Graduate Student

Katie Frevert

B.A. Russian and East European Studies and Creative Writing, Oberlin College, 2022

Entered Berkeley program 2023

Paper submitted with Berkeley application: “‘Kill the State in Yourself’: Totalitarianism and the Illiberal Dissidence of Egor Letov”

Languages known and studied: Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Old Church Slavic

Filippo Boscolo Gioachina

B.A. in Language, Civilisation, and the Science of Language: Russian and German Languages and Literatures, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 2021

M.A. in European, American, and Postcolonial Languages and Literatures: Slavic and Balkan Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 2024

Entered Berkeley program: Fall 2024

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley: Vladimir Klavdiyevich Arsenyev’s Literary Framework and its Orientalist Implications: Study on Travelogue in the Russian Far East from a Postcolonial Perspective

Languages known and...

Nicole Gonik

B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Political Science, Hunter College, 2023
Entered Berkeley program in 2024

Papers submitted with application: Borders in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and “The Demon” and “Every man must have somewhere to go”: Movement in Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

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Nina Gopaldas

B.A. in Comparative Literature, Reed College, 2024
Entered Berkeley program in 2025

Paper submitted with application: “Take a Hundred Lines for the Memory of Those who Lived on Tubabao”: Displacement and Poetic Voice in Olga Skopichenko’s Verse

Languages known and studied: English, Filipino, Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Research interests: 19th and 20th century poetry; lyric theory; émigré and exile literature; Russian formalism

Annabel Hou

B.A. in Russian Language & Literature, UC Berkeley, 2025
Entered Berkeley program in 2025

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley: "The Hegelian basis of V. G. Belinskij's aesthetics"

Languages known and studied: Mandarin, English, Russian, German, Old Church Slavic, Spanish

Research interests: 19th-c. Russian intellectual history; comparisons between German philosophy and Russian literature, sentimentalism and romanticism, realism, history of friendship, Belinskij

David Kurkovskiy

B.A. Yale University, majors in Russian and Eastern European Studies and Computer Science, 2017.

Yale Parker Huang Fellow and Visiting Student, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, 2017-8.

Visiting Researcher (Młodzi Naukowcy program), Centre of East European Studies, University of Warsaw, 2018-9.

Entered Berkeley program in 2020

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley: “’Where is Raysn?’: Imagining an Early 20th Century Jewish-Belarusian Shared Neighborhood”

Languages known and studied: Belarusian, French, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, OCS (Reading)

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Sophie Lee

B.A in Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, 2018

Entered Berkeley program in 2019

Paper submitted alongside Berkeley application: “ Trainspotting: teleology, linearity and continuity in the [post] space of Zheleznaia doroga”

Languages known and studied: Russian, German, French, English, Korean, Kazakh

Elena Leonenko

B. Phil., St. Petersburg State University, Russian Language and Literature, 2011
M. Phil., St. Petersburg State University, History of Russian Literature, 2013
M.A., University of Oregon, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2021

Entered Berkeley Program in 2021

Paper submitted alongside Berkeley application: “Figures of Speech: Inscriptions as Intertitles in Man with a Movie Camera”

Languages known and studied: Russian, English, French, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Old Church Slavic

Conference participation:

“No one Expected Such a High Mood...

Michael Lerner

B.A. Reed College, Russian, 2021
Entered Berkeley program in 2021

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
Trotsky Writes the Russian Revolution: The Symbol of the Explosion in Trotsky’s My Life and The History of the Russian Revolution and its Meta-Symbolic Significance.

Languages known and studied: Russian, Yiddish.