What is the focus of your dissertation research?
My dissertation, still in early stages, is on disability and holy fools in Russian literature. I’m interested in using the familiar figure of the holy fool as a vehicle to bring disability studies values and concepts into the field of Slavic literatures, and in determining the role that the holy fool has played in the processes of constructing dis/abled embodiment through Russian literature.
Which classes have you taught here?
Through GNS, I’ve taught first-year Russian language at the academic-year and intensive-summer paces, writing-intensive 19th century Russian literature in translation, and cultures of dissent in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center, I teach the Queer Emerging Leadership Program (QuELP) spring course.
If you had to choose one work of Slavic literature that has had the most impact on you, which would it be and why?
One of the few works I’ve read that affected me so powerfully I had to have a good cry about it is Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: recognizing my own neuroqueerness in this disarmingly holy and human Good Man was deeply life-affirming in a way that few other things have ever been for me.
Do you have a favorite place or thing to do in Madison that you wouldn’t mind sharing with us?
I spend a good deal of my free time at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. My garden has benefited greatly from their classes and workshops, especially by the Madison Herb Society and the Badger Bonsai Society, and the tropical conservatory is a beloved refuge in the long winter.
Cecil welcomes visitors to hir website: http://cecilleighwilson.com.