ATTENTION: Due to the recently implemented travel policy prohibiting University-related non-essential travel, this year's Weintraub Lecture has been canceled.
The Russian poet Anna Glazova will read from her work in a special Davis Center Literature and Culture Seminar, co‐sponsored by the Harvard Slavic Department.
Who Should Teach Whom to Read Tolstoy?: Curating the 1928 Centenary
The People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment greeted the centenary of Leo Tolstoy's birth with some trepidation. In the words of one official: “An inept, politically illiterate approach to Tolstoy’s anniversary can turn into a harmful sermon on Tolstoyanism.” My talk will examine the pamphlets, bibliographies, and lecture scripts produced by the Commissariat to chaperone new readers through Tolstoy’s oeuvre. How could Tolstoy be taught, and put in service of the Soviet cause, ...