Johanna Ross’s Presentation

You are invited to a Poetics of Research lecture by Johanna Ross titled “What is Soviet Girls’ Literature and Where Can We Find It in the Baltics?” on October 2 at 13:00 at the Archives of Latvian Folklore, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia (Latvian National Library, Mūkusalas iela 3). The lecture will be held in English.

Since the 1990s, literature for girls has been recognized as a significant subfield of women’s writing. In the preface to their seminal study What Katy Read (1995), Shirley Foster and Judy Simons emphasize the importance of analyzing popular girls’ books in light of the era in which they were written and published, the surrounding cultural context, and prevailing gender ideologies. In this light, one might ask: what messages were being conveyed to girl readers in the Soviet Union, with its famously contradictory gender politics?

This lecture will present several Estonian and Latvian books for and about girls from the Khrushchev Thaw and the later Stagnation period, by authors such as Anna Brodele, Zenta Ērgle, Silvia Rannamaa, and others. It suggests that these works form a distinct cluster of Soviet girls’ literature, standing out against the earlier, predominantly masculine Soviet children’s and youth literature. The talk will outline the defining features of this cluster and open a discussion about what these books communicate to young readers about girlhood.

Johanna Ross is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UL ILFA, working on Soviet Estonian and Latvian girls’ literature. In 2018, she defended her PhD thesis on Soviet Estonian women’s Bildungsromane and their modes of reading. Her research interests include women’s writing, Soviet literature, Estonian literary history, and the history of literary criticism. She is editor-in-chief of the journal Keel ja Kirjandus (Language and Literature).

Her research is funded by the Estonian Research Council under the project “Gender Patterns in Late Soviet Estonian Girls’ Novellas” (PUTJD1207).