Russian Literature

My main area of specialization is in Russian literature, especially nineteenth-century Russian literature and Russian romanticism. I have a secondary interest in the Russian Silver Age and love the poetry of Zinaida Gippius. My immediate publication project examines the biblical subtexts of Gogol's work of historical fiction Taras Bulba.

Click here for my article on the motif of mirrors in Gogol's oeuvre in Canadian Slavonic Papers via JSTOR. 

Click here for my article on the difficult relationship between the poet and his readers in Pushkin's poetry in The Pushkin Review.

Phonetics

On the linguistics side, I have a special interest in phonetics and pronunciation. I published a detailed description of the pronunciation of the Russian language in classical singing in my dissertation. Of particular interest were the differences between vowel reduction in sung versus spoken Russian and the significance of those differences for the underlying motivation of vowel reduction in Russian.

Click here for link to my dissertation at OhioLINK.

Opera and Dance

My love for Russian opera and ballet first motivated me to learn Russian when I was an undergraduate student at Northwestern University. I wrote a master's thesis about "academic folk dance" at Ohio State and also dedicated several chapters of my dissertation to the interpretation of Russian literature and culture through the media of opera and ballet.

Click here for link to my dissertation at OhioLINK.