Jane T. Costlow is Associate Professor of Russian at Bates College. Stephanie Sandler is Professor of Russian and of Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College. Judith Vowles is an independent scholar.

"This fascinating volume provides a whole range of new insights on linguistic, social, literary, and cultural matters."—Modern Language Review

• Introduction Jane T. Costlow, Stephanie Sandler and Judith Vowles Part I. The Cultural History of Sexual Representation: 1. Sexual vocabulary in medieval Russia Eve Levin 2. Marriage à la russe Judith Vowles 3. A stick with two ends, or, misogyny in popular culture: a case study of the puppet text 'Petrushka' Catriona Kelly 4. Redrawing the margins of Russian vanguard art: Natalia Goncharova's trial for pornography in 1910 Jane A. Sharp 5. Prostitution unbound: representations of sexual and political anxieties in postrevolutionary Russia Elizabeth A. Wood Part II. Literary Versions of Sex and Body: 6. Kiss and tell: narrative desire and discretion Cathy Popkin 7. Loving in bad taste: eroticism and literary excess in Marina Tsvetaeva's 'The Tale of Sonechka' Svetlana Boym 8. Laid out in lavender: perceptions of Lesbian love in Russian literature and criticism of the silver age, 1893-1917 Diana Lewis Burgin 9. Monsters monomaniacal, marital and medical: Tatiana Tolstaya's regenerative use of gender stereotypes Helena Boscilo Part III. The Maternal Body: 10. The pastoral source: representations of the maternal breast in nineteenth-century Russia Jane T. Costlow 11. Motherhood in a cold climate: the poetry and career of Maria Shkapskaya Barbara Heldt 12. Historectomies: on the metaphysics of reproduction in a Utopian age Eric Naiman Notes Index.