This book brings together groundbreaking analyses of the various ways female artists and activists in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans dare to behave badly, according to extant social and political norms. The chapters range in focus from traditional actresses on stage and screen to feminist activists in street theater and political organizations.

Introduction

[Yana Hashamova, Beth Holmgren and Mark Lipovetsky]

Section One: Performing Bad Behavior

1. From the Legs Up: The Rise and Retreat of the Chorus Girl in Interwar Poland

[Beth Holmgren]

2. Un/Taming the Unruly Woman: From Melodramatic Containment to Carnivalistic Utopia

[Elena Prokhorova and Alexander Prokhorov]

3. Performing History as a Story: Faina Ranevskaia and the Art of Remembering

[Marina Balina]

4. The Gesture of Alterity: Renata Litvinova and the Mediation of Contemporary Russian Sensibility

[Vlad Strukov]

Section Two: Committing Sacrilege

5. Talking Back and More: Women's Subversive Behavior in Bulgarian and Bosnian Films

[Yana Hashamova]

6. "How Long Can You Go Crushing Bones, I Ask You?": The "Bad Mother" in Liudmila Petrushevskaia's The Time: Night

[Mark Lipovetsky and Tatiana Mikhailova]

7. Women Who Eat Too Much: Consuming Female Bodies in Polish Cinema

[Elzbieta Ostrowska]

8. Bad Mothers in Russian Children's Literature After 1991: Alcoholism, Neglect, and the Problem of Post-Socialist Realism

[Andrea Lanoux]

Section Three: Politicizing Bad Behavior

9. Femen, A Litmus

[Jessica Zychowicz]

10. Beating Around the Bush: Pussy Riot and the Anatomy of the Body Politic

[Eliot Borenstein]

11. Bad Girls, Apocalyptic Beasts, Redemption: A Tribute to Helena Goscilo

[Nadezhda Azhgikhina and Irina Sandomirskaia]

Yana Hashamova is Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University.

Beth Holmgren is Professor of Polish and Russian Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University, and also holds secondary appointments in Theater Studies and Women's Studies.

Mark Lipovetsky is Professor and Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Colorado-Boulder.