This guest lecture is by Dr Eva Binder, a senior researcher at the Department of Slavic Studies, University of Innsbruck (Austria). Her research interests include contemporary Russian cinema, 20th-century Soviet auteur cinema, the aesthetics of documentary film and literature, and transcultural and postcolonial approaches to Eastern European cultures. In addition, she is involved in promoting media literacy in the instruction of Russian as a foreign language.
The critically acclaimed Russian-Tatar writer Guzel Yakhina [Guzel’ Iakhina] builds her novels around two central themes, setting clear expectations for her Russian and international readership. Firstly, her novels Zuleikha otkryvaet glaza (2015), Deti moi (2018) and Eshelon na Samarkand (2021) are set against the backdrop of radical political and social change during the first two decades of Soviet power, including the civil war, the Povolzh’e famine and the deportations of the 1930s. Secondly, they focus on the multi-ethnic nature of former imperial and then Soviet Russia. In her lecture, Eva Binder will focus on the strategies Yakhina employs to transform traumatic historical experiences into entertaining contemporary reading material. Additionally, the public scandal surrounding the TV miniseries ZULEIKHA OTKRYVAET GLAZA in spring 2020 will illuminate what Aleksandr Etkind termed the ‘multi-historical’ nature of historical memory in Russia on the eve of the war and the political transition from an authoritarian system to a totalitarian state.