How could literature, a generally intangible art form, be "materialist"? After the Russian Revolution, writers in the 1920s harnessed literary form to reflect upon the volatile changes in Russia's world of objects, in an early Soviet society that defined its political project as overcoming the commodity form on one hand while anxiously courting private business to revive a war-ravaged economy on the other. This talk will investigate two such literary reactions, seemingly opposed, by the Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the proto-socialist-realist novelist Fyodor Gladkov.

Guest Speaker: Dominick Lawton
Dominick Lawton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. His work and teaching are dedicated to Russian and South Slavic/Yugoslav literature and culture.