Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska’s article on women’s narratives in Soviet Latvian prose in "Colloquia"
An article by ILFA researcher Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska, “A Comrade, A Mother, A Trophy: Women’s Narratives in Soviet Latvian Prose of the 1920s and 1930s”, has been published in the international peer-reviewed academic journal Colloquia.
The article focuses on the Latvian diaspora that, after the First World War, settled in the USSR or remained within its territory rather than relocating to the newly established Republic of Latvia. The study analyses the ways in which female characters and narratives were constructed in Latvian prose written in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s. Central to the article is the question of how Soviet Latvian literary texts both reflected and actively shaped ideological, social, and gender transformations in early Soviet culture. Methodologically, the article approaches narratives as discursive practices that construct meaning and self-identity, combining feminist, imagological, and postcolonial theories with close textual analysis.
The publication addresses such concepts as gender equality between Soviet women and men, “free love” and polygamy, asexuality and comradeship, the role of motherhood and the Soviet family, as well as women’s sexuality and sexualization.
The journal Colloquia is published by the Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore, with Vilnius University providing access to the journal’s publishing platform. Colloquia is indexed in Scopus, MLA International Bibliography, EBSCO Discovery Service, and the eLABa databases.