Intervenants et résumés des communications > Heather BAILEY

Heather BAILEY (University of Illinois Springfield) : « The Reception of Life of Jesus in Russia Revisited »

Heather Bailey earned a Ph.D. in Modern European History at the University of Minnesota in 2001 and is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Springfield where she has taught since 2002. She is the author of Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” in Russia (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) and anticipates publication of her book The Russian Church of Paris and the Public Image of Orthodoxy in the Era of Vatican I in the near future.

My paper will provide an overview of the major conclusions presented in my book Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” in Russia, in comparative perspective with Nathalie Richard’s discussion of the “making of a best-seller.” It will reflect on what the Russian reception suggests about Life of Jesus as a global literary event, on the perceived emancipatory elements of the book, and on some of the peculiarities of the work’s reception in Russia. The paper will also draw connections between the Russian responses to Renan and my current research on French perceptions of Eastern Orthodoxy in the mid-nineteenth century, and Russian responses to the negative attitudes about Orthodoxy that they encountered in the West.