Makolkin, Anna

About the author: Dr. Anna Makolkin, a student of Jacque Derrida and Northrop Frye, Phyllis Grosskurth and Thomas Sebeok, holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto, where she is currently a Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor. A Northrop Frye Fellow 1989-90 and a member of twelve Canadian and International Learned Societies, Dr. A. Makolkin is the author numerous interdisciplinary publications, ranging from works on the myth of Dionysus, Byron’s, Gladstone’s and Pushkin’s biographies, history of law, and urban semiosis to the analysis of Aristotle, Epictetus, Freud, Kierkegaard, Plotinus, and Giambattista Vico. Her most recent books include The Genealogy of Our Present Moral Disarray ( The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Millennium Program on January 1,2000, and Anatomy of Heroism ( Ottawa:Legas, 2000). Earlier publications include Name, Hero, Icon: Semiotics of Nationalism Through Heroic Biography (de Gruyter, 1992) and Semiotics of Misogyny Through the Humor of Chekhov and Maugham (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992)

A HISTORY OF ODESSA, THE LAST ITALIAN BLACK SEA COLONY

2004 0-7734-6272-4
The study reconstructs the Italian protohistory of Odessa, founded in 1794 by the immigrants from Genoa and Naples, Venice and Palermo. For the first time and upon the lengthy and elaborate archival research in Italy and Ukraine, the Odessa of Alexander Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova, battleship Potemkin and Eisenstein, Babel and Kandinsky enters European historiography as a world of the dynasties of De Ribas and Frapoliies, Rossies and Bubbas, Bernadazzies and Riznich, Molinaries, Iorini et al. Having revised the narratives of the Tzarist, Soviet, pre- Perestroika and post- Communist past, the monograph not only reclaims the first Italian settlers, but examines the process of forging Europeanness, a cultural identity beyond the traditional East and West, nation and people.

European culture has been notably influenced by Italian civilization, and Odessa is one of the important manifestations of this phenomenon. The book places this 18th century Italian migration to the Black Sea into various contexts: the ancient Porto-Franco, the 12th-14th century Crimea, the persecution of Jesuits and Jews, Risorgimento and Romantic Europe. It challenges the post-modern concept of colonialism by presenting the colonial Other through history and philosophy, semiotics and architecture, history of art and musicology. This history of Odessa not only reveals the neglected European past, but also imagines the future of the European continent, explaining the role of migration and mechanism of cultural transport.

Genealogy of Our Present Moral Disarray. An Essay in Comparative Philosophy

2000 0-7734-7800-0
This monograph examines the origins of modern and modernist moral confusion, deterioration of the Judeo-Christian values and contemporary boundaries between Right and Wrong, tracing the ethical shift to the ideas of Hobbes and Bentham, the peculiar universes of Schopenhauer and Dostoevsky, the new religion of Tolstoy and the destroyed God of Nietzsche, ending with the psychoanalytical commandments of Freud and the mire of sexual identity of Foucault and Paglia. It is a contribution to the history of ideas and represents an anatomy of modern ethics as wells a critique of modern and postmodern philosophy. It also deals with the moral irresponsibility of the thinkers whose casual experimentation with values and ideas about human relationships has brought onto the pathway of moral confusion.

Semiotics of Misogyny Through the Humor of Chekhov and Maugham

1992 0-7734-9570-3
Examines the fictional worlds of Chekhov and Maugham (with their enormous resistance to abandoning the traditional myths about women) as symbolic responses to the changing culture. The purpose of this semiotic enterprise is to disclose the regrettably simplistic interpretation of the Other and the potential for violence that the seemingly innocent fictional signs carry. It is also to challenge the pervasiveness of the dangerous myth that involves interpreters of culture, myth and song.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN ODESSA:
One Hundred Years of Italian Culture on the Shores of the Black Sea (1794-1894)

2007 0-7734-5361-X
This new study, drawing its inspiration from A History of Odessa, the Last Italian Black Sea Colony (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004) and based on new archival findings, focuses solely on the eternal cultural legacy of the Italian founders of this unique port, shaped by nearly a century of Italian presence. The work reveals how Odessa Italians constructed a cultural bridge between Eastern and Western Europe via Odessa Italian Opera. The work demonstrates how the exploration of the New Russia by the Odessa Italians helped the Russian Empire to make a leap into modernity, giving them a touch of the Renaissance that the country had skipped, and bringing the Enlightenment that the Empire had seen briefly. This new contribution to European cultural history will be of interest to scholars of European, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian history, art historians and musicologists, as well as students of migration and multiculturalism. This book contains 10 color photographs and 20 black and white photographs.