Spencer Small
Fall 2024 Office Hours: Wednesday 2-4pm or by appointment.
Research Interests
20th- and 21st-century Russophone war literature, narrative ethics and first-person narratives, video games and digital narratives
Education
Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University (2024)
Dissertation: “The Ethical Pact in Russophone Wartime Writing (1920-2009)”
Minor field: Film and Media Studies
M.Phil. Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University (2020)
B.A. Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, cum laude, College of William and Mary (2016)
Invited Talks and Conference Presentations
“Remediated Reality: S.T.A.L.K.E.R and its Post-Soviet Video Game Legacy,” Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Boston, MA, November 2024. [forthcoming]
“Svetlana Aleksievich’s Boys in Zinc and the Cultural Politics of (Post-)Soviet War,” Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November-December 2023.
“Mediated Witnessing as Revolutionary Praxis in Isaac Babel’s Nonfiction Wartime
Writing,” Per Aspera ad Astra: The Making of Soviet Jewish Selves, Columbia University, New York, NY, October, 2023. [forthcoming]
“An Ethics of Fictionality: Isaac Babel’s Literary Alternative to Lived History,” American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Annual Conference, Online, February, 2023.
“Anatolii Kuznetsov’s Doubled Witness to the Holocaust in Kyiv,” Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, November 2022.
“The Novel-Document: Anatolii Kuznetsov and the Creation of an Ethical Wartime Witness,” North East Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Online, April, 2022
“Svetlana Aleksievich’s Zinky Boys,” Invited guest lecture for the undergraduate seminar, “War in Literature and Film,” Yale University, New Haven, CT, December, 2021
“Who Needs Russian? We All Do!,” Invited talk, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, Department of Russian and Post-Soviet Studies Homecoming Lecture, October, 2021
“Nabokov and Chekhov,” Invited guest instructor for the undergraduate seminar, “Love and Death in the Russian Short Story,” Yale University, New Haven, CT, October, 2021
“Bare-skin: Body, Mind, and the Grotesque in Sologub’s Poetry,” Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Online, November, 2020
“Andrei Tarkovskii’s Stalker,” Invited guest lecture for the undergraduate seminar, “Russian and Chinese Science Fiction,” Yale University, New Haven, CT, February, 2020
“The Revenge of the Rhizome: Forests and the Fate of Human Agency in Gorky’s ‘Legend of Danko,’” Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, November, 2019
“Unbound Time in Poetic Space: Compiling Temporality and Universality in Anna Akhmatova’s Poetic Cycles,” American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, February, 2019
“Gorky’s Rhizome in the ‘Legend of Danko,’” Space and Place Graduate Student Conference, Columbia University, New York, NY, February, 2018
Teaching
Yale University Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
War Games (Fall 2024)
Putin’s Russia and Protest Culture (Fall 2024)
Intensive Russian (Teaching Fellow, Spring 2024)
War Games (Co-Instructor, Fall 2023)
Russia Between Empire and Nation (Teaching Fellow, Spring 2023)
Tolstoy’s War and Peace (Head Teaching Fellow, Fall 2022)
Russian Culture: The Modern Age (Teaching Fellow, Spring 2021)
Second-Year Russian II (Teaching Fellow, Spring 2020)
Second-Year Russian I (Teaching Fellow, Fall 2019)
Yale University Department of Film and Media Studies
War Games (Fall 2024)
Putin’s Russia and Protest Culture (Fall 2024)
War Games (Co-Instructor, Fall 2023)
Introduction to Film Studies (Teaching Fellow, Fall 2020)
Honors, Grants, and Fellowships
Associates in Teaching Program, Yale University (2023)
Dean’s Funding for Research Workshops, Yale University (2022)
University Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University (2021-2022)
Russian Studies Dissertation Travel Fellowship, Yale University (2020)
MacMillan Center International Conference Travel Grant, Yale University (2019)
European Studies Council Grant, Yale University (2019)
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education (2019)
Slavic Languages and Literatures Departmental Fellowship, Yale University (2018-2019)
Franke Fellowship, Yale University (2017-2018)
Critical Language Scholarship, U.S. Department of State (2016