University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) Postdoctoral Fellow - 2015-2018 Dept. of Russian and East European Studies
EDUCATION
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) PhD – Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) Columbia University (New York, NY) BA - Russian Literature and Culture (cum laude, Departmental Honors)
ADDITIONAL EDUCATION/CERTIFICATION
Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) (Moscow, Russia) Certificate in Russian
“The Revolution Will Not Be Consummated: The Politics of Tolstoyan Chastity in the West,” Slavic and East European Journal (SEEJ) 60.3 (Fall 2016).
“Drag(ging) Tolstoy Into Queer Theory: On the Cross-Dressing Motif in War and Peace,” Tolstoy Studies Journal 26 (2014).
Articles (Editor selected)
“White Flight: The Shifting Grounds of Polish Racial Identity in Contemporary Europe,” World Policy Journal, Spring 2018.
“Tolstoy College: The War and Peace of an Anarchist Education,” Social Text (Online), December 21, 2016.
“Writing the ‘Soviet South’: Inflections of Post-slavery America in Langston Hughes’ Ethnography of Central Asia,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (New Literary Observer: Special Issue on “Slavery”) 142:2 (June 2016).
“The Importance of Being a Nihilist: Oscar Wilde’s Vera and the Sexual Politics of Russian Radicalism,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (New Literary Observer) 135 (May 2015).
“From Nigilistki to Pussy Riot: Locating ‘the Personal’ In the History of Women’s Activism in Russia,” Women in Politics/Женщины в политике. Special Issue: Re-introducing “the Personal is Political” to the Post-Soviet Reader 2(2013).
Special Issues Edited
“Public Humanities” Slavic and East European Journal (SEEJ) [Online issue], Summer 2018.
“Black October: the Impact of the Russian Revolution on the Black Diaspora,” African-American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), October 30-November 5, 2017; co-edited with Jennifer Suchland (Ohio State University).
Translations
Selected poems in Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, edited by Mark Burnhope, Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer. London: English PEN (2012). • Part of English PEN’s “Writers at Risk Programme” • Voted Best Poetry Anthology at the 2013 Saboteur Awards
Online Publications
“Teaching Race in Russia” Series - Multi-part blog series hosted by the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia: 1. Part I: Dispatches from “The Harlem Renaissance: From New York to Tashkent” 2. Part II: From Harlem to the “Soviet South” 3. Part III: Sartre, Jazz, and the Cossack Dance 4. Part IV: Audre Lorde and Zora Neale Hurston Question the Friendship of Peoples
Interviews
“How Red Russia Broke New Ground in the Portrayal of Black Americans,” Public Radio International (BBC), August 31, 2017. “Talking Policy: Race and US-Russia Relations,” World Policy Journal, March 3, 2017.
“Race and Russia with Jennifer Wilson,” Eurasian Enigma Podcast, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, June 3, 2016.
SELECTED HONORS, AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS
2015-2017 (Declined) University of Chicago Provost’s Career-Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholarship. 2012. Social Science Research Council (SSRC)-Mellon Mays Graduate Enhancement Scholarship. 2011-2012 United States Department of State (Title VIII) Research Grant (Moscow, Russia). 2011. Charles N. Hanna and Margaret T. Hanna Princeton Fellowship for Graduate Studies. 2011. Social Science Research Council (SSRC)/Mellon Mays Pre-doctoral Research Grant (Moscow, Russia). 2010. Social Science Research Council (SSRC)/Mellon Mays Graduate Enhancement Grant. 2009. Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) Research Grant (Odessa, Ukraine). 2009. Presidential Fellowship, The Graduate School, Princeton University. 2008. Departmental Honors, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University. 2006-2008. Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), Columbia University. 2004. Simon Guggenheim Scholarship for Undergraduate Studies, Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
PRESENTATIONS
Invited Lectures
2018. “Black Skin, White Snow: Sissako’s Soviet Films and the Queer Contours of the Friendship of Peoples,” University of Michigan, March 16. 2018. “Messenger of Saint-Domingue: Karamzin and the Haitian Revolution” University of Michigan, March 15. 2018. “Dostoevsky’s Timely Castration” Queer Russia conference, Davidson College, Feb. 17. 2017. “Black October,” Revolution! Symposium, Lafayette College, November 2. 2017. “Nevol’niki: Writing the Black Atlantic in Imperial Russia.” Howard University, April 12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Feb 27. Swarthmore College, February 7. 2016. “The ‘Red South’ and Other Paradigms: Reflections on Teaching Race in Post-Soviet Russia,” Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, April 29. 2016. “Drafting Tolstoy: War & Peace in the Era of Vietnam,” Utopias After Utopia, Yale University, February 11. 2010: “Limpopo: The Case of Tatyana Tolstaya’s African Woman,” Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES), University of Pittsburgh, February 4.
Forums Moderated
2017. “On Illazad’s Rapture, The Banned 1930’s Novel,” PEN World Voices Festival, New York, NY, May 4. 2017. “The Global Alt-Right: Race and US-Russia Relations” The Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia (New York University), February 6.
Selected Conference Participation
2018. “Black Skin, White Snow: Sissako’s October and Rostov-Luanda,” American Comparative Literature Association, March 30. 2017. “Writing a “Free Society”: Vol'noe obshchestvo and Abolitionist Literary Societies in Russia,” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), November 17. 2017. “Queer Harlem, Queer Tashkent: Langston Hughes’s Boy Dancers of Uzbekistan,” Central Eurasian Studies Conference, Seattle, WA, October, 6. 2017. “Saint Domingue by Way of Saint Petersburg: the Haitian Revolution in the Radical Russian Imaginary” Radical Americas, UCL (UK), September 11. 2016. “Russian Literature in the Era of Vietnam: The Utopian Project that was Tolstoy College,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Seminar: Nostalgia for the Future: The Legacy of Svetlana Boym in Comparative Slavic Studies,” Harvard University, March 18. 2015. “The Importance of Loving a Nihilist: Oscar Wilde’s Vera,” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), November 20. 2014. “Tolstoy and the Politics of Spiritualist Sexology,” Gender, Sexuality and Religion Working Group, Princeton University, November 17. 2014. “Affective Cartographies: Re(mapping) Sexual Desire and Political Commitment in Nineteenth Century Russian Literature,” Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS), University of Pennsylvania, November 3. 2014. “Shy, Awkward Men: The Politics of Sexual Impotence in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed,” Slavists Without Borders, University of Pennsylvania, October 21. 2013. “The Queer Consequences of Tolstoy’s Turn to American Sexology,” Slavics Without Borders Conference, New York University, February 8. 2013. “‘Failed’ Women: Tolstoy’s Spinsters and Queer Theory,” Graduate Colloquium in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, January 15. 2012: “Interdisciplinary and Inclusivity,” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), New Orleans, LA, November 16. 2010: “Staging Sex on the NEP Stage: Meyerhold’s ‘Woe to Wit’ and Sergei Tret’iakov’s ‘I Want a Baby!’” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Los Angeles, CA, November 19. 2010: “(Drag)ging Tolstoy Into Queer Theory: On the Cross-Dressing Motif in War and Peace,” Undoing Eros: Love and Sexuality in Russian Culture, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, October 23. 2009: “Tennessee Williams’ Queer Chekhov,” Association of American Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (AATSEEL), Philadelphia, PA, December 29.
Conferences and Panels Organized
2017. Translating Race in Eurasia, ASEEES, November 9-12 [linked panels]
Freeing Angela Davis in Eurasia
Race and the (Fe)male Body
Red Relations: Race and Transatlantic Radicalism
Race and the Canon: New Approaches to 19th-century Russian Literature
2018. Queering the Color Line in Eurasia, ASEEES, November 19 [panel] 2016. Translating Race in Eurasia, University of Pennsylvania, Sept. 24, [conference] 2015. Fifty Shades of Red: Socialist Sexualities, ASEEES, November 20 [panel] 2010. Co-organizer, “Undoing Eros: Love and Sexuality in Russian Culture,” Princeton University, October 22-23 [conference]
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION
Executive Board Member (2016-2019) - Northeast Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference European, and Eurasian Studies (NESEEES) Committee on Membership (2016-present) - Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS American Association for Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (AATSEEL) Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Radical Americas (UCL) Dobro Slovo, National Slavic Honor Society
LANGUAGES English (native), Russian (fluent), French (reading knowledge), Spanish (reading knowledge)