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Meet Some of Our Graduate Students

Katya Balter
kbalter@gmail.com

B.A. Amherst College (English Literature) 2002
M.A. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Comparative Literature) 2007
Entered Berkeley program in 2007

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
" 'Who is Jocasta?' Envy and the Destruction of the Symbolic Order"

Research Interests: contemporary Russian cinema (Muratova, Tarkovsky); the Russian avant-garde; late-Soviet and post-Soviet writing; literary theory and cultural studies

Languages known and studied: Russian; German; French

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Daniel Brooks
danielbrooks@berkeley.edu

B.A. Hampshire College (Russian Studies and Art History) 2007
Entered Berkeley program in 2007

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Morris and the Mamontov Circle: Arts and Crafts in Late 19th-Century Britain and Russia"

Research Interests: Russian and European visual culture; literary theory and narratology; nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose; vision and the visual in fiction; the city and mass culture; socialist realism and the avant-garde

Languages known and studied: Russian, German

Conference participation:
"Fetish, Spectacle, and Prosopopeia in Blok's Kleopatra," California Slavic Colloquium, 2008

Study Abroad:
Fall 2005: Russian culture and art history, European University in Saint Petersburg (Vassar College)

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Roy Chan (Department of Comparative Literature)
rbchan@berkeley.edu

B.A. University of Washington (Russian and Comparative Literature) 2002
Entered Berkeley Program in Comparative Literature in 2002

Research interests: Modern Russian and Chinese literatures; history and theory of the novel and other prose genres; Realism; semiotics; literature, ideology and Marxism; theories of the body; gender and sexuality; psychoanalysis

Languages known and studied: Russian, Chinese (Modern and Classical, Cantonese), French, German, and Japanese

Ph.D. Exams (2006)
Major Fields: Modern Chinese and Russian literatures, Realism, narrative, psychoanalysis

Dissertation topic:
"The Edge of Knowing: Dreams and Realism in Modern Chinese Fiction"; here I explore the interplay between discourses of "realism" and dreaming in modern Chinese fiction, from the Republican era through post-1949 literature. One chapter will hopefully explore Chinese translations of Soviet sotsrealizm.

Favorite seminar papers written in the department:
Tolstoy's Infectious Agents: Contagion as Metaphor in The Kreutzer Sonata;
Masculine Fantasies and Female Spectators in Mikhail Kuzmin's Fiction
Hermeneutics of a Hunter: Early Realist Aesthetics and the Violence of Observation in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter
A Stifling Glow: On Atmosphere in Platonov's Fro

Conference Participation:
Kuzmin and Masculinity (U Illinois, 2003)
"Living Relics": Early Russian realism, the dead, and the not quite dead yet in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter (UC Berkeley, 2006)

Study Abroad:
Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study at Tsinghua University, Beijing (Summer 2005)
IIE Fulbright for Independent Research at Tsinghua University, Beijing (2007-8)

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Erin Coyne
ecoyne@berkeley.edu

B.A. Fordham University, 1996
M.A. Georgetown University, 2001
Entered Berkeley Program in 2006
M.A., 2008

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"The Status and Function of Surzhyk in Contemporary Ukrainian Society"

Research interests: Sociolinguistics and dialectology, particularly in Ukraine (Surzhyk, Hutsul, etc.); Russian nonstandard speech and sociolects; bilingualism

Languages known and studied: Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Polish, Bulgarian

Summer Language Study/Study Abroad:
Fall 1994: Rostov State University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Spring 1995: Vilnius State University, Vilnius, Lithuania
Summer 1996: Peace Corps Language Training Program, Vladimir, Russia
Summer 2000: ACTR Language and Area Studies Program, Kyiv, Ukraine

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Mieka Erley
merley@berkeley.edu

B.A. Hampshire College (Amherst, MA), 2001
Entered Berkeley program in 2003
M.A., 2005

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
“The Times of Our Lives: The Work of Chris. Marker; or: NO EXIT! The Movie”

Research interests: Verbal and visual ethnography; mapping technologies; national literatures and cinema in the Soviet Union; documentary film; Central Asia

Languages known and studied: Russian, French, German, Tajik

Ph.D. Exams (2007)
Major Field: The Ethnographic Trend in Russian Literature of the 19th-Century
Minor Field: Narrative and Document in Early Soviet Film (1900-1938)

Dissertation Topic:
"Eastern Realism": National Imaginaries and the Literary Creation of Tajikistan

Favorite seminar papers written in the department:
"From Photography to X-rays: Fedorov's Apparatus of Resurrection"
"Body Images: Early Photography's Engagement with Animals"

Conference Participation:
"Mapping St. Petersburg," AAASS (Washington, DC, 2005)

Publications:
"Sochi's Winter Olympics," Newsletter of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Fall 2007
"Petersburg Online: A Web-based Cultural Resource for Students and Teachers of Russian," Berkeley Language Center Newsletter, Volume 23, Issue No. 1, Fall 2007
(contributing author) "A Digital Map of St. Petersburg at the Beginning of the 20th Century," Olga Matich, Newsletter of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Fall 2005.
“US Military Involvement in Central Asia: ‘The Price of Freedom’?” Give and Take: A Journal on Civil Society in Eurasia, Vol. 5, Issue 2/3, Summer 2003

Study Abroad:
1999-2000: Russia
2007: Tajikistan

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Cammeron Girvin
cgirvin@berkeley.edu

B.A. Slavic Languages & Literatures, Linguistics, University of Virginia, 2006
Entered Berkeley program in 2008

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
“Sexual Perversion and the Life Story in Sologub’s Prose Works”

Research interests: Bulgarian culture and cultural identity in literature, 19th and 20th century Russian prose, sexuality and gender, South Slavic linguistics, historical Slavic linguistics

Languages known and/or studied: Bulgarian, Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Polish, Yiddish, Old Church Slavonic, German

Study/Work Abroad:
2004: Summer language study in Moscow, Russia
2005: Summer internship with LGBT rights organization in Sofia, Bulgaria
2006: Summer language study in Valjevo, Serbia
2007: Worked for LGBT rights organization and taught English in Sofia, Bulgaria

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Zachary Johnson
zsjohnson@berkeley.edu

B.A. University of California, Berkeley (Mathematics) 2002
Entered Berkeley program in 2007

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"The Exile's Ideal: Chronotope, Memory and Transcendental Homelessness in Alexander Herzen's Byloe i dumy

Research interests: Literary theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukacs; 20th Century Russian poetry (Joseph Brodsky and Osip Mandel'shtam); Evolution of historical thought.

Languages known and studied: Russian; Norwegian; German

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Anastasia Kayiatos
akayiatos@berkeley.edu

B.A., Russian Literature, Reed College, 2002
Entered Berkeley program in 2004
M.A., 2006

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
“Out of the Closet and Into the Drawer: Anatomizing Evgenii Kharitonov’s Queer Corpus”

Research interests: Dissidence and sexuality in Russian and Soviet literature and political life; transnational queer and feminist theory and the second world; technologies of embodiment; psychoanalysis and cultural studies of affect; Soviet psychiatry; the late-Soviet literary underground; Russian modernism; the novels, criticism, and intimate documents of 19th-century Realism

Languages known and studied: Russian; Old Church Slavonic; French; German

Ph.D. Exams (2008)
Major Field: Russian literature - Post-Stalin Soviet Literature and Dissent
Minor Field: DE in Gender and Women's Studies - Queer Theory

Dissertation topic:
Modes of monstrosity and the construction of the human in post-Stalin Soviet literary and political discourse

Conference Participation:
(To be presented): "From Dirty Minds to Docile Bodies: Shock Therapy an dthe Sexing of Late-Soviet Dissent." AAASS and GSA (2008).
"Pushing Buttons: MADness and the Cold War." Guest lecture for American Studies 101: The Atomic Age and Cold War Culture. UC Berkeley (2007).
"Queering Uncanny Cinema: Sokurov and Pornography." Colloquium with Evgenii Bershtein. UC Berkeley (2007).
"Painful Perversities: Shock Therapy and the Psychopathology of Late-Soviet Dissent" at Queerness and Violence (UC Davis, 2007).
"On Account of Another: The Poetics of Indebtedness and the Writing of the Russian Literary Self in Foreclosure and Forgiveness: Tracing Debt in Literature and Culture" (NYU, 2007).
"The Shocking Soviet Century: Or, How Russia Learned to Stop Worrying and Love (Like) the West" at the 17th Annual Thinking Gender Graduate Student Research Conference (UCLA, 2007).
“Andrei Platonov's Sentimental Journey: Gender Transitions, Genders in Transition, and the Gendering of Transition in ‘Semen,’” AAASS (Washington D.C., 2006).
“Na chuzhoi schet: The Poetics of Indebtedness and the Writing of the Russian Literary Self,” AATSEEL (2005).
“'Desire for Desires' [Zhelaniia zhelanii]: Platonic Eros and Polymorphous Sexualities in Anna Karenina,” California Slavic Colloquium (2005).
With Evgenii Bershtein, “Homosexuality as Ontological Taint: The Literary Reputation of Evgenii Kharitonov in Post-Soviet Russia,” The Ruby Seminars in the Humanities (Reed College, 2001).
Cowritten with and presented by Evgenii Bershtein, “The Work and Literary Reputation of Evgenii Kharitonov,” AAASS (2001).

Publications:
Review of the book Private Life and Communist Morality in Krushchev's Russia. Women East-West, 95 (Summer, 2008), 6-7.

Summer Study/Study Abroad:
Summer 1999: St Petersburg, Russian language study
Summer 2005: Moscow, Russian language study (FLAS)
Summer 2007: Berlin, German language study

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Anzhelika Khyzhnya
angelakh@berkeley.edu

B.A.: KDU, 1994 (Shevchenko State University, Kyiv, Department of Journalism)
Entered Berkeley program in 2003
M.A., 2005

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
Derevo, shumiashchee vershinoju v samom nebe(on a problem of the territorry of idyll in Gogol's prose)

Research interests: Early nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Russian prose; early twentieth-century Ukrainian and Polish literature; novel, language and authority; literature on borderlines and bilingualism; semiotics; synthesis of arts

Languages known and studied: Russian (native), Ukrainian (native), Polish, Old Church Slavonic, German

Ph.D. Exams (2008)
Major Field: "Speaking in Tongues": The Place and Role of the Linguistic Outsider in Russian Literature
Minor Field: Ukrainian Literature and Russian-Ukrainian Bilingualism from 1798 to 1930

Favorite seminar papers written in the department:
"Another volume of 'Dead Souls": Mark Chagall as an Author of the Parallel Version of "Chichikov's Adventures".
Black Magic and its Expose (Chronotype of Circus in M. Bulgakov's "Master I Margarita")
A Lonesome Flower on the Monument to Marginality (On Andrei Platonov's Last Tale)
Faith in the Age of Ruin: the historiosophical concept of Panteleimon Kulish's "The Black Council"

Study abroad:
Summer 2004: Polish language program at Jagiellonian University (FLAS)

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Chloe Kitzinger
ckitzinger@berkeley.edu

B.A. Philosophy, Yale University, 2006
M.A. Middlebury College Russian School, 2009
Entered Berkeley program in 2009

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Dead Word, Living Image: The Role of Smerdyakov in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov"

Research interests: 19th century novel; philosophical aesthetics; Dostoevsky; intersections between philosophy and literature.

Languages known and/or studied: Russian, German, Spanish

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Irina Kogel
ikogel@berkeley.edu

M.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 2008
B.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 2008;
English Language and Literature, University of Chicago, 2008
Entered Berkeley program in 2009

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Reframing Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady: Reconsidering the Influence of Ivan Turgenev's 'On the Eve'."

Research interests: Nineteenth century novel in Russia and the West, Romantic poetry (Russian and English).

Languages known and/or studied: Russian, Spanish, Polish and Old Church Slavonic

Study Abroad:
Moscow State University Russian Literature Course (Summer 2007)
Greek Antiquity and its Legacy, University of Chicago, Athen, Greece (Spring 2007)

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Tony H. Lin
tonyhlin@berkeley.edu

B.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, Psychology, Northwestern University
2005
B.M. Piano Performance, Northwestern University 2005
Entered Berkeley program in 2006
M.A., 2008

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"The First Polish Novel: Ignacy Krasicki's Przypadki Mikolaja
Doswiadczynskiego"

Research interests: 20th century Polish and Russian literature; relations between
poetry and music; Russian culture and music in literary context

Languages known and studied: Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese (native),
Russian, Polish, German

Favorite seminar paper
Anna Karenina: A Novel-Opera?

Conference Participation:
"A Glance Into Shostakovich's Interior" (KFLC, 2007)
"Muzykal'nost' v romane Bulgakova 'Master i Margarita'" (Middlebury Graduate Student Symposium, 2007)

Study Abroad:
2003-2004: Jagiellonian University, Poland (Kosciuszko Foundation Year Abroad Scholarship)
2005-2006: Jagiellonion University, Poland (IIE Fulbright Grant)
Summer 2008: Samara State University (Department of State Critical Language Scholarship)

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Traci Lindsey
tlindsey@berkeley.edu

B.A. in International Studies and Economics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1996)
M.A. in Germanic Philology from the University of Alabama (1998)
Entered Berkeley Program in 1999
M.A., 2002

Research interests: Balkan linguistic phenomena; Bulgarian, modern and historical

Languages known and studied: Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, German, Old English, Old Norse

Ph.D. Exams (2006)

Favorite seminar paper written in the department: “The Development of the Post-Posed Definite Article and Case Loss in Bulgarian” (presented at 13th BSL conference, Chapel Hill, April 2002)

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Julia McAnallen
julia8@berkeley.edu

B.S.E. University of Michigan, 2001
Entered Berkeley program in 2003
M.A., 2005

Research interests: Slavic linguistics, especially diachronic linguistics of northern Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Polish); historical contacts between Slavic and non-Slavic languages, in particular West Slavic contacts with Germanic and East Slavic contacts with Finnic and Baltic languages; syntactic and morphological change as a result of language contact; grammaticalization

Languages known and/or studied: Russian, Czech, (Polish); reading knowledge: German, OCS

Ph.D. Exams (2007)

Dissertation topic:
The History of Predicative Possession in Slavic: Internal Development vs. Language Contact

Conference Participation:
"The Rise and Spread of Akan'e in Russian," Cognitive and Functional Perspectives on Dynamic Tendencies in Languages, Tartu, Estonia, May 2008
"Word Order in Khozhdeniia Igumena Daniila," Slavic Linguistics Society, Bloomington, IN, September 2006
"The Context of Feminization in Russian," AATSEEL, Philadelphia, PA, December 2004

Publications:
Coauthor of "Lexicon and Context in Feminization in Russian," with Olga Gurevich, Elena Morabito, Renee Perelmutter, Jonathan Platt, Johanna Nichols, Alan Timberlake; published in Russian Linguistics, August 2006

Summer Language Study/Study Abroad:
Summer 2002: Moscow, Russia
Summer 2004: Vladimir, Russia
Summer 2008: Olomouc, Czech Republic (FLAS)

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Jessica Merrill
jmerrill@berkeley.edu

B.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University, 2003
Entered Berkeley program in 2005
M.A., 2007

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Duality in Vladimir Makanin's Andergraund, ili Geroi Nashego Vremeni"

Research interests: 20th Century Russian and Czech literature; Russian emigre writing in America and Prague.

Languages known and studied: Russian, Czech, French

Study Abroad:
Spring 2001: St. Petersburg, Russia
Year 2003-2004: Prague, Czech Republic
Summer 2005: Moscow, Russia
Summer 2007: Study Czech in Brno (FLAS)

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Elena Nelson (neé Morabito)
elena@berkeley.edu

BA: University of Rochester, 2001 (Modern Languages and Cultures)
MA: University of Toronto, 2002 (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Entered Berkeley Slavic Linguistics program in 2003
M.A., 2005
UC Berkeley Doctoral Candidate as of December 2007

Research interests: Tense, aspect, and clause structure in Russian and Serbian recensions of Church Slavonic; South Slavic and Balkan linguistics; the sociolinguistics and codification of post-Yugoslav languages; corpus linguistics and its relation and application to sociolinguistic analysis

Languages known and studied: French, Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bulgarian, German, Old Church Slavonic, Russian Church Slavonic, Serbian Church Slavonic, Polish, Spanish

Dissertation in progress:
"Past tenses, aspect, and clause structure in the Russian Menaions"

Teaching: Four semesters as a Graduate Student Instructor for first-year Russian; currently teaching first-year Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Conference participation:
2006: Balkan and South Slavic Conference (UC Berkeley)
2006: International Postgraduate Conference: Inclustion/Exclusion (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London)
2005: California Slavic Colloquium (UC Berkeley)

Publication:
"Lexicon and Context in Feminization in Russian." Russian Linguistics Volume 30, Number 2/August, 2006 (joint publication with Alan Timberlake, Johanna Nichols, Olga Gurevich, Renee Perelmutter, Julia McAnallen and Jonathan Platt).

Language-related Study/Work Abroad:
2008: summer FLAS to study Advanced Mastery Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian through the University of Pittsburgh's Slavic Languages Institute
2006: summer research, the relationship of language to politics and identity in Montenegro at the time of separation from Serbia (Peter N. Kujachich Endowment in Serbian and Montenegrin Studies)
2005: summer ACTR program at Moscow State University for teachers of Russian
2004: summer FLAS to study Croatian in Zagreb and Dubrovnik
2002-2003: year teaching English at the Institut International de Rambouillet, France
2002: summer internship in Sofia, Bulgaria researching anti-corruption programs at the Center for the Study of Democracy (University of Toronto CREES grant)
2000: summer Polish language program at Jagiellonian University (University of Rochester Skalny grant)
1999-2000: year studying Russian at St. Petersburg State University
1998: summer Russian language program in St. Petersburg

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Jillian Porter
jillianporter@berkeley.edu

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 2002 (Liberal Arts)
Entered Berkeley program in 2004
M.A., 2006.

Research interests: Russian literature of the 1820s-1840s; New Economic Criticism

Languages known and studied: Russian, Croatian, Italian, French, German, Latin

Ph.D. Exams (2008)
Major field: The Economy of Russian Literature 1830-1850
Minor field: Sociology of the Everyday

Dissertation topic:
My dissertation will investigate the function of economic tropes and paradigms in Russian literature of the 1830s-1840s. It will examine the reciprocal gives and takes between readers and texts; texts and intertexts; extratextual economic "realities" and intratextual literary "economies."

Favorite papers written in the department:
The Double, the Ruble, the Real: Counterfeit Money in Dostoevsky's "Dvoinik"
The Many Economies of "Mertvye dushi"
Ways of Exchange: Fantastic Fungibility in "Sadko" and "Kupecheskaia doch' i sluzhanka"

Study Abroad:
Spring 2001: Sarah Lawrence abroad program in Florence, Italy.
2002-2003: Independent language study in and around St. Petersburg, Russia.
Summer 2006: Language study at the University of Split, Croatia.
Summer 2007: Independent language study near St. Petersburg, Russia

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Kathryn Schild
kde@berkeley.edu

B.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton, 1999.
Entered Berkeley program in 2002
M.A., 2004.

Research interests: Twentieth century, national identity, political literature, Soviet culture, Moldova, Central Asia, Turkish literature.

Languages known and studied: Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian. Reading level
Romanian, French, OCS.

Ph.D. exams (2006)
Major field: Russian literature ­ Russia’s Orient from Romanticism to
Modernism
Minor field: Soviet history ­ the nationality question

Dissertation topic: I’m studying the negotiation of official national literatures within the Union of Soviet Writers, with a focus on Azerbaijan.

Favorite papers:
“The Grand Inquisitor in Orhan Pamuk’s Black Book”
“Orienting the Orient in Bely’s Petersburg”

Study Abroad:
Bogazici University Summer Language and Culture Program, Istanbul, 2003.
ACTR Summer Russian Language Teachers Program, Moscow (MGU), 2005.

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Lily Scott
ls172572@berkeley.edu

B.A. Russian Studies, University of Montana, 2009
B.A. History, University of Montana, 2009
Entered Berkeley program in 2009

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Russia's 'Freest' Generation: Images of Youth in Yuri Mamin's Window to Paris and Sergei Loban's Dust"

Research interests: Russian Orthodoxy; antireligious history; early Soviet literature and culture; Soviet propaganda; 20th century Russian short story; contemporary Russian cinema; Balkan studies.

Languages known and/or studied: Russian, Modern Greek, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian

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Katy Sosnak
katy_sosnak@berkeley.edu

B.A. Russian Language and Literature, Columbia University, 2005
Entered Berkeley program in 2006
M.A., 2008

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"East Meets West: The Literature of the Russo-Japanese War"

Research Interests: Intertextuality; nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose; the graphic novel; interplay between the visual and verbal; popular culture; New Historicism; the novel of adultery; Russian and Japanese literary relations

Languages known and studied: French, Russian and Japanese

Favorite Seminar Papers Written in the Department:
"Formal Deviation and Narrative Infidelity: Modes of Adultery in Evgenii Onegin"
"Dostoevsky's Modern Illustrators: Prestuplenie i nakazanie as 1950s Popaganada"

Study/Work Abroad:
2004 Semester in St. Petersburg (Smolny Institute)
2005-2006 Assistant English Teacher in Kyoto (J.E.T. Programme)
2008 ACTR Summer Russian Language Teachers Program, Moscow (MGU)

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Lucas Stratton
lstratton@berkeley.edu

B.A. French and Russian languages and literatures, Dickinson College
Entered Berkeley program in 2006
M.A., 2008

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"To See and To Feel the Floating Dream: Eidolologia in the Poetics of Théophile Gautier and Nikolay Gumilev"

Research interests: Fin-de-siècle literature, music and visual arts in Russia and France; Synesthesia, symbolism and poetry; (homo)sexuality in French and Russian
literature at the turn of the twentieth century; French literary influence
and récits de voyage pertaining to Russia

Languages known and studied: Russian, French, German

Conference Participation:
"The 'Queer Phenomenology' of Evgenii Kharitonov's 'The Oven'" (Mexico City Queer Studies Easter Symposium, March 2008)

Study Abroad:
1998 Three-week homestay in Coulommiers, France
2001-2002 Academic year in Moscow (Dickinson Program)
2002 Fall Semester in Toulouse (Dickinson Program)
2004-2005 Academic Year in Moscow (IIE Fulbright grantee for research in Comparative Literature)

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Malgorzata Szajbel-Keck
szajbelkeck@berkeley.edu

M.A. Classics (ancient Greek and Latin language and literature), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, 2004
M.A. General Linguistics and West Slavic Languages and Literatures, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, 2008
Entered Berkeley program in 2008

Research interests: West Slavic Linguistics; syntax and morphology of Polish and Czech; comparative linguistics; language teaching and acquisition

Languages known and studied: Polish, Czech, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Spanish, Old Church Slavonic

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Alyson Tapp
alysont@berkeley.edu

B.A. (Hons) Modern & Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, 2002.
M.A. Critical Theory & Modern Languages, University of Sheffield, 2003.
Entered Berkeley program in 2004.
M.A., 2006

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
Images of Nabokov’s The Gift: (Meta)fiction, Autobiography, Criticism

Research interests: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature; the novel and novel theory, especially guestions or emotion and ethics; Tolstoy and his scholars; modernism and modernity in St Petersburg; Platonov’s poetics

Languages known and studied: Russian, French, German.

Ph.D. Exams (2008)
Major field: The Russian novel from Pushkin to Bely: narrative and emotion
Minor field: The context of the Russian novel: the European novel and novel theory

Conference Participation:
"'Kak byt' pisatelem?' Eikhenbaum's search for a genre in the 1920s" (AAASS, November 2007)
“The Soundtrack to Platonov’s Happy Moscow” (AAASS, November 2006)
“Mapping St Petersburg” - roundtable participant (AATSEEL, December 2005)
“Moving Stories: (E)motion and Narrative in Anna Karenina” (California Slavic Colloquium, April 2005)

Publications:
"Moving Stories: (E)motion and Narrative in Anna Karenina," Russian Literature 61:3 (April 2005)

Publications:
"Moving Stories: (E)motion and Narrative in Anna Karenina," Russian Literature 61:3 (April 2007)

Study abroad:
Academic year 2000-01 spent in Samara and St Petersburg.
Internship at United Nations Information Center, Moscow (Summer 2002)
Research assistant for independent researcher/writer, St Petersburg (Summer 2005).

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Cameron Wiggins
cwiggins@berkeley.edu

BA: Oberlin College, 2004 (Russian and English)
Entered Berkeley program in 2004
M.A., 2006

Paper Submitted with application to Berkeley:
“Mass Media, the Cultural Marketplace, and Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry”

Research Interests: Theatre and the Novel, 19th and 20th Century Drama, Genre and Novel Theory, Dramatic Adaptations, Dostoevsky

Languages Known and Studied: Russian, French, German

Ph.D. Exams (2008)
Major Field: The Rise of the Russian Realist Novel in the Nineteenth Century
Minor Field: Russian Drama, 1825-1860

Dissertation Topic:
Dramatic modes of narrative in the early realist novel.

Favorite Seminar Paper Written in the Department:
“Unmasking the Text: Locating Drama in Tolstoy’s War and Peace”

Conference Participation:
"Between the Past and Futur(ism): Staging the Author in Chekhov's Chaika and Maiakovskii's Vladimir Maiakovskii: Tragediia" (AAASS, 2007).
"Drama and Authorial Voice in War and Peace" at the California Slavic Colloquium (Stanford, 2007).

Language-Related Study/Work Abroad:
2006: Summer at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, German language study
2004: Summer internship at the Dostoevsky Literary-Memorial Museum in St. Petersburg
2003: Semester at St. Petersburg State University, Russian language and literary study

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Margarita Zaydman (Department of Comparative Literature)
mzaydman@berkeley.edu

M.A. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 2006
B.A. Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 2006
Entered Berkeley program in 2007

Paper submitted with application to Berkeley:
"Calling Each Thing By Its Name: Olesha's Paradisaical Poetics"

Research interests: 18th to 20th century American, European, and Russian literature, semiotics, ethics, aesthetics, theories of modernity

Languages known and studied: Russian, Spanish, French, German, Old Church Slavonic

Study Abroad:
Summer 2003: Department of the History of Russian Literature, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia

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