Mercuriality as Muse: Intersecting Identities in Contemporary Russian-Jewish-American Literature
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
-
Alfredson, Peter
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
- Abstract
- This honors thesis explores transitional identity among Russian-speaking Jewish émigrés living in the United States, as represented in literary works by five writers from that community: The Last Chicken in America (2007) by Ellen Litman, What Happened to Anna K. (2008) by Irina Reyn, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam (2009) by Maxim Shrayer, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002) by Gary Shteyngart, and Petropolis (2007) by Anya Ulinich. Chapter One presents Russian identity as a largely cultural and sentimental phenomenon that has been increasingly emphasized in a context of emigration. Chapter Two explores representations of Jewish identity based in memory, historic anti-Semitism, and a sense of ethnic belonging. Chapter Three introduces and discusses the existence of a persistent and depoliticized Soviet identity that has been largely ignored by previous scholarship. Chapter Four examines a composite, pluralistic American identity that has redefined the relationships among all other identities. This interdisciplinary thesis draws upon extensive secondary sources from across the social sciences and humanities to further analyze all of these identities and their literary representations.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Shvabrin, Stanislav
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Highest Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 88
Relations
- Parents:
This work has no parents.