For over a decade the Center has been a spearhead for contact between scholars of Russian and Southern culture, and the latest stage of that relationship was reached in December as University faculty and administrators attended the annual meeting of the Russian Association for the Study of American Literature and Culture, December 1-7, 1997, in Moscow.

The Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the meeting, which included a separate program entitled William Faulkner's Centenary. Yassen Zassoursky, of Moscow State University, welcomed participants at the opening ceremony, and Peter Palievsky, of the Gorky Institute, also spoke, suggesting that Faulkner had long ago been prescient about the end of the Soviet system. Palievsky recalled that Faulkner had declined a United States Information Agency invitation to visit the Soviet Union in the 1950s, suggesting to the American government, though, that a quick end would come to communism if Americans would simply give 10,000 automobiles to Russians. Palievsky related this anecdote to the recent coming of capitalism to Russia and the complexities it has brought, complexities that still make Faulkner relevant to Russians.

Ann Abadie, acting director of the Center, sketched the history of the relationship between Russian scholars and the University in her opening talk, "William Faulkner: From Mississippi to the World." The first trip by Center personnel to Russia was in 1984, for a symposium on William Faulkner, followed by attendance at two other symposia, one on Sholokov and the other on culture of the American South. Scholars from the former Soviet Union who have been at the University for extended stays include, among others, Palievsky, Sergei Chakovsky, and Maya Koreneva, the latter of whom helped plan the conference and spoke on "Faulkner: The Art of Creation."

Most of the sessions at the Faulkner Centenary included University faculty. Donald Kartiganer, William Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University, spoke on "Faulkner vs. the Reader," and Robert Brinkmeyer, professor of English and Southern Studies, placed Faulkner's work in the broader context of the interwar period of the 20th century, addressing the topic "Faulkner and the World at War." Another Center faculty member, Charles Reagan Wilson, argued at the conference that Faulkner's work grew out of the South's culture of death, analyzing his portrayal of funerals, cemeteries, and other emblems of mortality. Tom Rankin, associate professor of Art and Southern Studies, added a visual element to the meeting, showing slides while discussing "Evoking William Faulkner: Martin J. Dain and Yoknapatawpha."

Robert Haws, chairman of the Department of History and former Fulbright Professor of American History at Moscow State University, lectured on "Faulkner and the Historical Context." He brought together the fictional story of Charlotte Rittenmeyer in The Wild Palms and the real-life story of Francis Birkhead, a young Mississippi woman who, in 1918, had a botched abortion, like Rittenmeyer in Faulkner's tale, and filed a seduction and breach of promise lawsuit against Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Lee Russell. Haws used the paper to explore American attitudes toward abortion at the time and Faulkner's sensibility in portraying them.

These and other papers presented at the December meeting in Moscow provided the grand finale of a year-long celebration of the Faulkner Centenary in a variety of sites throughout the world.

--Charles Reagan Wilson