Education
Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley, 2009
M.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley, 2004
B.A. Art History and Russian Literature, Columbia University, 2000
Research Interests
19th-century Russian literature, visual arts, and material culture
History of Russian art from the eighteenth century to present
Theories of realism and the avant-garde
Theories and histories of the novel
Aesthetics and interart studies
Theories and histories of vision and materiality
Environmental humanities
Selected Publications
Books
Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016.
Russian Translation: Russkie realizmy: literatura i zhivopis’, 1840–1890. Series: Contemporary Western Rusistika. Brookline, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2022.
Articles
“Seeing the (Russian) Novel.” Oxford Handbook of the Russian Novel, edited by Julie Buckler and Justin Weir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
“Painting Coal in the Donbas: Nikolai Kasatkin and the Energy of Late Realism.” In Russian Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste since 1850, edited by Jillian Porter and Maya Vinokour, 65–85. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
“‘The Most Theatrical Entertainment in New York’: Vereshchagin and the Exhibition of Russian Art in America.” Published in English and Russian. Tretyakov Gallery Magazine 61, no. 4 (2018): 40–65.
“Vasily Surikov and the Russian Point of View.” Art History 41, no. 5 (November 2018): 894–921.
“Aleksei Venetsianov and the Theatricality of Russian Painting.” In Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action, edited by Julie Buckler, Julie Cassiday, and Boris Wolfson, 24–32. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018.
“Gogol Country: Russia and Russian Literature in Perspective.” Comparative Literature 69, no. 4 (December 2017): 370–93.
“Dostoevsky’s Realist Paragone: Word, Image, and Fantastic Ekphrasis in The Idiot.” Slavic and East European Journal 60, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 447–70.
“A Light on the Road: Oleg Vassiliev and Painterly Space.” In Oleg Vassiliev: Space and Light, 18–25. New Brunswick: Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, 2014.
“Painting History, Realistically.” In From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture, edited by Rosalind P. Blakesley and Margaret Samu, 94–110. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014.
“Wandering Greeks: How Repin Discovers the People.” Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 2 (2012): 83–111.
“Panorama P’era: Opticheskaia illiuziia i illiuziia romana v Voine i mire.”
In Lev Tolstoi i mirovaia literatura: Materialy V mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, edited by Galina Alekseeva, 80–90. Tula: Iasnaia Poliana Press, 2008.
“Polet nad Moskvoi: Vid s vozdukha i reprezentatsiia prostranstva v Mastere i Margarite
Bulgakova.” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 76 (2005): 173–95.
Publications in Progress
The Underground: Mining and Matter in Russian and Soviet Culture (single-authored book manuscript).
The Russian Point of View: Perspective and the Birth of Modern Russian Culture (single-authored book manuscript, under contract with University of California Press).
Fragile Things: Material Culture and the Russian Empire (co-edited volume).
Selected Honors and Fellowships
2023 Russkie realizmy short-listed for the Art Newspaper Russia’s Best Book of 2022
2017 Russian Realisms awarded the Best Book in Cultural Studies, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
2016 Summer Fellow, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
2013 Poorvu Family Prize for Interdisciplinary Teaching in Yale College
Courses Taught
Graduate
Russian Realist Literature and Painting
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the Russian Novel
Russian Style: Material Culture and the Decorative Arts
The Arts in Russia from Reform to Revolution
Proseminar in Slavic Literature and Theory
Undergraduate
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
Russian and Soviet Art, 18th Century–Present
Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
The Living Dead in Literature
City and Country in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Ecology and Russian Culture
Art and the Arctic