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RUSSIAN LITERATURE
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RESEARCH INTERESTS
For the first part of my career my scholarship focused on the relationship between poetics
and metaphysics in the nineteenth-century novel, especially those of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
I am currently preparing a book manuscript, based on my dissertation, about the poetics of
Tolstoy’s representation of the human search for existential meaning. The book is tentatively
entitled Tolstoy and the Quest for Perfection in an Imperfect World.
I also have a strong
interest in the Russian theater, especially Chekhov. As a Slavist who has performed
Chekhov professionally, I am interested in the ways in which Chekhov infuses his dramatic
world with a sense of poetic grandeur, even as he depicts the most mundane aspects of everyday
life. This aspect of Chekhov’s theater, which is the subject of a graduate seminar I taught
at the University of Virginia, is crucially important for a full appreciation of Chekhov’s
uniqueness as a playwright and his contributions to modern drama.
Another scholarly interest, which I plan to develop more fully over the next few
years, concerns the representations of capitalism, merchants, and money in the Russian
cultural imagination. This interest grew out of my part-time work experience as a management
consultant in Russia. I have taught a course centered on this problem at the University of
Virginia: “Tycoons, Tyrants, and Tortured Souls in Russian Literature.”
The course and the publications that should arise out of it are predicated on the thesis
that the historical representations of capitalism in Russian literature can illuminate
deeply rooted Russian cultural and psychological biases about the role of money in human affairs. Understanding these biases is one useful tool for identifying some of the less obvious obstacles to—and opportunities for—the development a “free market mentality” in Russia today. This line of inquiry, while grounded in the Russian texts themselves, also has implications that extend into the spheres of sociology, cultural anthropology, and even the psychology of economic behavior.
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