Love, Lust, or Liberation? Muslim Women through the Soviet and Russian Imagination

Abstract

This thesis explores the representation of Muslim women through the lens of two literary works, Chingiz Aitmatov’s Jamilia (1958) and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha (2015) with the goal of finding parallels between how the women are represented in Russian and Central Asian perspectives. By considering the religious, historical, and political landscapes in the texts, this thesis connects the construction of Muslim women within broader societal narratives, drawing upon theories of Orientalism, feminist scholarship, and postcolonial theory. It further explores artistic and visual modes of representation in order to find similar constructions and depictions akin to the literary texts. Additionally, this paper examines the difference between Russian Orientalism and Soviet Orientalism, tracing its evolution from the Imperial period to the Post-Soviet present.