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Review: "I Want a Baby and Other Plays" by Sergei Tretyakov, Translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland
This new collection of plays by Sergei Tretyakov, translated by Robert Leach and Stephen Holland, attempts to solidify Tretyakov’s role in the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde Canon. In his introduction, Leach...
Interrogating the Declining Significance of Pushkin’s Blackness: Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, and Literary Nationalism (with Korey Garibaldi and Emily Wang)
On October 14th, Professors Korey Garibaldi and Emily Wang, both of Notre Dame, joined the Jordan Center to speak about their collaborative work on race and literature in talk entitled...
Our Pushkin?
Pushkinists know that today is a holiday. The first graduating class of the Tsarkoe Selo Lyceum annually celebrated the anniversary of their first day of school by gathering, drinking, and...
Why We Should be Paying Attention to Russian Economic Statecraft
The rise of corruption and kleptocracy associated with right-wing populism only gives Moscow further opportunities to use economic levers to pursue foreign policy goals. As new tools of financial globalization...
A New Companion for Readers of Dostoevskii
Today, "All the Russias" features an interview with the editors of "A Dostoevskii Companion: Texts and Contexts," a new volume out this month from Academic Studies Press.
Open Letter on the Termination of Russian Studies Faculty at Ohio University
Like you, we are wholeheartedly invested in the survival and recovery of higher education in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That recovery depends on the will of universities...
Civic Poetry and the Decembrist Revolt: Pushkin, Virtue Signaling, and Liberal Vibes
Pushkin’s political verse helped shape a subgenre of civic poetry and was subsequently interpreted in the context of this broader corpus and its increasingly radical opposition to the state.
Twitterature in the Dostoevsky Classroom
My adventure with Twitterature began three years ago, when I began to work with the North American Dostoevsky Society as their social media curator. I began a twitter account for...
In "Mr. Jones," Stalin’s Man-Made Famine Offers Lessons for the Present
What can the Holodomor teach us today about the importance of journalistic integrity and the dangers of historical revisionism?
Excerpt from "Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective," Part I
The character of the female sex worker has recurred pervasively across time, space, and genre, repeatedly used by writers, filmmakers, artists, intellectuals, and politicians to explore anxieties about the disruptive...
Excerpt from "Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective," Part II
The sex industry in Russia is multiethnic, with scholars estimating a significant number of female migrants (from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia) working as sex workers, especially in...
Excerpt from "Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective," Part III
Prostitution existed in Russia for several centuries but became a widespread phenomenon during Peter I’s rule (1683–1725), with the first brothel or “public house” reportedly established by a German in...
Coalition or Cold War with Russia?
This spreading threat cannot be contained, diminished, or, still less, eradicated without Russia.
Viy as Dracula: Selling “Russian literature” One More Time
Just imagine the clash of civilizations when the two parties drink together; eventually, the rational Englishman starts seeing irrational things—all the ugly monsters, demons, and witches that contemporary CGI can...
Tweets of a Ridiculous Man: Rethinking the Narrative Structure of Crime and Punishment through Twitter
My biggest quandary was how to treat the conversation between Raskolnikov and Porfiry.
Rodion Raskolnikov, Your Tweet Archive is Ready
Two years ago, on May 1, 2016, the Twitter account @RodionTweets sent its first tweet. Since then @RodionTweets has livetweeted the events of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, broken into...
Vasilisa Visits America: The Rise of Slavic Folklore- Inspired Young Adult Literature in the U.S.
Recently, Russia — or, at least, an imaginary version thereof — has become a standby among writers of American young adult and popular literature.
Excerpt from Emil Draitser's "In the Jaws of the Crocodile: A Soviet Memoir," Part III
What else do I have in my briefcase?
The Strength and Flexibility of Maria Kolesnikova
While the possibility for political change has seemed nearly unimaginable under Lukashenko’s long tenure, the penetration of global consumer culture over the past decade has nonetheless helped to shape a...
Teaching Race in Russia Part III: Sartre, Jazz, and the Cossack Dance
Sartre’s essay spends considerable time problematizing the intersection of communism and anti-racist politics, asking, “Can the black man count on a distant white proletariat-- involved in its own struggles?"