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"On Narratives of Possibility and the Nature of Social Protest": A colloquium discussion with William Rosenberg
William Rosenberg discusses the multiplicity of narratives that shaped the Revolution.
Late to the Party (Russia's Alien Nations)
“Party Like a Russian” is mess.
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...
Russians’ “Impressionable Years”
I argue that Russians’ worldview in the Putin era derives, at least in part, from the lived experience of the years just before and after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The...
Money Is Not Enough: The Role of Economic Incentives in Cooperative Nonproliferation Initiatives
The current main threats to Russian nuclear materials are determined insiders, coupled with a questionable commitment by Moscow to ensuring sustainability and improving security culture.
Party Like a Russian
Are we really here again?
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...
Universal Pictures: Zvyagintsev, Dostoevsky and the Politics of the Particular
By the end of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, I wanted to scream.
2014 Sochi Olympics: A chance for more Democracy or Repression?
Roughly 30 years ago, the Soviet Union staged the Moscow Olympics. This winter, Russia’s resort town of Sochi will play the host. One commonality is clear; the Kremlin is using...
Heroes and Zeros: Ded Moroz and Yuri Olesha
Who's your hero: Yuri Olesha, Ded Moroz, or Tyler Durden?
Shaving Eisenstein in Manhattan
An old-fashioned shave, with a razor that in Russian they call “dangerous”; an uncannily private scene performed under an open sky, 800 feet over the sidewalks of the greatest city...
Inferiority Complex: Why the New Film Adaptation of Lady Macbeth is Too Subtle for its Own Good
Oh great, I thought, as she suffocated the little boy, now we’re getting to my favorite bit.
Interview with Sean Guillory, Part II
"I think we who either produce or engage with academic work need to seriously reconsider what we do, why we do it, and whom we do it for. I remember...
A Balanchine for the New Millennium: Dana Genshaft and "Shadow Lands" at the Washington Ballet
A futuristic feeling pervades Dana Genshaft’s new work "Shadow Lands," the centerpiece of the Washington Ballet’s Three World Premieres this April at the Harman Center. Along with Ethan Stiefel’s Wood...
Thesis Profile: The Eurovision Song Contest and Russia’s Place in the Fantasy of European Unity
Why should we care about Eurovision, a spectacle of glitter and camp that thumbs its nose at political protest? In order to argue for the significance of the contest, my...
Russian Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Part I
“Absurd!” “Perverse!” “Puerile!” “Frantic trash!” Thus fumed London critics who attended the 1850 exhibition of the little-known Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. For the three young artists who dreamt of revolutionizing the Royal...
Russian Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Part II
In painting, Mikhail Vrubel’s engagement with the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood exemplifies a lifelong negotiation of Russia’s position on the map of European modernisms.
War and Pestilence: The Epidemiological Motif in L. N. Tolstoy's Historical Epic
In the motivic structure of "War and Peace," the “mythical” French "grippe" of Anna Petrovna Scherer occupies a unique position. It is a simultaneously socio-linguistic, satirical, historical, moral, and providential...
The Last Will and Testament of Sergei Esenin: Cultural History of a Mystification, Part I
In this article, I’d like to turn away from heated debates over Esenin’s alleged “killers,” or unprofessional falsifiers of literary history, toward an apparently calmer place. I will focus on...
Insurgents Built In: How Wars Radicalized the Most Integrated Muslims in the Russian Empire
With observers consistently pointing to the social isolation and lack of opportunity Muslim youth often confront, why are European societies reluctant to listen to Muslim citizens who — speaking a...