The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination

The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination

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Edited by Miranda Remnek
Studies in Book and Print Culture
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division © 2010
World Rights
320 Pages
Cloth
ISBN 9781442641020
Published Apr 2011
$60.00
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Description
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Contents
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From the Enlightenment to the Internet age, reading practices in Russia have been shaped by factors such as artistic and cultural trends, economics, and state scrutiny. The Space of the Book provides the most comprehensive overview to date of salient topics in Russian print culture, in a volume that promises to become the leading introduction to current research in the field.

This collection features illustrated essays by premier Russian historians, literature specialists, and innovative younger scholars on topics including the influence of commerce, diversifying readerships, education and rural libraries, reception theory, and censorship. Miranda Remnek begins each chapter with an introduction on digital applications. Skilfully connecting multidisciplinary sources along broad historical continuum, The Space of the Book will be a valuable resource as the study of Russian print culture takes on new directions in a digitized world.

Miranda Remnek is the head of Slavic & East European Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

List of Figures and Tables

Introduction: The Space of the Book: Print Culture in Russia’s Social Imagination / by Miranda Remnek (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  1. Russian Eighteenth-Century Popular Enlightenment Literature on Commerce / by Lina Bernstein (Franklin & Marshall College)
  2. Dinner at Smirdan’s: Forces in Russian Print Culture in the Early Reign of Nicholas I / by George Gutsche (University of Arizona)
  3. The Proliferation of Elite Readerships and Circle Poetics in Pushkin and Baratynskii (1820s-1830s) / by Joseph Peschio (University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee) and Igor Pil’shchikov (Moscow State University)
  4. The Archaeology of “Backwardness” in Russia: Assessing the Adequacy of Libraries for Rural Audiences in Late Imperial Russia / by Ben Eklof (Indiana University)
  5. The Reading Culture of Russian Workers in the Early Twentieth Century (Evidence from Public Library Records) / by Leonid Borodkin (Moscow State University) and Evgeny Chugunov (Kostroma Department for Culture and Tourism)
  6. Reading Between the (Confessional) Lines: The Intersection of Old Believer Manuscript Books and Images with Print Cultures of Late Imperial Russia / by Kevin M. Kain (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay)
  7. The Moral Self in Russia’s Literary and Visual Cultures: The Late Imperial Era and Beyond / by Jeffrey P. Brooks (Johns Hopkins University)
  8. Books and Their Readers in Twentieth-Century Russia / by Stephen Lovell (King’s College, London)
  9. Adapting Paratextual Theory to the Soviet Context: Publishing Practices and the Readers of Il’f and Petrov’s Ostap Bender Novels / by Anne O. Fisher
  10. Closing and Opening and Closing: Reflections on the Russian Media / by Marianna Tax Choldin (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Appendix: The Internet on the State of Mass Media in Russia / by Svetlana Stulova

Contributors
Index

‘This collection breaks important new ground in study of print culture in Russia and Soviet Union. In addition to the generally high quality of essays, the book seeks to &lduo;strike the imagination of a new generation of scholars&rduo; that has grown up with the internet and is often more comfortable with a website than the hard copy…. The essays have many insightful tidbits to offer a broad spectrum of readers.’

Lousie McReynolds, The Russian Review vol 71:01:2012