Holly Myers
Assistant Professor of Russian
University of Delaware
227 Jastak-Burgess Hall
Newark, DE 19716
Biography
Holly Myers is an Assistant Professor of Russian in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Languages. Her research and teaching interests are in Russian and Soviet literature and culture, including international trends in documentary modes; artistic representations of violence and trauma; environmental humanities; intersections between literature and music; and cultural expressions of nationalism and national identity.
Prof. Myers's book manuscript āTelling and Retelling a War Story: Svetlana Alexievich and Alexander Prokhanov on the Soviet-Afghan War,ā examines fluid relationships between truths, authority, facts, and documents in the unusual hybrid literary forms that each writer has produced and then repeatedly revised, from the 1980s to the present day. Unlike the Russian Civil War or World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War did not gain a stable narrative in Russian culture. As a result, its literary representationsāand interpretations of these representationsāhave been especially sensitive to evolving political realities and agendas. Located on opposite sides of the political spectrum, Alexievich and Prokhanov tell competing narratives of the so-called āforgotten war.ā The aesthetic decisions Alexievich and Prokhanov have made in revising their Soviet-Afghan war stories over the decades since the war ended reflect and respond to the larger polarization of post-Soviet society in Belarus and Russia. The relationships between implied author and implied reader in their respective texts thus become competing political statements about the relationship between state and citizen in the post-Soviet space.
Degrees
Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A. in Russian Literature from Columbia University, Department of Slavic Languages
M.A. in Russian Literature from the University of Virginia, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
B.A. in English and Music from Amherst College
Selected Publications
āāSvetlana Aleksievichās Changing Narrative of the Soviet-Afghan War in Zinky Boys,ā Canadian Slavonic Papers, Svetlana Alexievich: The Writer and her Times (Special Issue), Fall 2017.
Selected Reviews
"The Gift: Fathers, Sons, and Urinal Art," film review, KinoKultura, Jan 2020. [http://www.kinokultura.com/2020/67r-dar.shtml]
Night God, film review, KinoKultura, Oct 2018. [http://www.kinokultura.com/2018/62r-nochnoibog.shtml]
Big Village Lights, film review, KinoKultura, Jul 2017. [http://www.kinokultura.com/2017/57r-ogni-bolshoi-derevni.shtml]
āRiver of Love,ā film review, āAdaptations of Anna Karenina,ā Tolstoy Studies Journal: āAnna Karenina for the 21st Century,ā Nov 2016.
āTerritory: Patriotism without Propaganda?,ā film review, KinoKultura, Oct 2015. [http://www.kinokultura.com/2015/50/50r-territoria.shtml]
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