The Refraction of the Self

AvtobiografiЯ

Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture

«AvtobiografiЯ» is a journal devoted to the works that deal with the representation of the self in Russian culture. The journal analyzes the Russian theoretical and artistic autobiographical production following Western research and approaches. It combines different but, at the same time, rich and complex traditions. The first, that of the Western and above all the French and Anglo-Saxon context, where themes related to autobiography and memoirs writing have been constantly and consistently studied in the last fifty years. The second, the Russian tradition, whose wide corpus has been studied to date in a sometimes successful but overall fragmented way.
«AvtobiografiЯ», an international and peer-reviewed online journal, follows the model of similar journals issued in Europe and in the United States that are devoted to national or supranational cultures, such as the journal of the European section of the International Autobiography and Biography Association «European Journal of Life Writing» (http://ejlw.eu/). The name of our journal combines both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, thus underlining the intention of promoting the exchange and reciprocal integration between Western and Eastern cultures. The idea of an open access journal is aimed at reducing the main gaps in the studies on autobiographical and memoirs genres in the Russian context, i.e. their excessive fragmentariness and, consequently, their scarce availability, usually found published in local journals.
The aim of the journal is to grasp the mysteries of the ‘Russian soul’ and to implement the international dialogue through the multifaceted affirmation of the self: all the staff of «AvtobiografiЯ» are dedicated to the above goal and would like to encourage other scholars to contribute to our exploration of auto/biography and the representation of the self in Russian contexts.

Claudia Criveller

Go to the website of the journal
Go to the first issue of «AvtobiografiЯ» (1/2012)