Victoria Buyanovskaya

Area(s) of Study: Late Soviet and Post-Soviet culture, literature and biopolitics, memory studies, Russian formalism, Polish and Russian modernism

About: Victoria comes from Moscow, Russia, where she received her BA and MA in Russian and Comparative Literature at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics.” Her undergraduate thesis addressed the queer aesthetic in the work of the Russian modernist poet Mikhail Kuzmin, whereas her MA thesis discussed the politics of pedagogy in Soviet children’s literature, Arkady Gaidar’s short stories in particular. Victoria also spent a semester at the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy, practicing both Italian language (which Victoria later taught at her alma mater) and comparative approach to Russian literature. Maintaining her interest in various moments of transition and ruptures in Russian history and art, Victoria now studies the intersection between the biopolitics, memory culture, and literature, particularly in the Post-Soviet times. Her research interests also include Russian formalism, aesthetic and politics of Russian avant-garde, and Polish modernism. Victoria is excited to have begun teaching Russian at UW-Madison in 2022.

Education:

National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (Moscow, Russia) – BA and MA in Russian and Comparative Literature

Courses Taught:

-First Semester Russian (Fall 2022)

Awards:

2022 Cultural Studies Grand Prize in NYU Jordan Center Blog Graduate Student Essay Competition (“Paralysis of Complicity in Dmitri Prigov and Beyond: How to Do Things With Metaphors Now?”)

Publications:

“Turning Back Time to Keep Writing: Melancholic Memory and the Making of the Modern(ist) Self in Bruno Schulz’s ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.’” The Polish Review (in print)

Review of Word Play: Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children’s Literature (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory), by Ainsley Morse. SEEJ 65, no. 3 (Fall 2021): 565-566.

“Revolution vs. Pedagogy: Arkady Gaidar and the Making of Soviet Children’s Literature.” NYU Jordan Center Blog. https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/revolution-vs-pedagogy-arkady-gaidar-and-the-making-of-soviet-childrens-literature/#.YyFppuzMJQI