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Alumni Profiles
And make sure to check out Northwestern Magazine's recent feature on
Slavic Alumni, Will Butler, of Arcade Fire.
Katherine Bowers, PhD 2011
Since January of 2012 I have been a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge (UK). My position is predominately research-based, and I am attached to Prof. Simon Franklin's project "Information Technologies in Russia, 1450-1850" in the Department of Slavonic Studies. During the three years I will be at Cambridge, in addition to my work on the project, I plan to revise my dissertation for publication as a monograph and I hope to do some teaching as well. My most recent work is the article "The City through a Glass, Darkly: Use of the Gothic in Early Russian Realism," which is forthcoming in Modern Language Review.
Nina Wieda, PhD 2010
I'm starting as an assistant professor of Russian at Middlebury College in the fall of 2012. My article “Cultural Kenosis in Chekhov’s The Wife” is forthcoming in the collection Chekhov in the 21st Century with Slavica. I am currently working on my book manuscript on secular kenosis in Russian literature and culture and starting a new book project, The Ethical Other: Internal Minorities in Soviet Russia, which delineates the tradition of axiological exchange between center and periphery in the Soviet Union. At ASEEES 2012, I will present on the relationship between Ukrainian literary diaspora and the linguistic situation in post-Soviet Ukraine. At AATSEEL 2013, I will present with Dr. Elisabeth Elliott on the relationship between language proficiency and heritage speakers' identity.
Olga Livshin, PhD 2010
Olga Livshin is currently a Term Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Her dissertation, which she is revising for publication, is the first book-length study of masculinity in Soviet nonconformist literature. Professor Livshin's recent articles concern contemporary Russian poetry, performance studies, and writing during Perestroika. Her poetry has appeared in The Mad Hatters' Review and other journals, in the Persian Anthology of World Poetry (trans. Mohsen Emadi), and on WFMT Radio.
Peter Thomas, PhD 2008
Peter Thomas is an assistant professor of Russian at Lawrence University.
Jenny Kaminer, PhD 2006
I am currently an assistant professor of Russian at UC-Davis, where I've been since 2009. I teach courses on various periods of Russian literature and culture, conducted in both Russian and English. I also teach a large-enrollment lecture course for the Humanities program on the topic of motherhood in Western culture. Prior to Davis, I had two visiting assistant professor positions: first at Oberlin College for 1.5 years, and then at the University of Sheffield (UK) for 1 year. My book, Women With a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture, has recently been accepted for publication by Northwestern UP.
Michal Oklot, PhD 2005
Michal Oklot is an assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Brown University. Prior to coming to Brown, Michal taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison and American University in Cairo. He has taught courses on Russian, Polish, and English literatures from the early modern period through the twentieth-century. His scholarly interests include Nikolai Gogol and his twentieth century continuators, Russian and Polish modernism, comparative Slavic history of ideas, especially Neoplatonic currents in Slavic thought, and literary theory. He has published articles on Schulz, Gombrowicz, Wittlin, Vincenz, and others. His book, Phantasms of Matter in Gogol (and Gombrowicz), was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2008.
Angelina Ilieva, PhD 2005
Angelina Ilieva is a lecturer in Balkan and South Slavic literature at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses on Balkan history folklore, literature, and film. Her general interests include the relation between representation and identity, anthropological approaches to culture, and contemporary critical theory. In particular, she is working on the role of trauma and sublimity in the emotional power of national identity.
Alexander Burry, PhD 2001
I am an associate professor at the Ohio State University Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, where I have taught since 2004. I recently published a book entitled Multi-Mediated Dostoevsky: Transpositions of Novels into Opera, Film, and Drama (Northwestern University Press, 2011) and have also written articles on Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Prokofiev, Venedikt Erofeev, and other cultural figures. Right now I am doing research for a book on the Don Juan legend in Russian culture. As a graduate student at Northwestern, I had many wonderful experiences. I vividly recall my feeling of excitement and relief after teaching my very first class of Russian in Fall 1996, and realizing how much I enjoy interacting with students. I also remember the thrill of giving my master's talk on Prokofiev's opera The Gambler to the department a year later. I sensed that this first public discussion of my ideas was an important step in becoming a scholar.
Patricia Zody, PhD 2002
Since August 2010, Patricia Zody has worked for American Councils as manager of the Russian and Persian Overseas Flagship Program. In January 2012, she took on the management of the Swahili Overseas Flagship and African Languages Initiative Programs. Prior to this, Dr. Zody was the Director for the Center for Language Studies at Beloit College. She has also served on the Board of Directors for American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR), as the Executive Director for the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (2006-2011), and as the Chairperson of the Annual National Post-Secondary Russian Essay Contest for ACTR (2002-2011).
Simon Greenwold, PhD 2001
Simon Greenwold is currently the Senior Associate Dean of The Graduate School at Northwestern University. His direct responsibilities include oversight of strategic planning, admissions, financial aid, research and analysis, training grant support, and information technology. His indirect responsibilities include his participation in nearly all other aspects of the TGS enterprise — academic and student affairs, alumni relations, and postdoctoral affairs, to name a few. He lives in Evanston with his wife Jennifer and daughter Josephine and is pleased to remain friends with many alums of the Slavic program.
Michael Denner, PhD 2001
I am currently an associate professor of Russian Studies at Stetson University, a 125-year-old liberal arts college in central Florida. I direct the Russian Studies program as well as the university's Honor Program. For six years I have edited the Tolstoy Studies Journal, the only academic periodical devoted to Tolstoy. Additionally, I pursue an active research agenda, and I am currently at work on a book entitled Resistance is Futile but No-Resistance Might Work: The Antistatist Politics of Leo Tolstoy. I feel that I received a marvelous education at northwestern, with remarkable faculty support that continues to this day. My "first readers" for new research are still Andrew Wachtel and Saul Morson.
Timothy Langen, PhD 1998
Timothy Langen is an assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Missouri.
Justin Weir, PhD 1997
Justin Weir is an associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His publications includes Eight Twentieth-Century Russian Plays, co-edited and co-translated with Timothy Langen; The Author as Hero: Self and Tradition in Bulgakov, Pasternak, and Nabokov; and Leo Tolstoy and the Alibi of Narrative. He is currently working on projects concerning early Soviet film, cultural politics, and Russian Formalism.
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