What are your current and future research projects?
I am currently developing two book projects. The first investigates the introduction of Western-type science to Russia under Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century. I am interested in the the links between scientific knowledge and political and cultural thinking in Petrine Russia and its Western counterparts. My second book project concerns the emergence and development of the sentimentalist mode in Russian literature from Karamzin to Dostoevsky. As I hope to show, this mode served as a “critique of political economy,” a framework for reflecting on modernity and its economic conditions.
What will you be teaching on a regular basis and what course would you ideally like to plan and teach here?
I will be regularly teaching undergraduate introductions to nineteenth-century Russian literature and contemporary Russia, as well as graduate courses on the eighteenth century and Realism. Currently I am thinking about a graduate course where we would read literary fiction–Russian and possibly German–alongside relevant political theory.
Do you have a favorite place or thing to do in Madison that you wouldn’t mind sharing with us?
I am only exploring Madison but even living next to Lake Mendota and Capitol Square is exciting.