Valentina Parisi

My research aims to shed light on the historical role of uncensored production and circulation of texts in the former USSR ("samizdat") and beyond its boundaries ("tamizdat"). Taking my post-PhD dissertation as a starting point for analysis, I will try to approach samizdat not only from its textual side, but also to portray it as a social activity with its own rules and practices, questioning whether or to what extent samizdat editors and readers can fit into the definition of "interpretive community" (Fish, 1980). Furthermore, since the practice of self-publication was often dependent on the existence of transnational networks, my goal is to re-think the predominant interpretation of this phenomenon in local terms. The challenge is to trace out a spatial and temporal mapping of the migration of selected text corpora outside the boundaries of USSR through an integrated perspective on individual experiences of intellectuals.