Bio

I teach in the Slavic Department at Harvard University. I am a scholar of Russian literature, with special interests in poetry and cinema. I have written about Pushkin and myths of Pushkin in Russian culture, and about contemporary poetry of Russia and of the United States. I have a long-standing interest in women writers and in feminist theory, and my work also draws on psychoanalysis, philosophy, visual studies, and post-modernist theories.

My most recent book is The Freest Speech in Russia: Poetry Unbound (1989-2022), published by Princeton University Press in 2024. I continue to write about contemporary Russian poetry, and have been focusing on visual poetry, particularly by Ry Nikonova and Elizaveta Mnatsakanova. A chapter on Russian visual poetry will appear in the Oxford Handbook of Russian Poetry, which I have been coediting with Luba Golburt and Catherine Ciepiela. The Handbook is slated to appear in 2026.  

Other published books include Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of Exile (1989); Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's Myth of a National Poet (2004); and several edited collections, including: Rereading Russian Poetry (1999); Self and Story in Russian History (2000; with Laura Engelstein); and Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture (1993; with Jane Costlow and Judith Vowles);  History of Russian Literature, co-authored with Andrew Kahn, Mark Lipovetsky, and Irina Reyfman (2018). 

In addition, an edited volume, Ольга Седакова: Стихи, смыслы, истолкования, edited with Maria Khotimsky, Margarita Krimmel, and Oleg Novikov was published by Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie Press in Moscow; an English-language version, The Poetry and Poetics of Olga Sedakova: Origins, Philosophies, Points of Contention, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2019. 

For the last decade or so, I have also been translating contemporary Russian poetry. Together with Genya Turovskaya, I translated Elena Fanailova, The Russian Version (2009, revised edition 2019), published by Ugly Duckling Presse. Translations of poems by Fanailova and others (including Elena Shvarts, Mara Malanova, Fedor Swarovski, Aleksandr Skidan, Ksenia Shcherbino, Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Keti Chukhrov, and Polina Barskova) have appeared in Jacket, Poetry, World Literature Today, Boston Review, St. Petersburg Review, Aufgabe and elsewhere. In 2014, a translation of Olga Sedakova, In Praise of Poetry appeared from Open Letter Press; Ksenia Golubovich and Caroline Clark are co-translators of the volume.  

I was grateful to receive the AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship in 2013. I serve on a number of editorial boards, including Slavic Review,  Neuere Lyrik. Interdisziplinäre und interkulturelle Studien for Peter Lang Publishers, and Avto-biografiia published by the University of Padua. In 2015-2017, I was on the Editorial Board for PMLA and, untll 2022, on board for the Russian Library for Columbia University Press,

I have taught at Harvard University since 2000; before that, I taught at Amherst College in the Departments of Russian and Women's and Gender Studies, and briefly, in the Russian Department at Mt. Holyoke College. At Harvard, I have chaired the Slavic Department, served as Director of Graduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies. I serve on the Executive Committee of the Davis Center, and for a decade co-chaired with Sandra Naddaff the Rethinking Translation Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center.