Product Overview
Uncensored? Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia is a wide-ranging scholarly analysis of humor and satire in Russia during the regimes of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The volume brings together an international group of emerging scholars and established authorities in the fields of Russian humor, satire, and popular culture, who explore a broad range of post-Soviet media and genres (such as literature, folklore, film, television, journalism, estrada comedy, and rock music). The book's contributors pose a wide array of related questions: What are the functions of humor and satire in Russia's "post-censorship" environment? To what extent are contemporary Russian satirical writers and performers free to express themselves? What (and who) are the principal targets of post-Soviet humorous and satirical production? Viewed as a whole, the articles in Uncensored? present a series of compelling observations of the socio-political climate in post-Soviet Russia through a shared topical prism of humor and satire. About the editors: Olga Mesropova teaches Russian language, literature, and culture at Iowa State University. Her publications on Russian cinema and popular culture have appeared in the Russian Review, Slavic and East European Journal, and Canadian Slavonic Papers. She is the author of Kinotalk: Russian Cinema and Conversation (Slavica, 2006) and is currently completing a monograph on Soviet and post-Soviet stand-up comedy. Seth Graham teaches Russian culture and language at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He has published articles on cinema, literature, and humor, and his book Resonant Dissonance: The Russian Joke in Cultural Context was published in 2009 by Northwestern University Press. This book is recommended for library collections at colleges and univer¬sities, as well as larger public library systems.
