19th-, 20th-century, and contemporary Russian literature, Soviet and Russian film, Russian and European culture, medical humanities, environmental humanities, empire studies, space and place in literature, literary and critical theory, Russian language and culture through new media
I research intersections between literature, psychology, and social change. My initial focus has been on writers like Turgenev, Marko Vovchok, the Khvoshinskaya sisters, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, who often used their work to reflect, debate, and catalyze social progress. After the peasant reforms urbanization, industrialization, and imperial expansion rapidly transformed social and psychological life in Russia. My current book Chekhov’s Environmental Psychology: Medicine and Literature focuses on dramatist and short story writer Anton Chekhov, who, as a writer trained in medicine, understood these social dynamics well. The book introduces new archival evidence to argue that Chekhov constructs medically informed relationships between people and their environments to model psychological development in the post-reform era. This process addresses many of Imperial Russia’s social contradictions: industrialization’s abuses of labor and the physical environment, limited access to medical care, the brutal system of colonization by exiles, gender inequality, and the irresponsible management of land. The forms of social life Chekhov’s writing suggests, however, often compelled Russian institutions to make systemic cultural change.
I continue my work on Russian literature and psychology in the context of rapid modernization through two additional research projects. The first addresses how dissident writers including Chekhov, Bulgakov, Shalamov, and Ulitskaya use their experiences with the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet medical systems to protest the Russian state’s repressive measures. The second investigates environmental thought across Russian prose. I also research Russian film and new media, focusing on documentary forms of social protest and dissent.
"Psychosomatic Illness and Narrative Medicine in The Wolf and A Nervous Breakdown," Wiener Slawisticher Almanach (forthcoming 2023). Psychosomatic Illness and Narrative Medicine
"Medicine and the Mind-Body Problem" in Chekhov in Context, edited by Yuri Corrigan. Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2022) Chekhov in Context
“Chekhov’s Environmental Psychology: Medicine and the Early Prose,” Slavic Review, 79.4 (2020): 709-30. Chekhov’s Environmental Psychology: Medicine and the Early Prose
“Letters, Dreams, and Their Environments” in Chekhov’s Letters, edited by Carol Apollonio and Radislav Lapushin, 247-52. New York: Lexington Books, 2018. Chekhov's Letters: Biography, Context, Poetics
“Space and Storytelling in Late Imperial Russia: Chekhov, Tolstoy, and the Question of Property,” The Russian Review 76.1 (2017): 72-94. Space and Storytelling in Late Imperial Russia: Chekhov, Tolstoy, and the Question of Property
“Chekhovskoe nabliudenie: sub”ektivnost’ i ob”ektivnost’ v rannikh proizvedeniiakh Chekhova” in Ckekhovskaia karta mira, edited by A. A. Zhuravleva and V. B. Kataev, 496-504. Moscow: Melikhovo, 2015. Chekhovskoe nabliudenie
Inclusive Excellence Curriculum Enhancement Grant, George Mason University
Serve-Learn-Sustain Grant, Immigration and Social Justice in Atlanta, Georgia Institute of Technology
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Mellon-Council for European Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Rutgers University (declined)
Critical Language Scholarship, U.S. Department of State, American Councils, Resident Director, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Dodge-Lawrence Fellowship, Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Mellon Research Fellowship, Rutgers University, Dostoevsky Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Critical Language Scholarship, U.S. Department of State, American Councils, Vladimir, Russia
RUSS 325 Russian Literature and Imperialism
RUSS 353 Contemporary Russian Culture and Media: Diversity and Disinformation
RUSS 327 The Environments of Twentieth-Century Russian Literature
RUSS 325 Chekhov's Interdisciplinary Prose (Independent Study)
RUSS 326 Crime and Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (included parallel Independent Study in Russian)
RUSS 325 War and Peace (included parallel Independent Study in Russian)
RUSS 327 Twentieth-Century Russian Literature and Human Life
RUSS 353 Introduction to Russian Culture: Media, Technologies, Ideas
RUSS 380 Readings in Russian Culture (Independent Study in Russian)
RUSS 326 Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Social Change
RUSS 470 Soviet and Russian Film: Innovation and Ideology
Ph.D., Program in Comparative Literature, Rutgers University
B.A. in the History of Science and Philosophy, St. John’s College, Annapolis
"The Environments of Sakhalin Island" Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich (2022, invited lecture)
“Chekhov’s Suggestive Prose” Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich (2021, invited online lecture)
“Chekhov’s Environmental Psychology: Space and the Mind in ‘The Steppe’” New York University (2019, invited lecture)
“Intercultural Competence and the Ethnographic Interview” Atlanta Global Studies Symposium (2019)
“Chekhov, Psychiatry, and Activist Prose” Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, Boston (2018)
“The Environments of Chekhov’s Drama” Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, Chicago (2017)
“The Dreaming Mind in Realist Fiction: Chekhov and Grigorovich” American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Annual Convention, San Francisco (2017)
Call for Peace: Statement Issued by the Russian Program on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Call for Peace
Researching the Intersection of Russian Literature and Medicine, Research News at Higher School of Economics, Moscow Researching the Intersection of Medicine and Literature
Thinking Across Languages: Interview with Sibelan Forrester Thinking Across Languages