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Verena Zabel

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Phd Project: "Between Modernisation and Catastrophe. The Soviet Empire in Literature from Qazaqstan"

In my dissertation, I want explore how the Soviet empire is depicted in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russophone and Qazaq literature from Qazaqstan. For this, I am examining the depiction of empire and imperiality through the lens of four different themes: the October Revolution 1917, World War II, the environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea as well as Gender. Thereby, I want to analyse how the Soviet Union is both examined and remembered through literature. Currently, I am working on the chapter dealing with the desiccation of the Aral Sea where I analyse and compare three different novels and their depiction of imperial institutions and science, their critical engagement with technology and imperial rivalry and the narrativisation of disaster through catastrophic storytelling.
The general focus of the dissertation relates to the research focus of the GRK "empires," particularly the inquiry into imperial institutions and norms. By juxtaposing different authors' positionalities vis-à-vis the Soviet Union as well as their different times of writing, both the situational as well as the temporal transformations of these themes will become visible.

 

Publications

Zabel, Verena: Atomwaffen? Nein danke, Wochentatz 9. – 15. märz 2024. (read online here)