Sacred Stories

. . . certainly recommended for any combination of curious philosopher, cross-disciplinary psychologist, radical feminist, and communication theorist among us.November 6, 2008 -- Brittany Shoot * Feminist Review * . . . an important contribution to the history of, mainly, Orthodox popular religiosity and Orthodox Christian spirituality of modern Russian and Ukraine.Vol. 81.1, March 2009 -- Martin A. Miller * Duke University * In summary, this is an excellent collection of illuminating essays by noted scholars in their fields, finely written and thoughtfully conceived, which should be read by anyone interested in religious life in late imperial Russia.Vol. 53.3 Fall 2009 -- Michael Pesenson * University of Texas, Austin *

Mark D. Steinberg is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His books include The Fall of the Romanovs; Voices of Revolution, 1917; and Proletarian Imagination: History, Religion, and the Sacred in Russia. Heather J. Coleman is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Imperial Russian History in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. She is author of Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 19051929 (IUP, 2005).

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Rethinking Religion in Modern Russian Culture Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman 1. Miraculous Healings Christine D. Worobec 2. Transforming Solovki: Pilgrim Narratives, Modernization, and Late Imperial Monastic Life Roy R. Robson 3. Scripting the Gaze: Liturgy, Homilies, and the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Late Imperial Russia Vera Shevzov 4. Written Confessions and the Construction of Sacred Narrative Nadieszda Kizenko 5. "Orthodox Domesticity": Creating a Social Role for Women William G. Wagner 6. Profane Narratives about a Holy Sacrament: Marriage and Divorce in Late Imperial Russia Gregory L. Freeze 7. Arbiters of the Free Conscience: State, Religion, and the Problem of Confessional Transfer after 1905 Paul W. Werth 8. Tales of Violence against Religious Dissidents in the Orthodox Village Heather J. Coleman 9. Prayer and the Politics of Place: Molokan Church Building, Tsarist Law, and the Quest for a Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia Nicholas B. Breyfogle 10. Divining the Secular in the Yiddish Popular Press Sarah Abrevaya Stein 11. Revolutionary Rabbis: Hasidic Legend and the Hero of Words Gabriella Safran 12. "A Path of Thorns": The Spiritual Wounds and Wandering of Worker-Poets Mark D. Steinberg 13. A New Spirituality: The Confluence of Nietzsche and Orthodoxy in Russian Religious Thought Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal 14. Malevich's Mystic Signs: From Iconoclasm to New Theology Alexei Kurbanovsky 15. The Theology of Culture in Late Imperial Russia Paul Valliere Further Reading List of Contributors Index