Olson preps folkloric study of Russian women

Laura J. Olson, an associate professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleague Svetlana Adonyeva at St. Petersburg State University in Russia have published a folkloric study of generations of Russian village women that will be released in February.

Russian rural women have been depicted as victims of oppressive patriarchy, celebrated as symbols of inherent female strength, and extolled as the original source of a great world culture. Throughout the years of collectivization, industrialization, and World War II, women played major roles in the evolution of the Russian village. Based on nearly three decades of fieldwork (1983 to 2010), “The Worlds of Russian Village Women: Tradition, Transgression, Compromise” follows three generations of Russian women and shows how they alternately preserve, discard and rework the cultural traditions of their forebears to suit changing needs and self-conceptions.

Publication of the volume was made possible, in part, through support from the Eugene M. Kayden Endowment at the University of Colorado.