Employment History

University of Southern California

Associate Professor, 2019-present

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University of Illinois at Chicago

Associate Professor, 2013-2019

Assistant Professor, 2007-2013

Visiting Lecturer, 2006-2007

Johnson Space Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Russian Instructor, 2000-2002           

Education

Ph.D. Columbia University in the City of New York (2006)                                            

• Field: Slavic Languages and Literatures

• Dissertation: “The Russian Modernist Masquerade: Deception, Rhetoric, and Theatrical Transposition.” 

• Awarded Certificate in Advanced Russian Studies from The Harriman Institute

M.Phil. Columbia University in the City of New York

• Major Field: Russian Literature

• Minor Field: Polish Literature

M.A. Columbia University in the City of New York

• Thesis: “Osip Mandelshtam’s Ideological Map in Journey to Armenia”

B.A. Amherst College, magna cum laude

• Major: Russian Literature

• Thesis: “Anna Akhmatova’s Poem without a Hero: A Kaleidoscopic Vision of Self.” 

Publications

Books:

Ecologies of Modernism: Natural and Built Environments in Russian Culture. In progress.

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The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia (co-edited and co-authored a critical introduction with Julia Vaingurt). Academic Studies Press, 2018.

• Reviewed in the LA Review of Books

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The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (December 2013).

Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters:

• “Artists’s Colonies as Creative Ecologies of Russian Modernism.” Modernism/modernity Print Plus Platform. Special cluster on Collaboration edited by Annika Forkert. In progress.

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• “The Political Ecology of Coal Mining: From Historical to Vital Materialism in Alexander Kuprin’s Donbass Stories.” In progress.

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• “The Scorched and Depleted Earth: Terrestrial Decadence in Fin-de-siècle Russia.” Invited contribution to a special issue of Russian Literature devoted to the Anthropocene in Russia, edited by Alec Brookes and Elena Fratto. Forthcoming 2019.

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• “Russian Modernist Theatricality and the Practice of ‘Life-Creation’.” A Reader’s Guide to Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg, ed. Leonid Livak (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018).

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• “Human Adaptation in Late Soviet Environmental Science Fiction” in The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia, eds. C. McQuillen and J. Vaingurt. Academic Studies Press (2018).

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• “Deviantnoe povedenie: The Graffiti Collective Zachem’s Social and Artistic Practices.” Russian Literature 96-98C (2018). 329-350. Special issue edited by Mark Lipovetsky and Klavdia Smola on the topic “Russia – Culture of (Non-) Conformity: From the Late Soviet Time to the Present.”

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• “Satires of Fashionable Clothing and Literature in Nineteenth-Century Russia.”  Clothing Cultures 3:3 (2016). 247-263. Special issue edited by Victoria Ivleva and Amanda Murphy.

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• “From The Fairground Booth to Futurism: The Sartorial and Material Estrangement of Masquerade.” The Russian Review. Issue 71.3 (July 2012). 413-435.

• “Artists’ Balls and Conceptual Costumes at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, 1885-1909.” Fashion Theory. Ed. Valerie Steel, published by Berg Publishers, Oxford UK. Issue 16.1 (March 2012). 29-48.

• “Герменевтика маскарадного костюма. Дизайнерские новации на «Балах художников» в Санкт-Петербургской Академии художеств.” Теория моды: Одежда Тело Культура. Москва: НЛО. № 21 (осень 2011). 30-51.

• “Animating Dostoevsky’s ‘Gentle Spirit’: Piotr Dumala’s Kineaesthetic Palimpsest.” Eds. Ryszard Nycz and Bozena Shallcross. The Effect of Palimpsest. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011. 49-64.

• “Sanctity or Sanctimony in Wyspianski’s Akropolis: On Boundary Oppositions, Subverted Expectations and Irony.” The Sarmatian Review. April 2009. 1468-1475.

•  “The Dionysian Roots of the Symbolist Masquerade Ball in Petersburg and Poem without a Hero.” Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University. Issue 8 (2004). 106-18.

• “The Decadent Anna Akhmatova?” (with Boris Gasparov, et. al.) Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University. Issue 8 (2004). 91-105.

• “Private Pleasures Made Public: Voyeurism in Pan Tadeusz.”  Polish Review XLIII:4 (1998). 419-28.

Invited Talks

• “The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia.” Book talk with co-editor Julia Vaingurt organized by the Slavic Graduate and Faculty Workshop series at Northwestern University, May 15, 2019.

• “The Scorched and Depleted Earth: Terrestrial Decadence in Fin-de-siecle Russia.” Stanford Slavic Colloquium, Stanford University, February 20, 2019.

• “Creative Ecologies in Russian Modernist Material Culture.” Yale Slavic Colloquium, Yale University,

• “Environmental Science Fiction of the Soviet ‘70s and the Man of the Future.” Invited by the University of Oregon, May 2016.

• “The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia.” Book talk organized by Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California, January 2015.

• “Reading the Sartorial-Semantic Interface: Figurative Imagery and Referential Attenuation at the Symbolist-Era Masquerade.” Invited speaker at The Columbia University Seminar on Slavic History and Culture, April 2011.

• “Gender Masquerade, Parody and Russian Symbolist Life-Creation.” Invited speaker at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center, March 2010.

• “Life-Creation or Parody: Symbolist Constructions of Gender in Life and Literature.” Invited speaker at Northwestern University’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, March 2010.

• “The Gesamtkunstwerk in Fin-de-siècle Russia.” Invited speaker at The Ballets Russes Project: A Centennial Celebration, Macalester College, MN, December 2009.

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