The Svetlana Boym Reader

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Svetlana Boym was a prolific writer, a charismatic professor, a novelist, and a public intellectual. She was also a fiercely resourceful and reflective immigrant; her most resonant book, The Future of Nostalgia, was deeply rooted in that experience. Even after The Future of Nostalgia carried her fame beyond academic circles, few readers were aware of all of her creative personas. She was simply too prolific, and her work migrated across most peoples disciplinary boundariesfrom literary and cultural studies through film, visual, and material culture studies, performance, intermedia, and new media. The Svetlana Boym Reader presents a comprehensive view of Boyms singularly creative work in all its aspects. It includes Boyms classic essays, carefully chosen excerpts from her five books, and journalistic gems. Showcasing her roles both as curator and curated, the reader includes interviews and excerpts from exhibition catalogues as well as samples of intermedial works like Hydrant Immigrants. It also features autobiographical pieces that shed light on the genealogy of her scholarly work and rarities like an excerpt from Boyms first graduate school essay on Russian literature, complete with marginalia by her mentor Donald Fanger. Last but not least, the reader includes late pieces that Boym did not live to see through publication, as well as transcripts of her memorable last lectures and performances.

Reviews

An essential collection of essays in literary and cultural criticism by Russian-American writer Svetlana Boym ... [The editors] provide a bibliography of works published within Boyms nearly thirty-year career, and they have assembled a compelling collection that positions this contemporary philosopher as a foundational thinker. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
A striking work of literature that embodies Boyms ideas, ethics, principles, and values in its very process of creation and curation of her work. * Contemporary Women's Writing *
For people already familiar with Boyms work, or for those simply interested in the diverse subjects it tackles, this volume will be an excellent sourcebook. It showcases Boyms intellectual versatility, her eloquence, and her passion. At a time when migration is evoked everywhere but poorly understood in its cultural, intellectual, and historical implications, Boyms patient, and personal, examination of the phenomenon is invaluable. Her work develops an inspiring view of the university as a realm where creativity trumps neoliberal expediency. * Sven Spieker, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA *
Every emigrant tries to make 'families' wherever he/she goes. Svetlana Boym made hers among students, academics, artists, writers and thinkers, in different geographical sites, even in cyberspace, bumping into unknown interlocutors. The Svetlana Boym Reader is an impressive book put together in her honor by the members of her 'family'her former students, literature scholars, and academic acquaintances. Cristina Vatulescu, Tamar Abramov, Nicole G. Burgoyne, Julia Chadaga, Jacob Emery, and Julia Vaingurt have compiled selections of Boym's work, grouped by her favorite themes, with each theme introduced by the editors. This book is a brilliant scholarly achievement, but it is also an intimate and emotional one. All the texts invite the reader to join a dialogue, as inspirational dialogue was what Svetlana Boym missed the most and enjoyed the most when she found it. * Dubravka Ugreic, author of Europe in Sepia (2014) *
Svetlana Boyms eloquent, ironic, deeply personal writings explore issues of major concern today: emigration and exile, art and politics, trauma and nostalgia. The Svetlana Boym Readers rich suite of selections illuminates the deep continuities in her multifaceted work as it developed over time, redefining modernityand off-modernityfor a global era. * David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature, Harvard University, USA *

Author Bio

Svetlana Boym (1959-2015) was a literary critic, visual artist, writer of fiction, and Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA. Her books include Death in Quotation Marks (1991), Common Places (1994), The Future of Nostalgia (2001), Another Freedom (2010) and The Off-Modern (Bloomsbury, 2017). Her artworks were exhibited in New York, Berlin, Ljubljana, Glasgow, Copenhagen, Kaunas, and Cambridge. Cristina Vatulescu is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at NYU, USA. Tamar Abramov is an independent scholar based in Jerusalem, Israel. Julia Chadaga is Associate Professor of Russian Studies at Macalester College, USA. Jacob Emery is Associate Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, USA. Julia Vaingurt is Associate Professor of Russian literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.