About Me:

My area of specialty is early Russian modernism, European Decadence, and the print and material culture of the fin de siècle. I am the author of The Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (Scarecrow Press, 2013), The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (Northwestern University Press, 2017), and Decadence and Modernism in European and Russian Literature and Culture: Aesthetics and Anxiety in the 1890s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).  I have served on numerous College and professional committees and projects that have worked to innovate the liberal arts curriculum, study and promote interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship, and foster community engagement through the humanities.

See here for more information.

Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of California, Berkeley)

Dissertation: “Conceptualizing ‘Symbolism’: Institutions, Publications, Readers, and the Russian Propagation of an Idea”

M.A., Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of California, Berkeley)

B.A., Russian Literature (Columbia University)

• Russian Symbolism and Decadence
• Modernist periodical studies
• Comparative theories of Decadence
• History and theory of the book
• Sociology of texts

Books

•  Decadence and Modernism in European and Russian Literature and Culture:                         Aesthetics and Anxiety in the 1890s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
• The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
• Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (Scarecrow Press, 2013)​

Translations

• The Symphonies by Andrei Bely (Columbia University Press, 2021).

• “The Venetian Stanzas” by Joseph Brodsky (fine press edition designed, illustrated, and printed by Dmitrii Saenko, Nikodim Press, St. Petersburg, 2017).

   

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Journals” in The Oxford Handbook of Russian Poetry, eds. Catherine Ciepiela, Luba Golburt, and Stephanie Sandler (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2023).
• “Aleksandr Blok as the Model Modernist” in Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses, eds. Carol Ueland and Ludmilla Trigos (Lexington Books,  2022).
• “O!?!?!: Reading and Readers in the Silver Age (1890s-1900s)” in Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia Vol. 2, Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds., (Milan: Di/Segni, 2020).
• “The Journal as Archive: Vesy and the Russian Reader’s Encounter With Decadence” Volupté 3.1 Summer 2020 (special issue on the Decadent Archive, edited by Kirsten MacLeod)
• “Декадентская Метафизика: Зинаида Гиппиус, Брэм Стокер и тревожная эпоха Fin de siècle” in Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (1/2018)
• “Еще раз о Фукс: Пародия и подражание в раннем творчестве В.Я. Брюсова” in Брюсовские чтения 2013. (Yerevan/Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2014).
• “Making the Symbolist Book/Fashioning the Symbolist Reader: The Case of Aleksandr Dobroliubov's Collected Verses” in Reading in Russia. Literary Communication and Practices of Reading, 1760-1930, Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds. (Milan: Di/Segni, 2014).
• “Decadent Style with a Symbolist Worldview: Andrei Bely, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, and the Perils of Surfaces” Modernism/Modernity 21:1 ( January 2014): 269-282.
• "Aleksandr Blok and the Rise of Biographical Symbolism" Slavic and East European Journal  54:4 (Winter 2010): 626-642.
• “The Literal Symbolist: Solov’ev, Briusov, and the Reader of Early Russian Symbolism” The Russian Review 67:3 (July 2008): 373-386.
• “Polyphony and the Atomic Age: Bakhtin’s Assimilation of an Einsteinian Universe” PMLA 123:2 (March 2008): 405-421.
• “Palitra simvolistov i ottenki Belogo: Estetika tsveta v rannei poetike A. Belogo” in Andrei Belyiizmeniaiushchemsia mire: k 125-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia. Moscow: Nauka, 2008: 508-514.

RUS 101: Elementary Russian I

RUS 102: Elementary Russian II

RUS 201: Intermeditate Russian I

RUS 202: Intermeditate Russian II

RUS/LIT 172: Nabokov/Platonov: Revolution, Exile, and Artistic Genius in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Literature

RUS/LIT 272: Monsters, Loose and Tight: Exploring Russia’s Great Books

RUS/BOS 216: Business in Today’s Russia: Culture, Society, and Capitalism

RUS 275: Russia’s Literary Titans: Major Works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

RUS 301: Introduction to Literary Texts

LIT 101: World Literatures: Introduction to Comparative Literary Studies

LIT 271: Decadence and Degernation in Turn-of-the-Century European Literature

LIT 274: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian and American Years 

RUS/AMS 273: Cold War Cultures 

CNX 125: Russian Realities and Realisms

CNX 225: Banned Books and Jailed Writers 

RUS 179: From Tsars to Commissars: An Introduction to Russian Culture (summer travel course)

Distinguished Service to AATSEEL (2020)

Phi Beta Kappa Society

Mellon Foundation Modern Language Initiative (for The Institutions of Russian Modernism)

Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Studies

National Slavic Honor Society, Dobro Slovo

Professional Service

PMLA Advisory Committee (2019-22)

MLA Delegate Assembly (2019-21)

AATSEEL Program Committee Chair (2014-19)

Slavic Discussion Group, Executive Council, MLA (2012-17 )

Program Committee Division Chair (Russian Literature since 1950) AATSEEL (2010-14)

Memberships

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Modern Language Association

Modernist Studies Association

American Comparative Literature Association

Fine Press Book Association

Grolier Club