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Rethinking “The Archives” in the Aftermath of Russia’s War in Ukraine, Part II
Instead of giving funding for travel to archives in Russia, funding should be determined by the project itself. Scholars should be able to propose travel to a variety of places...
On Studying and Teaching Lesser-Known Russian Writers
At every meeting of “The Other 19v,” a reading group devoted to discussing less-studied nineteenth-century Russian writers, we find new insights into this century of literary experimentation and cultural transformation....
Minor Writers and the Major Leagues, Part II
Another reason to study minor writers is that they help us to understand historical eras. They are part of the thick description of a given time. For the major-centric among...
Minor Writers and the Major Leagues, Part I
Why bother reading the minor writers of nineteenth-century Russia? There seems to be such a surplus of major writers, why dig any deeper?
19v So Far
As we approach the one-year mark of 19v’s inception, I’ve been polling some of our participants to learn which of our activities have proven valuable so far and what we...
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part II
Pity is weird. We happily extend it to strong figures but we’re stingy with the weak, with actual “victims.”
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata on Stage: Domestic Violence and the Economics of Pity, Part I
I pictured myself as the narrator in Tolstoy’s 1889 novella The Kreutzer Sonata. Like me, he feigns sleep to escape a talkative seatmate. Like me, he is failed by this...
Minds and Bodies in the World, or: Learning to Love Dostoevsky
I'm not one of those American Slavists who came to the study of Russian literature by way of Dostoevsky. For a long time, I wasn’t even particularly interested—I’m afraid that...
Art in the Middle
When I started working on nineteenth-century Russian art almost two decades ago, one of the things that surprised me most was the stark division between the two halves of the...
“From Another Shore”: Zoom in Russian Literary Studies
Online technologies are, of course, a wonderful tool, but they do not solve the fundamental problems still discernible in our ways of conducting research on literature and culture in Russia...
Between the Provinces and the World
Here, I will first explain my personal understanding of the meaning of "the provinces" to Russian Studies, then expound on some aspects of the same concept within Chinese and Russian...
Announcing Upcoming Events Sponsored by 19v, a Working Group on Nineteenth-Century Russian Culture
Please join us on Zoom Wednesday, June 24, 12-2 pm EST, for an interdisciplinary roundtable on "What Is The 19th Century?" with panelists Alex Martin (University of Notre Dame), Rosalind...
On Not Talking about Gender in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
As a graduate student in Russian literature, I wrote a dissertation and eventually a book about the body and the grotesque in nineteenth-century realism. As I look back, I can’t...