Research Interests:
I research late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture, focusing especially on the evolution of the ideology of the Russian intelligentsia between the 1950s ‘Thaw’ and the present. Primarily, I study how political ideals such as socialism, liberalism and nationalism were interpreted among Russian elites and their audiences, and how these ideas influenced literature, criticism, film and art of the 20th and the 21st century.
I am also interested in the forging of Soviet discourse on Stalinist and post-Stalinist subjectivity in the works of such authors and critics as Andrei Platonov, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Lifshitz, and Vladimir Sappak.
My current book project, A Russia That We Have Lost: The History and Politics of Recalling the Pre-Soviet Past examines how inventive recollections of the pre-Revolutionary past allowed late Soviet intellectual leaders and their audiences to define themselves and articulate a political horizon that ended up shaping the post-Soviet era.
Honors/Awards:
Max Weber Fellow in History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence (2017-2018)
Mellon Foundation- Council for European Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2016-2017)
Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania (2011-2016)
Publications:
“What is Our Life? A Game: What? Where? When? and the Capitalist Gamble of the Soviet Intelligentsia.” The Russian Review 2:2020, 269-292
Review of Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy After Socialism, Eliot Borenstein (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2019). The Russian Review 1:2020, 163-165
Introduction: “Mikhail Lifshitz and the Dialectical Politics of Art.” Pushkin Review 20:2018, 67-73
Translation: Mikhail Lifshitz, “On Pushkin, A Letter to G. M. Fridlender, 8 April, 1938.” Pushkin Review 20:2018, 75-85
“Honest Jacobins: High Stalinism and the Socialist Subjectivity of Mikhail Lifshitz and Andrei Platonov.” The Russian Review 4:2018, 576-601.
Review of Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures: Institutions, Dynamics, and Discourses, Evgeny Dobrenko, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol, eds. (London: Anthem, 2018). The Russian Review 4: 2018, 650-652
“Vladimir Sappak’s Humanism on Soviet TV,” European University Institute Max Weber Fellow Working Papers 4:2018
Book Manuscript in Progress
A Russia That We Have Lost: The History and Politics of Recalling the Pre-Soviet Past
Courses Taught at Rutgers:
Introduction to 19th Century Russian Literature: Russia's Long Nineteenth Century in Literature, Culture and Memory (01:860:259:01; AHp)
Russia Between Empire and Nation (01:860:272:01; CC, AHp)
