Framing Mary

Despite the continued fascination with the Virgin Mary in modern and contemporary times, very little of the resulting scholarship on this topic extends to Russia. Russia's Mary, however, who is virtually unknown in the West, has long played a formative role in Russian society and culture. Framing Mary introduces readers to the cultural life of Mary from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet era. It examines a broad spectrum of engagements among a variety of people—pilgrims and poets, clergy and laity, politicians and political activists—and the woman they knew as the Bogoroditsa. In this collection of well-integrated and illuminating essays, leading scholars of imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia trace Mary's irrepressible pull and inexhaustible promise from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Focusing in particular on the ways in which both visual and narrative images of Mary frame perceptions of Russian and Soviet space and inform discourse about women and motherhood, these essays explore Mary's rich and complex role in Russia's religion, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and art. Framing Mary will appeal to Russian studies scholars, historians, and general readers interested in religion and Russian culture.

Amy Singleton Adams is associate professor of Russian literature at the College of the Holy Cross. Vera Shevzov is professor of religion and director of the program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Smith College.

Kudos to Adams and Shevzov for assembling such a fruitful harvest of consistently stimulating researches. Can't wait for volume 2

This multidisciplinary anthology of articles on Mariology in Russian culture documents a remarkable range of functions served by the figure of the Mother of God (Bogoroditsa) in the spheres of art, social history, folk belief, poetry, politics, prose, religious culture, and theology. Editors Amy Singleton Adams and Vera Shevzov handle the vastness of the topic well through a chronological arrangement of the subject matter (seventeenth to twenty-first centuries), by a fine introduction delineating the notion of 'frames' placed around Mary, and by deftly weaving cross-references between the pieces.

Valerie Kivelson, author of Desperate Magic:

Shevzov and Adams have assembled a set of smart, innovative essays by top-notch scholars from a variety of disciplines. Together, the essays highlight the importance of Mary as a model and mode of negotiating meanings of women and motherhood, while they explore the connection between devotion to the Mother of God and concepts and definitions of space and place.

Robert H. Greene, author of Bodies like Bright Stars:

The editors and contributors to this rich volume examine how Mary has been understood across the past five centuries of Russian history. Mary comes forth in these studies in her various guises-prayerful intercessor, indefatigable advocate, loving mother, local champion, and national symbol. Like Orthodoxy itself, Russian Mariology is capacious enough to accommodate a wide range of possible responses and reactions, and one of the volume's strengths is that the historical actors within represent a broad array of social backgrounds and stations.