K. Maya Larson

Antiracist pedagogies are accelerating a shift in literary studies toward research by scholars of color, about communities of color, or that perform critical analyses of racist practices, a shift that is transforming understandings of existing work including Russophone literatures. Scholars engaged with antiracist methodologies open up critical lines of inquiry, e.g., African diasporas in Russophone literary imagination, Black American writers’ reflections on the Soviet Union, and Russia’s relationship to antiblack racism. Critical examination of racist and colonialist assumptions, such as the dismissal of Aesopian discourse because it is “the language of slaves,” is now possible within a larger conversation that reveals the power of Aesopian discourse to subvert the language of enslavers.