jobs. It was also a challenge to work without access to Memorial Library and its rich print collection. The coronavirus pandemic made accessing libraries problematic generally, but fortunately I had great support from the librarians at Connecticut College, where I work.
What’s next for you as a new PhD?
I don’t know what changes in professional life await me, but my work on the Leningrad andegraund is far from done. One possibility I have been entertaining is a book-length study building on the dissertation and following Shvarts’s poetic path through the end of the Soviet era. There are many possible areas to expand, and I am looking forward to exploring approaches with the Slavic Studies community at upcoming conferences and elsewhere.