GSAS Lecture Series

Thanks to generous funding from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Slavic Department is able to invite our distinguished alumni to return to campus for a special lecture and consultation with our graduate students. Each speaker presents a lecture on his or her current research, as well as meeting with graduate students in a more informal setting to discuss current research trends in Slavic studies, and to share professional and research experiences. 

Past GSAS Lectures

February 27, 2020

"Who Should Teach Whom to Read Tolstoy?: Curating the 1928 Centenary"

Tatyana Gershkovich, is an Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2016. 

 

November 7, 2019

"Ukrainian Literary History in Translations, Mistranslations, Self-translations, and Falsifications"

Iaroslava Strikha works as a literary translator. She received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2017.

 

April 16, 2019

"Words on Trial: The Journalistic Courtroom of Frida Vigdorova"

Rebecca Reich is a University Lecturer in Russian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. She received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

 

February 13, 2019

“Higher Education Administration as a Career Path after the PhD.”

Giorgio DiMauro is the Director of the Center for Global Education at Rutgers University. He received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2002. 

 

April 19, 2018

“Dostoevsky on Evil, Before and After Auschwitz.”

Yuri Corrigan is an Assistant Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Boston University. He received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University in 2008. 

 

September 26, 2017

"This New Sporting Life: Modern Athletics and Early Soviet Cinema"

Dr. Timothy Harte (Chair and Associate Professor of Russian on the Myra T. Cooley Lectureship in Russian, Bryn Mawr College) received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2001, joining the faculty at Bryn Mawr a year later. His research interests center on 20th-century Russian literature, film, and culture.

 

March 30, 2017

“Calendar reform and the politics of Russian exceptionalism since Peter the Great”

Andreas Schönle is a Professor of Russian at the Queen Mary College, University of London. He received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 1995.

 

September 20th, 2016

"Literature as Philosophy: Deconstructing Plato in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s 'In the Pupil.'"

Alexander (Sasha) Spektor is an Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Georgia. He received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2008.

 

April 14, 2016

"Characters without Biography: the "New Prose" of Lydia Ginzburg and Varlam Shalamov.”

Emily Van Buskirk, is an Associate Professor of Russian and Czech literature at Rutgers University. She received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2008.

 

 

 

March 24, 2016

"Scenes of Encounter: The "Soviet Jew" in Fiction by Russian Jewish Writers in America"

Sasha Senderovich, is an Assistant Professor of Russian Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2010.

 
 
November 5, 2015
"Low Spirits and Immoderate Meditations in Venedikt Erofeev's 'Moskva-Petushki'"

Julia Vaingurt, Associate Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2005.

 

 

October 22, 2015

"Translation as Interpretation: From Nabokov’s Letters to Véra to the Metaphysical Wordplay in 'Ultima Thule'"

Olga Voronina, Assistant Professor of Russian at Bard College, received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2010. 

 

April 30th, 2015

"Aesthetics in the Clone Age"

Jacob Emery

Jacob Emery, Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, received his doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2006.

 

March 10, 2015

“Criminal Performance in Revolutionary and Post-Soviet Russia”

Julia Bekman Chadaga, Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at Macalester College, received her doctorate from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2003. 
 

December 9, 2014

"Genre Trouble: Zapiski, Parabiography, and Facticity in the Literature of Concentration Camps and Besieged Cities"

Benjamin Paloff, Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, received his Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2007. 
 

September 25, 2014

Edyta Bojanowska"Pineapples in Petersburg, Cabbage Soup on the Equator: Imperialism, Globalization, and Ivan Goncharov's Travels in Asia" 

Edyta Bojanowska, Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature and Director of the Russian and East European Program at Rutgers University. 

The subject of Edyta's presentation was The Frigate Pallada (1859), Ivan Goncharov's travelogue about Africa and Asia, which is based on his voyage with the official Russian mission to "open up" Japan in 1852-54.  Little known today, the book was a nineteenth-century bestseller which introduced Russian readers to the wider colonial world and located their own empire in it. Edyta talked about Goncharov's visits to the ports of south-east Asia. In particular, she focused on his prescient commentary on the rise of what we today know as globalization, which he connects to the spread of modern imperialism and global trade.

Edyta received her Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2002.