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Putin’s war has prompted a deep analysis and reevaluation of the forces driving this deadly confrontation. At the Vanishing Point in History brings together renowned humanities scholars and prominent novelists to explore the roots and causes of the ongoing catastrophe in Eastern Europe.
This distinguished group of Russian émigrés, well-versed in Russian culture, history, and philosophy, aims to examine the past to understand the present. Experts in the inner workings of Russian society who have fled the country, they believe it is their responsibility to critically assess the current crisis, reflect on its origins, and outline the agenda for future research in the humanities. In response to this challenge, they present a collection of analytical essays that offer essential background and context for understanding the unfolding events in Europe.
Today’s Russia is perhaps the most representative example of the grave threat that tyranny poses to global civilization. In its brutal attack on Ukraine, Putin’s regime holds not only Russians but all of humanity hostage. The atrocities committed in the name of the “Russian world” make it urgent to thoroughly investigate Russia’s current political pursuit in order to uncover its true origins and find a way forward.
Marina F. Bykova is a professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University and the editor-in-chief of the highly rated international philosophical journal, Studies in East European Thought. Her main area of specialization is the history of the nineteenth century continental philosophy, with a focus on German idealism, especially on Kant, Fichte and Hegel. Her most recent books include The German Idealism Reader: Ideas, Responses and Legacies (Bloomsbury, 2019), Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit: A Critical Guide (ed., Cambridge UP, 2019), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte (ed., Bloomsbury, 2020), and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook (co-ed. with K. Westphal; Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has also published books on Russian intellectual tradition, including Philosophical Thought in Russia in the Second Half of the 20th Century: A Contemporary Views from Russia and Abroad (co-ed. with V.A. Lektorsky; Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought (co-ed. with M. Forster and L. Steiner; Palgrave MacMillan, 2021). Her new book, Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Guide is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2024. Her works have been published in Russian, German and English. She was awarded a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Germany), European Fellowship (Switzerland), named Lisa Meitner Fellow (Austria), and the Aleksanteri Institute Visiting Fellow (Finland).
Caryl Emerson is A. Watson Armour III University Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Her work has focused on the Russian classics (Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevskii), Mikhail Bakhtin, and Russian music, opera and theater. Recent projects include the Russian modernist Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii (1887-1950), the allegorical-historical novelist Vladimir Sharov (1952-2018), and the co-editing, with George Pattison and Randall A. Poole, of The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought.
Alyssa DeBlasio’s research and teaching fall primarily along the intersections of philosophy, literature, and cinema, with a focus on late Soviet intellectual history. She is editor of Brill’s book series in Contemporary Russian Philosophy and author of two monographs, The End of Russian Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and The Filmmaker’s Philosopher: Merab Mamardashvili and Russian Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2019; Russian trans.: Academic Studies Press, 2020). Together with Izolda Savenkova, she published the textbook Про-движение: Advanced Russian Through Film and Media (Georgetown University Press, 2023). With Mikhail Epstein, she edits Filosofia: An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought, the only scholarly electronic resource in English dedicated to contemporary Russian philosophy. Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, Fulbright-Hays, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the U.S. Dept. of State. At Dickinson she also contributes to the Philosophy Department and the Film Studies Program. Together with Claire Seiler, DeBlasio is co-director of “Beyond the New Normal: Disability, Literature, and Reimagining Social Justice,” a Dickinson College initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.
