Russian Language & Literature
Русский язык и русская литература в Рид–колледже
Professors
Evgenii V. Bershtein
Associate Professor of Russian
email: zhenya@reed.edu
Evgenii V. Bershtein grew up in Leningrad, USSR. He studied Russian literature and linguistics at Tartu University, Estonia, and received his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. He is the author of a number of articles on eighteenth-century Russian literature, contemporary Russian literature, and Russian Symbolist culture. His publications include the articles "The Russian Myth of Oscar Wilde," "Psychopathia Sexualis in Fin-de-Siècle Russia: Politics and Genre," "Two Short Essays on the Cult of Otto Weininger in Russia."
Evgenii Bershtein has been teaching at Reed since 1999. He offers courses in twentieth-century Russian literature, Russian and European Symbolism, Soviet and post-Soviet culture, the St. Petersburg myth in Russian literature, as well as seminars in Russian poetry. He also teaches intermediate and advanced Russian. Professor Bershtein was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute for Russian Studies, Columbia University (2001 - 2002) and a Kone Fellow at the Helsinki University Collegium for Advanced Studies (the summers of 2004 and 2005). Professor Bershtein is on sabbatical and leave in 2007/08. He is finishing his book manuscript on Symbolist sexuality and working on a new project devoted to irony in Russian modernism.
Zhenya's recent Russian-language essays:
on Tatyana Tolstaya's non-fiction
on Dan Healey's book Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia
on the HBO series "Sex and the City"
on post-Soviet decadence
on the cult of Otto Weininger in Russia
on the poet Mikhail Kuzmin's diary
Zhenya's pictures from St. Petersburg, Summer 2001
Marat Grinberg
Assistant Professor of Russian and Humanities
email: grinberm@reed.edu
On leave 2008-09.
Marat Grinberg, Assistant Professor of Russian and Humanities, has been teaching at Reed since 2006. He holds a BA in Modern Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University in New York. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago in 2006. Professor Grinberg specializes in Russian Jewish literature and culture, Russian and European Modernism, Soviet literature, poetics and cinema studies. He is the author of many articles on modern Jewish culture and politics, Russian Jewish literary historiography and 20th century Russian poetry and prose. Among his publications are "The Midrash from Joseph: 'Isaac and Abraham' as Brodsky’s Ur-Text," "'All the Young Poets Have Become Old Jews': Boris Slutsky’s Russian Jewish Canon" and "My Judaic Pride Sang: Eduard Bagritsky and the Making of Soviet Jewish Identity." He is the editor of, author of preface, footnotes and a number of chapters in The Four Thousand Year Journey of Jewish History (New York: 2002).
Marat Grinberg regularly offers comparative seminars in Jewish literature as well as courses in Russian short story, 20th century Russian poetry and 19th century Russian prose. He also teaches and lectures in HUM 110. Professor Grinberg is on leave in 2008/09. He is writing a book on the construction of Jewishness in Russian modernist and Soviet poetry.
Marat’s other recent publications:
“’The Problem of Evil’: An Exchange”
On Friedrich Gorenshtein
On Isaac Babel and Friedrich Gorenshtein
On Boris Slutsky
Lena M. Lencek
Professor of Russian and Humanities
email: lencek@reed.edu
Lena M. Lencek, born in Trieste of Slovene parents and educated at Barnard College and Harvard University, is Professor of Russian and Humanities. She offers courses in her special areas of interest: medieval East Slavic literature; Russian romanticism in its west European context; Russian modernism; and literary theory (formalism, structuralism, semiotics). She has offered “special topics” seminars on South and West Slavic literatures ; the culture of the book in Russia; prose of the 1920s; Russian theater of the avant-garde; epic poetry of the Russian Revolution; Russian religious culture; the Russian short story; and offers instruction in Old Church Slavonic.
Her research and publications extend beyond Slavic philology. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Frozen Music: A History of Portland Architecture (The Press of the Oregon Historical Society, 1985), Making Waves: Swimsuits and the Undressing of America (Chronicle Books, 1988), The Beach: A History of Paradise on Earth (Viking/Penguin, 1998, 1999) a 1998 New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Beaches (Chronicle, 2000); Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea (Marlowe Books, 2000); Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea (Marlowe Books, 2001); Escape: Stories of Getting Away (Marlowe Books, 2002); Pilgrimage(Chronicle, 2003); Off the Wall (Chronicle, 2004); Dynamic Wave Theory (Booth Cliborn/Abrams, 2006).
Several television documentaries have developed from Lencek’s publications; these include: Nothing to Hide (Australia: Beyond Productions for Discovery Channel); Beach Crazy (Los Angeles: Termite Productions for Arts and Entertainment;) Technological Beach (for History Channel), and, for the History Channel, the two-hour documentary based on The Beach. A History of Paradise on Earth. She has also been radio columnist for Canadian Public Broadcasting and has contributed to “The Savvy Traveler”, National Public Radio, and other NPR venues.
