Barbara Kukushkina

Barbara (Varvara) Kukushkina is an amateur violinist, an entomology enthusiast, and a budding scholar of Russian modernism from Cherepovets, Russia. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Linguistics from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) University in Saint Petersburg in 2015, ultimately producing a thesis on the book Reflections on Goethe by Emilij Medtner. It was also at HSE that Barbara’s interest in Russian modernism and its attempts to synthesize mysticism with contemporary scientific breakthroughs was first piqued. This interest would later mature into serious scholarly dedication, and in 2018, Barbara became a member of the research team ‘Intellectual History of Russian Modernism’ led by Professor Ilona Svetlikova; the ambitious project gradually turned into a study of the cultural role of astronomy at the turn of the twentieth century and continues to bear fruit.

After completing her undergraduate degree at HSE, Barbara  earned a master’s degree in art history from the European University in Saint Petersburg. Barbara’s thesis focused on the unique, albeit anachronistic, project of the Kievan psychiatrist Ivan Sikorsky, a passionate advocate of physiognomy as both a powerful diagnostic tool and a universal means of ‘reading’ works of art, from Roman sculptures to masterpieces by Repin and Vasnetsov. 

Prior to enrolling at Harvard’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Barbara worked as a docent at the Joseph Brodsky museum ‘A Room and a Half’ for three years. Currently, her research interests revolve around texts and visual culture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the history of psychology and psychiatry. 

Photo: Alexander Kukushkin.