Featured
Journalists discuss the role of race in US-Russia relations
"The alt-right has found a natural ally in Russia's current zeitgeist."
Why the international community shouldn’t ignore the Crimean Tatars
Early in 2014 the Russian annexation of Crimea caused international uproar. Subsequently, things went quiet. Today, the media are paying attention again, as they reveal how local Russian authorities are...
Teaching Race in Russia: Dispatches from “The Harlem Renaissance: From New York to Tashkent”
Why do American race relations reappear over and over again in discussions of the minority experience in the former Soviet Union?
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...
Is Slavic ready for Minorities?
Very often I’m asked how Slavic Studies can attract more minorities. I’ll tell my own story.
Teaching Race in Russia Part II: From Harlem to the “Soviet South”
My students, like Vladimir Nabokov before them, were surprised at how sexualized American racism was and how often black men were lynched for charges of even looking at white women.
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?"
Regarding the Pain of Others: Tweeting Book V of Crime & Punishment
How do you tweet “pauper’s pride”?
Will Somebody Please Write This Novel?
The dependably inventive G. Willow Wilson has just come out with a novel called Alif the Unseen, which somehow combines gray hat Arab hackers, would-be Islamic terrorists, and troublemaking djinns...
Simpler Times? Rural Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
To ask about modernity is to ask what it is not, and anyone looking for stable definitions is sure to be disappointed.
Russian Women and the Myth of the “Right Man”
As in the West, the Russian nuclear family includes two adults raising the children; the difference is that, in the Russian case, those adults are often a mother and a...
Virtual Historical Mapping: Physical Spaces and Interactions Featured in “Harlem and Moscow”
I figured that I was going to school in Harlem, but learning Russian for my degree, so why not mesh the two topics together? Ultimately, the class was a rewarding...
Teaching Race in Russia: Some Conclusions
I was giving the students a brief biography of Lorde and as soon as I said the phrase “black lesbian Feminist,” their eyes opened really wide. I don’t know if...
Tweets from Underground
How would Raskolnikov use Twitter?
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...
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...
Russians are protesting! Why? A Monkey Cage Symposium
Do the protests that took place across 99 cities in Russia on Sunday signify that meaningful change in Russian politics is likely?
The European Court’s Pro-Gay Ruling Is Great Anti-Gay Propaganda
The ECHR ruling plays right into the Kremlin’s favorite narrative: Western liberalism is not only offensive to traditional values, but also out to get Russia.
Balanchine’s Neoclassical Serenade and the Washington Ballet’s New Signature Style
The Washington Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s Serenade this past weekend at the Kennedy Center was a watershed moment for the company. The program heralded the emergence of a Washington...
Red Goes Green: A Contemporary Ecological Reading of a Soviet Classic
“Pkhents,” written by Abram Tertz, the pen name of Andrei Sinyavsky, is the story of an incognito extraterrestrial stranded in the Soviet Union. He’s not one of the stereotypical little...