Browsing by Author "Andrews, Edna"

The identity of the Third Wave Russian Diaspora has been misunderstood through the oversimplification of their ethnic and language identity. In addition, the methodologies of sociolinguistic fieldwork, including bilingual studies in the Russian Diaspora, contain essentialism at their core. The paper explores the problem of the essentialist identity in the study of the Third Wave Diaspora and how it is created and maintained. In the first part of the thesis, I unpack the history of the Third Wave Soviet émigrés to understand why they were essentialized as Soviet or Russian Jews before becoming immigrants and then the Russian Diaspora. As a way to open up the discussion of the problem of studying Russian diaspora as one group, I discuss the methodologies of several key scholars in this field. Then, I specifically look at lexical data that have been studied by scholars on the Russian Diaspora. I use lexical terms I gathered from Soviet dictionaries to analyze and deconstruct the interpretations by the previous scholars. My conclusion is that because of this oversimplification of the Third Wave Russian Diaspora and methodological tendency to essentialize identities in studies, the Russian Diaspora and the language as a result have also been essentialized.

In this thesis, I will analyze a selection of Evgeny Zamiatin’s theoretical works, addressing prominent themes, including the historical and political context of his works, the future and purpose of literature, the role and responsibilities of writers in society, people’s responsibilities toward each other as humans, who creates societal change, and how they accomplish change. I will consider Zamiatin’s definitions of “revolutions”, “heretics”, and “heresy” to demonstrate how they apply to his understanding of the role of writers and the purpose of literature. I will apply the core ideas of these essays to an analysis of how ideas from Zamiatin’s theoretical works manifest themselves in his novel We, with an especial focus on how Zamiatin adhered to his own vision for a brave, “heretical” writer. Through a semiotic perspective, I will explore some of the possible meanings and interpretations of We to reveal the relevance of this work to a twenty-first century audience. All English translations of original Russian text are my own.

This thesis examines how domestic violence is talked about both in the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union and by the Westerners whom have offered their expertise on the matter. The first chapter shows how there is a divide between Russian journalists and Russian academic scholars in the way domestic violence is viewed and how they believe it can be resolved. Although they both share some consistent values, there is tension between whether a new enforced law can be preventive or if the need to prevention goes beyond the law. The second chapter discusses how Westerners from both the United States and the United Kingdom have used various methods of data collection to find out why the establishment of women's crisis centers have not been as stable and successful as they had hoped. It also explores how Western aid comes with specific standards and how the word `feminism' has become stigmatized in Russia. Both of these chapters use newspaper articles, journal articles, and interdisciplinary analyses of academic texts to show how domestic violence has become recognized as a major problem in Russia, and how both Russians and Westerners are searching for a solution to end the violence.

Conclusions show how there is still a need for dialogue between Russians who are trying to aid victims of domestic violence and Westerners who have been working in this field for many years. This thesis works as a meta-analysis to show the past and current dialogue happening between Russia and `Western' scholars.