HomeResearch in Russian ranges over a wide number of topics:
- Eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century Russian literature (Karamzin, Zhukovskii, Gogol, Tolstoi, Chekhov, Zoshchenko and others)
- Literary and cultural theory
- Soviet cinema
- Georgian language and literature
- Russian folklore
- The nineteenth century Russian press and its magnates
- The relationships between totalitarianism and the Russian intelligentsia
Diverse topics are united by the publications of the Garnett Press , edited by the department and supported financially by the College.
The research team and their areas of expertise include:
- Jeremy Hicks
Jeremy’s research centres on issues of documentary and journalism in 1920s Russia from satirical literature (Mikhail Zoshchenko) to documentary film (Dziga Vertov). He is at present writing a book about the reception of Soviet film in the West from the beginning of the sound era to the end of World War II. His monograph Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film was published in 2007. His DVD commentary to Mark Donskoi's The Rainbow is in production, in a new scholarly 'hyperkino' format.
- Olga Makarova
Olga works is working on the circle of A S Suvorin (a Russian publishing tycoon, whose diary she co-edited and co-published). She has written articles on the connections between the Russian literary and bohemian world and Suvorin and is preparing a doctoral dissertation on Suvorin's professional and personal connections.
- Anna Pilkington
Anna is now completing the second volume of the Garnett Book of Russian verse, which is devoted to anonymous and folk verse, with an extensive introduction to this neglected field. She also works on Russian children's literature, and her ab initio Russian course is in preparation for publication in Moscow.
- Donald Rayfield
Anton Chekhov - A Life (Rayfield's biography of Chekhov) has now been published in an extended Russian version and has aroused both controversy and acclaim. (It was a non-fiction bestseller in Moscow in October 2005 and has been reprinted in 2006 and in 2007.) Rayfield has also prepared an edition of the poetry of Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik, much of it previously unpublished, for publication. Rayfield has recently completed the first comprehensive Georgian-English dictionary (some 2000 pages), financed by a substantial AHRB grant and supported by the Leverhulme Trust. Rayfield's monograph of 2004, Stalin and his Executioners, has now been translated into six European languages. Future research will develop all three fields: Chekhov's circle, Stalin's henchmen and rivals; Georgian lexicology.
- Andreas Schönle
Andreas researches the signification Russia ascribes to space (through travel, gardening, urban development, etc.). His latest work is a monograph on the politics of landscape design The Ruler in the Garden: Politics and Landscape Design in Imperial Russia (2007), and he is now writing a book on the cultural meaning of ruins in Russia. In parallel he conducts research on literary and cultural theory. He edited a volume called Lotman and Cultural Studies: Encounters and Extensions, which came out in 2006, and has prepared, with Julia Hell, a collective volume on Ruins of Modernity, to be published in 2008.
Associate researchers and contract teachers in the department also make important contributions to the department's research.
- Robert Chandler has translated selections of poetry by Apollinaire and Sappho and numerous Russian authors, including Pushkin, Leskov and Vasily Grossman. He has edited and translated an anthology of Russian short stories for Penguin Classics and his co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won several prizes. He has been a regular participant for many years in conferences devoted to Andrey Platonov at the Russian Academy of Sciences and has written a number of articles about Platonov for their publications. He has published his own poetry, articles and reviews in the TLS, the Independent and other journals. His most recent translation is of THE RAILWAY, a novel by the Uzbek writer, Hamid Ismailov.