Theo Barnett

I am a DPhil candidate at Balliol College, Oxford, researching cultural narratives of exile in the literature of the post-revolutionary Russian Emigration in interwar Europe (1918-1939). In this context, my present project examines discourses of Russian Émigré culture and cultural identity through the literary genre of the “human document” – a form combining features of documentary writing, autobiographical fiction and memoir, prominent in Émigré and transnational literature during these years.

Tracing the human document’s emergence in Émigré writing via a number of cultural and literary contexts, I explore how the genre’s transnational development reflects on contemporary narratives about the cultural status of Russophone literature outside Russia, and complicates the Emigration’s so-called “mission” of continuing the Russian cultural tradition in exile. I draw on a large constellation of Émigré authors to contextualise their varied interpretations of the human document – and its injunction to record human experience directly, without embellishment or artifice – in contemporary debates surrounding the genre’s literary and testimonial value, addressing the questions it poses about the forms, functions, and necessity of literature as a response to the historical traumas of the early Twentieth Century.

Prior to joining Oxford, I developed an interest in transnational Russophone culture during undergraduate and MPhil degrees at the University of Cambridge, where I wrote my Master’s thesis on Sergei Eisenstein’s dialogue with European Modernism in his unfinished film, 'Que viva Mexico!' (1930-32). I also practice as a Russian-to-English literary translator.

My research is supervised by Prof. Philip Bullock, and is co-funded by the Clarendon Fund.