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 has published extensively on eighteenth-century Russian literature, contemporary Russian literature, and Russian Symbolist culture. His recent publications include the following essays and book chapters: "Psychopathia Sexualis in Fin-de-Siècle Russia: Politics and Genre," "Two Short Essays on the Cult of Otto Weininger in Russia," " 'The Withering of Private Life': Walter Benjamin in Moscow," "'Next to Christ': Oscar Wilde in Russian Modernism," and "An Englishman in the Russian Bathhouse: Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings and the Russian Tradition of Homoerotic Writing."
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, Pushkin, and Tolstoy. 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). He is currently revising his book manuscript on Symbolist sexuality and working on a new project devoted to Sergei Eisenstein.
Zhenya's recent essays, available online
Zhenya's pictures from Siberia, Summer 2012
Marat Grinberg
Associate Professor of Russian and Humanities
Email: grinberm@reed.edu
On sabbatical 2012–13
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 "I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left": The Poetics of Boris Slutsky (Borderlines series: East European-Jewish studies, Academic Studies Press, 2011) as well as many articles on modern Jewish culture and politics, Russian Jewish literary historiography and 20th century Russian poetry and prose. He is the editor of 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 poetry and 19th century Russian prose. He also teaches and lectures in HUM 110.
On Marat Grinberg's book see:
http://academicstudiespress.com/Default.aspx
#L_2
Marat's other recent publications:
- On Woody Allen
- "'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.
Alyson Tapp
Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian
Email: altapp@reed.edu
Russian prose fiction, narrative and novel theory, the European novel, Soviet literature and culture of the 1920s–30s, translation.
Alyson Tapp joined the Russian Department at Reed as Visiting Assistant Professor in 2011. She gained her undergraduate degree in Modern & Medieval Languages at Cambridge University (U.K.) and an M.A. at the University of Sheffield (U.K.). She continued her graduate studies in the U.S. and received her Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at U.C. Berkeley.
Alyson Tapp specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian literature, with particular emphasis on the history and theory of the novel. Her current research focuses on narrative, emotion and the Russian novel. Meanwhile, the literature and culture of the Soviet 1920s-30s also remain a long-standing teaching and research interest. She has a special interest in the prose works of literary scholars, and has written on the Russian Formalist Boris Eikhenbaum and translated literary essays by Lidiia Ginzburg. Other recent publications include "Reading and Riding St . Petersburg's Trams" in Petersburg/Petersburg: Novel and City, 1900-1920 and "Moving Stories: Emotion and Narrative in Anna Karenina." In conjunction with the former, at Berkeley Alyson Tapp participated in the digital mapping project, Mapping Petersburg (http://stpetersburg.berkeley.edu/).
At Reed this year Alyson Tapp is teaching first-year Russian, a survey of Russian literature From Its Beginnings to Lermontov, and a course on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the English Novel.