Margarita and Cheryl will present their WIP on opening up the history of Russophone trans life writing to the general public. Their current project - a collaborative translation into English of Russian primary sources - is underpinned by Margarita's forthcoming monograph, titled A Brave Life: Queer and Transgender Erasure in Russian Culture, a foundational contribution to the emerging field of Russophone transgender studies. Spanning the period from the nineteenth century to the present, it reveals Russian culture’s continuous engagement with narratives of transgender lives. It does so by looking at six works by different authors in literature, film and theatre, all featuring one protagonist – a Russian-Ukrainian transgender hero of the Napoleonic Wars, Aleksandr Aleksandrov (Nadezhda Durova) (1783-1866). Exposing how Aleksandrov’s masculine identity was (mis)represented in these six adaptations of his original 1837 autobiography, it counteracts the ongoing global process of erasing trans subjectivities from cultural history. Margarita's and Cheryl's collaborative work builds on this research by creating new translations, curating exhibitions and producing teaching materials for UK charities interested in engaging with global LGBTQI histories. Margarita will discuss the academic dimension of their work, while Cheryl will share insights from her experience as a public historian, sensitivity reader and diversity consultant.
Cheryl Morgan (Hon. LL.D.) is a writer and publisher based in South Wales. She has written papers and delivered talks on many aspects of trans history and trans characters in literature, including for HistFest, and is a regular speaker at LGBT History Month events. She can be found on BlueSky and Mastodon, and at her blog: https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/.
Dr Margarita Vaysman is Associate Professor of Nineteenth-Century Russophone Literature and Fellow in Russian at New College, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on literary texts, primarily the realist novel, and history of gender and sexuality. Her recent publications include a monograph, Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (2021) and two edited volumes, Nineteenth-Century Russian Realism: Society, Knowledge, Narrative (2020) and The Oxford Handbook of Global Realisms (2025).
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