Faculty Books

These are some of the monographs and edited volumes produced by the department's faculty. In addition, members of the faculty are, or have been, editor or co-editor of academic journals, including Diachronica (Brian Joseph), Journal of Greek Linguistics (Brian Joseph), Language (Brian Joseph), the Russian Review (Irene Delic), and the Pushkin Review (Angela Brintlinger).

Samizdat, Tamizdat & Beyond: Transnational Media During and After Socialism, co-edited by Friederike Kind-Kováks and Jessie Labov (Berghahn Books, 2013).

Chekhov for the 21st Century, co-edited by Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger (Slavica Publishers, 2013)

One hundred fifty years after his birth, Anton Chekhov remains the most beloved Russian playwright in his own country, and in the English-speaking world he is second only to Shakespeare. His stories, deceptively simple, continue to serve as models for writers in many languages. In this volume, Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger have brought together leading scholars from Russia and the West for a wide-ranging conversation about Chekhov’s work and legacy. Considering issues as broad as space and time and as tightly focused as the word, these are twenty-one exciting new essays for the twenty-first century.

Chapaev and his Comrades: War and the Russian Literary Hero Across the Twentieth Century, by Angela Brintlinger (Academic Studies Press, 2012)

Across the twentieth century, the Russian literary hero remained central to Russian fiction and frequently "battled" the battlefield or on a civilian front. War was the experience of the Russian people, and it became a dominant trope to represent the Soviet experience in literature as well as other areas of cultural life. This book traces those war experiences, memories, tropes, and metaphors in the literature of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, examining the work of Dmitry Furmanov, Fyodor Gladkov, Alexander Tvardovsky, Emmanuil Kazakevich, Vera Panova, Viktor Nekrasov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Voinovich, Sergei Dovlatov, Vladimir Makanin, Viktor Astafiev, Viktor Pelevin, and Vasily Aksyonov. These authors represented official Soviet literature and underground or dissident literature; they fell into and out of favor, were exiled and returned to Russia, died at home and abroad. Most importantly, they were all touched by war, and they reacted to the state of war in their literary works.

Memory, Language, and Bilingualism: Theoretical and Applied Approaches, co-edited by Jeanette Altarriba and Ludmila Isurin (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

The relationship between memory and language and the topic of bilingualism are important areas of research in both psychology and linguistics and are grounded in cognitive and linguistic paradigms, theories and experimentation. This volume provides an integrated theoretical/real-world approach to second language learning, use and processing from a cognitive perspective.This is a strong yet balanced combination of theoretical/overview contributions and accounts of novel, original, empirical studies which will educate readers on the relationship between theory, cognitive experimentation and data and their role in understanding language learning and practice.

From Symbolism to Socialist Realism, by Irene Delic (Academic Studies Press, 2012)

Developed as a reader for upper division undergraduates and beginning graduates, From Symbolism to Socialist Realism offers a broad variety of materials contextualizing the literary texts most frequently read in Russian literature courses at this level. These approaches range from critical- theoretical articles, cultural and historical analyses, literary manifestos and declarations of literary aesthetics, memoirs of revolutionary terrorism and arrests by the NKVD, political denunciations and literary vignettes capturing the spirit of its particular time in a nutshell. The voices of this polyphonic reader are diverse: Briusov, Savinkov, Ivanov-Razumnik, Kollontai, Tsvetaeva, Shklovsky, Olesha, Zoshchenko, Zhdanov, Grossman, Evtushenko and others. The range of specialists on Russian culture represented here is equally broad: Clark, Erlich, Falen, Grossman, Nilsson, Peace, Poznansky, Siniavskii, Volkov and others. Together they evoke and illuminate a complex and tragic era.

Multi-Mediated Dostoevsky: Transposing Novels into Opera, Film, and Dream, by Alexander Burry (Northwestern University Press, 2011)

In Multi-Mediated Dostoevsky, Alexander Burry argues that twentieth-century adaptations (which he calls "transpositions") of four of Dostoevsky’s works—Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Gambler, Leos Janacek’s opera From the Dead House, Akira Kurosawa’s film The Idiot, and Adrzej Wajda’s drama The Devils—follow Dostoevsky’s precept by bringing to light underdeveloped or unappreciated aspects of Dostoevsky’s texts rather than by slavishly attempting to recreate their sources. Burry’s interdisciplinary approach gives his study broad appeal to scholars as well as to students of Russian, comparative literature, music, film, drama, and cultural studies.

Russian Diaspora: Culture, Identity, and Language Change, by Ludmila Isurin (De Gruyter, 2011)

The book presents a broad interdisciplinary perspective on the contemporary Russian immigration to three countries: the United States, Germany, and Israel. The changes and transformations in three domains, i.e., cultural perception, self-identification, and attitudes to first language maintenance, are explored through the Acculturation Framework that allows bringing together these essential aspects of immigration. A separate look at Jewish and Russian ethnic groups within the so-called ""Russian"" immigration as well as its interdisciplinary nature sets this book apart from other studies on recent immigration from the former USSR.

Celebrity and Glamour in Contemporary Russia: Shocking Chic, edited by Helena Goscilo and Vlad Strukov (Routledge, 2010)

The book demonstrates how the process of ‘celebrification’ in Russia coincides with the dizzying pace of social change and economic transformation, the latter enabling an unprecedented fascination with glamour and its requisite extravagance; how in the 1990s and 2000s, celebrities - such as film or television stars - moved away from their home medium to become celebrities straddling various media; and how celebrity is a symbol manipulated by the dominant culture and embraced by the masses. It examines the primacy of the visual in celebrity construction and its dominance over the verbal, alongside the interdisciplinary, cross-media, post-Soviet landscape of today’s fame culture.

Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film, edited by Helena Goscilo and Yana Hashamova (Indiana University Press, 2010)

This wide-ranging collection investigates the father/son dynamic in post-Stalinist Soviet cinema and its Russian successor. Contributors analyze complex patterns of identification, disavowal, and displacement in films by such diverse directors as Khutsiev, Motyl', Tarkovsky, Balabanov, Sokurov, Todorovskii, Mashkov, and Bekmambetov. Several chapters focus on the difficulties of fulfilling the paternal function, while others show how vertical and horizontal male bonds are repeatedly strained by the pressure of redefining an embattled masculinity in a shifting political landscape.

Understanding Morphology, 2ed, by Martin Haspelmath and Andrea D. Sims (Hodder Education, 2010)

Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that starts at the very beginning. The goal is to shed light on major issues of analysis, so chapters are structured around essential questions: What are the basic units of the lexicon -- words or morphemes? Is there a categorical difference between inflection and derivation? Do the same basic principles apply to both word formation and sentence formation? What makes one morphological rule more productive than another? And so on. To answer these questions, the authors draw on the best research available, discussing a variety of theoretical approaches..

A Linguist's Linguist: Studies in South Slavic Linguistics in Honor of E. Wayles Browne, edited by Steven Franks, Brian D. Joseph, and Vrinda Chidambaram (Slavica Publishers, 2009)

For nearly fifty years E. Wayles Browne has been a unique and almost irreplaceable intellectual resource for specialists in Slavic linguistics, working on a myriad of topics in a variety of languages and from a range of theoretical perspectives. He has been a subtle yet persistent force in bringing Slavic puzzles to the attention of the larger world of linguists and in defining the larger significance of these puzzles. The present volume brings together a leading cohort of specialists in South Slavic linguistics to celebrate Wayles Browne's body of works in this area.

Exotic Moscow Under Western Eyes: Essays on Culture, Civilization and Barbarism, by Irene Masing-Delic (Academic Studies Press, 2009)

This collection of essays on Turgenev, Goncharov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Blok, Briusov, Gor'kii, Pasternak and Nabokov represents diverse voices but is also unified. One invariant is the recurring distinction between ''culture'' and ''civilization'' and the vision of Russia as the bearer of culture because it is ''barbaric.'' Another stance advocates the synthesis of ''sense and sensibility'' and the vision of ''Apollo'' and ''Dionysus'' creating a ''civilized culture'' together. Those voices that delight in the artificiality of civilization are complemented by those apprehensive of the dangers inherent in barbarism. This collection thus adds new perspectives to the much-debated opposition of vital Russia and a declining West, offering novel interpretations of classics from Oblomov to Lolita and The Idiot to Doctor Zhivago.

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching (Studies in Bilingualism), edited by Ludmila Isurin, Donald Winford, and Kees de Bot (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009)

The volume presents a selection of contributions by leading scholars in the field of code-switching. This book raises a question of a much broader multidisciplinary approach to studying the phenomenon of code-switching, calls for integration of disciplines; and illustrates how frameworks from one subfield can be applied to models in another. The volume includes survey chapters, empirical studies, contributions that use empirical data to test new hypotheses about code-switching, or suggest new approaches and models for the study of code-switching, and chapters that discuss principles and constraints of code-switching, and code-switching vs. transfer. The book is easily accessible to anyone who is interested in the phenomenon of code-switching in bilinguals.

Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, and Nostalgia, edited by Helena Goscilo and Stephen M. Norris (Indiana University Press, 2008)

Preserving Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional representations. By moving beyond the "Petersburg text" created by canonized writers and artists, the contributors to this engrossing volume trace the ways in which St. Petersburg has become a "museum piece," embodying history, nostalgia, and recourse to memories of the past. The essays in this attractively illustrated volume trace a process of preservation that stretches back nearly three centuries, as manifest in the works of noted historians, poets, novelists, artists, architects, filmmakers, and dramatists.

Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917-1937, by Angela Brintlinger (Northwestern University Press, 2008)

In Writing a Usable Past, Brintlinger compares the Pushkin biographies to the other biographies examined, and in a concluding chapter she considers other, more successful commemorations of the great poet's death. She argues that popular commemorations--exhibits, concerts, special issues of journals--were a more fitting biography than the genre of the "usable past." For post-revolutionary cultural actors, including Tynianov, Khodasevich, and Bulgakov, Pushkin was a symbol rather than a model for constructing that usable past.

Derzhavin: A Biography, by Vladislav Khodasevich and translated by Angela Brintlinger (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007)

Derzhavin occupied a position at the center of Russian life, uniting civic service with poetic inspiration and creating an oeuvre that at its essence celebrated the triumphs of Russia and its rulers, particularly Catherine the Great. His biographer Khodasevich, by contrast, left Russia in 1922, unable to abide the increasingly repressive regime of the Soviets. For Khodasevich, whose lyric poems were as commonplace in their focus as Derzhavin’s odes were grand, this biography was in a sense a rediscovery of a lost and idyllic era, a period when it was possible to aspire to the pinnacles of artistic achievement while still occupying a central role in Russian society.

Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, edited by Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky (University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2007)

Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture represents a joint effort by American, British, and Russian scholars - historians, literary scholars, sociologists, cultural theorists, and philosophers - to understand the rich history of madness in the political, literary, and cultural spheres of Russia. Editors Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky have brought together essays that cover over 250 years and address a wide variety of ideas related to madness - from the involvement of state and social structures in questions of mental health, to the attitudes of major Russian authors and cultural figures towards insanity and how those attitudes both shape and are shaped by the history, culture, and politics of Russia.

Pride and Panic: Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film, by Yana Hashamova (Intellect Ltd, 2007)

A groundbreaking study, Pride and Panic probes cinematic representations of the unsettled Russian national consciousness, a complex cocktail of fear, anger, and anxious uncertainty. Hashamova examines the works of both established and lesser-known Russian directors, and she draws thought-provoking parallels between these evolving social attitudes in contemporary Russia and the development of an individual human psyche. The cultural impact of globalization, the evolution of the Russian national identity, and the psychology of a society all intertwine in this fascinating study of the connections between film and political consciousness.

Studia Caroliensia: Papers in Linguistics and Folklore in Honor of Charles E. Gribble, edited by Robert A. Rothstein, Ernest Scatton, and Charles E. Townsend (Slavica Publishers, 2006)

Studia Caroliensia is a collection of essays that offer a selection of new research in Slavic linguistics and folklore in honor of Professor Charles E. Gribble. The essays collected in this volume offer a sampling of the range of scholarly themes on which Professor Charles Gribble has worked over the years.

Monastic Traditions: Selected Proceedings of the Fourth International Hilandar Conference, edited by Charles E. Gribble and Predrag Matejic (Slavica Publishers, 2004)

"Monastic Traditions" represents the selected proceedings of the Fourth International Hilandar Conference, held 14-15 August 1998 on the campus of The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, as part of the worldwide commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the founding of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. 1998 was also the 20th anniversary of the Hilandar Research Library, a special collection of the Ohio State University libraries that originated with and houses microfilms of the Slavic manuscripts of Hilandar Monastery, as well as microforms of Cyrillic manuscripts from over 100 other collections.

Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth Century Literature, by Irene Masing-Delic (Stanford University Press, 1992)

The idea of abolishing death was one of the most influential myth-making concepts expressed in Russian literature from 1900 to 1930. In this book Dr. Masing-Delic finds the seeds of this extraordinary concept in the erosion of traditional religion in late-nineteenth-century Russia. Influenced by the new power of scientific inquiry, humankind appropriated various divine attributes one after the other, including omnipotence and omniscience, but eventually even aiming toward the realization of individual, physical immortality, and thus aspiring to equality with God.

Glasnost, An Anthology of Literature Under Gorbachev, edited by Helena Goscilo and Byron Lindsey (Ardis, 1990)

This remarkable collection brings together the best writers of the current Russian literary renaissance, providing the English-speaking reader with the largest, most representative anthology yet available of works published during the last three years in the Soviet Union. The ten writers included here are all literary stars whose works have evoked both praise and controversy, often provoking charges of excessive naturalism and pessimism. These stories illuminate new worlds as previously forbidden themes are explored in works of genuine merit. 

Yury Nagibin: The Peak of Success and Other Stories, edited by Helena Goscilo (Ardis, 1986)

Russian and Polish Women's Fiction, edited by Helena Goscilo (University of Tennessee Press, 1985)