1st Edition

Transnational Russian-American Travel Writing

By Margarita Marinova Copyright 2011
    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    202 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this study, Marinova examines the diverse practices of crossing boundaries, tactics of translation, and experiences of double and multiple political and national attachments evident in texts about Russo-American encounters from the end of the American Civil War to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Marinova brings together published writings, archival materials, and personal correspondence of well or less known travelers of diverse ethnic backgrounds and artistic predilections: from the quintessential American Mark Twain to the Russian-Jewish ethnographer and revolutionary Vladimir Bogoraz; from masters of realist prose such as the Ukrainian-born Vladimir Korolenko and the Jewish-Russian-American Abraham Cahan, to romantic wanderers like Edna Proctor, Isabel Hapgood or Grigorii Machtet. By highlighting the  reification of problematic stereotypes of ethnic and racial difference in these texts, Marinova illuminates the astonishing success of the Cold War period’s rhetoric of mutual hatred and exclusion, and its continuing legacy today.

    Contents  List of Figures  Acknowledgments  Introduction  1: Russian Tourists View Postbellum America  2: "Innocent" Encounters with Russia, or Americans at Play  3: Russian "Marvels" and American "Originals." The View of Russia and America During the Last Two Decades of the Nineteenth Century  4: The Gifts of Travel: Tales of Passing of the Ethnic Russian in America: Vladimir Korolenko’s Bez Iazyka and Abraham Cahan’s "Theodore and Martha" and The White Terror and the Red  Conclusion  Notes  Bibliography  Index

    Biography

    Margarita Marinova is Assistant Professor of English at Christopher Newport University.

    "Marinova's research brings together a variety of Russian and American voices from this period and provides a thoughtful analysis of their convergences, similarities, differences, and 'mimetic capital'... Her work is an important step in understanding both historical and contemporary Russian and American attitudes towards each other." - Slavic and East European Journal