Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Department of Film and Media
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Comparative Literature).
D.E.A. Universite de Paris – III (General & Comparative Literature).
Teaching: Russian and Soviet Literature; Russian and Soviet Film; ; Literature for Children; Eisenstein; the Novel in Russia and the West; Literary Theory; Film Theory; Russia and America; Gogol; The Soviet Union and American Minority Movements. Recent graduate seminars have included: Literature of the 1920s; Film: Eisenstein; Film: Vertov. Literature for Children.
Research interests: Silent and Early Sound Film (France, Germany, Russia). Early Soviet Culture. Sergei Eisenstein. Soviet Film. GDR History and Culture.
Current projects: Soviet Cinema and the Construction of Architectural Space
Selected publications:
Books
- The Cabinet of Earths and A Box of Gargoyles (Harper Collins, 2012 and 2013): novels for children and young adults
- Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).
Articles
- “Skyscrapers, Consular Territory, and Hell: What Bulgakov and Eizenshtein Learned about Space from Il’f and Petrov’s America,” Slavic Review 69: 2 (2010)
- “Ecstasy in the Margins: How Bely’s Gogol Helped Eisenstein Build His House,” forthcoming in The Russian Review , 2005.
- “In Borrowed Balloons: The Wizard of Oz and the History of Soviet Aviation,” Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2001.
- “Sergei Eisenstein and the ‘Juncture of Beginning and End,'” in Eisenstein at 100, (Rutgers Unversity Press, 2001).
- “Inanimations: Snow White and Ivan the Terrible,” Film Quarterly, vol. 50, no 4, 1997.
- “Coming Home to Homer: Gogol’s Odyssey,” Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1995.
- “Formy vremeni v <>: Khronosomy khronotopa,” (written jointly with Eric Naiman), Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2, 1993.
- “Mise en abime: Platonov, Zolia i poetika truda,” (written jointly with Eric Naiman), Revue des Etudes Slaves, vol. 64, No. 4, 1992.
- “Suicide as Literary Fact in the 1920s,” Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4, 1991.
- “Tokens of Elective Affinity: The Uses of Goethe in Mandel’stam,” Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1988.