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.
Education:
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Comparative Literature).
D.E.A. Universite de Paris – III (General & Comparative Literature).
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.
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
