Modernism and its Environments

This two-day conference will revisit literary texts and cultural products of Russophone modernism and the avant-garde from an ecocritical perspective. The numerous discoveries in the fields of climatology, paleontology, physics, and biology that punctuated the early twentieth century brought about a new understanding of time, space, evolution, and the role of human life and activity vis-à-vis other living and nonliving entities. These new scientific ideas and technologies permeated modernist aesthetics, emerging thematically and stylistically throughout literature and the visual arts. Approaches include, but are not limited to, the energy humanities, extractive practices, and sound studies.