L&S Student Boris Maslov Wins Norton Scholar's Prize

By Genevieve Shiffrar, December 29, 2003

The Norton Scholar's Prize is one of the highest honors in literary studies awarded to undergraduates. Given annually by the publishing house W.W. Norton & Company, the prize recognizes an outstanding undergraduate essay on a literary topic. Berkeley student Boris Rodin Maslov outshined competition from across the nation to win the Norton Scholar's Prize for 2003.

A double major with highest honors both in Slavic Languages and Literatures and in Classical Languages, Maslov earned his B.A. in May 2003. He now continues his studies at Berkeley as a graduate student in Comparative Literature.

Leslie Kurke, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, nominated an essay Maslov wrote for her upper-division lecture course, "History of Sexualities." She stated, "his essay represents a remarkable range of literary and philosophical sources for an undergraduate paper, and Boris has skillfully deployed them to fashion an argument of great theoretical complexity and subtlety."

The essay, entitled "Reading Alcibiades as an Appropriative Self (Theognis, Lessing, Foucault)," takes as its starting point a lecture delivered by the postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault near the end of his life. In his lecture, Foucault drew from the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades I the notion of the "care of the self," which he traced through Hellenistic and Roman Imperial philosophy and early Christian theology, arguing for it as a "technology of the self" that changed and developed over time and eventually precipitated a different model of self and self formation.

Maslov's essay refocuses Foucault's notion of a radical shift of subject formation through the "care of the self" back onto the classical traditions surrounding the bad-boy fifth-century Athenian politician Alcibiades. Maslov thereby grounds Foucault's philosophical and theoretical argument for a startling new conception of self in the complex political and cultural specificities of classical Athens, arguing that Alcibiades represented a new model of radical self assertion — a model which ultimately forms one basis of the contemporary Western notion of subjectivity. Professor Kurke summarized the results: "Boris suggests that new constructions of self come at least partially through the appropriation of multiple, older cultural forms and images, both by Alcibiades himself and by other members of the culture in reaction to his transgressive self formation." (The full text of the essay is available on the W.W. Norton website.)

Professor Kurke, a recipient of a MacArthur "genius" fellowship for 1999 - 2004, said, "I feel extremely fortunate to teach at Berkeley, where I encounter extraordinary students like Boris." The respect is mutual. According to Maslov, the course for which he wrote the essay was the best lecture course he has taken at Berkeley. In his words, "She is indeed a fascinating teacher — not just a scholar — which is something one appreciates when taking her classes or working with her."

At 21 years of age, Boris Maslov is himself an exceptionally accomplished young scholar. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Maslov was educated both in Russia and in Germany before moving to the Bay Area to pursue his undergraduate degree at Berkeley. He is the author of three scholarly articles. One is an adaptation of his honors thesis for Slavic Languages and Literatures. Published in Russian in the journal Russian Literature, the article examines Russian formalist verse theory and the poetry of the Romantic poet Fyodor Tiutchev. The title translates as "The production of poetic text and the notion of voicing."

Another article, "Subjecthood and the Politics of Literature in Yuri Olesha's Diaries of the 1930s," is currently submitted for publication to a prestigious American journal of Slavic studies. According to Maslov, "I spent the summer of 2002 as a SURF fellow — a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow — which subsidized my efforts to work on the article throughout the summer. This helped me a lot in my work. The project started as a paper for a seminar with Slavic Languages and Literatures Professor Irina Paperno, who is equally influential for me, and now, it will become my first publication in English."

As a graduate student, Maslov's interests continue to widen beyond classical languages and his passion for Russian literature. He said, "At this point, I am trying to do as much as I can, continuing with my study of Archaic and Classical Greek culture and literature, as well as Russian literature. I am also trying to study something else, such as Greek Late Antiquity. A substantial amount of archaic Greek poetry was mediated through this period — precious fragments of Sappho, for instance — seen through the eyes of early Christian writers. To me, this is very fascinating."

The W.W. Norton Company awards to Maslov the Norton Scholar's prize, and a check for $2,500, at the December 2003 meeting of the Modern Languages Association.