Holds a doctorate in Russian Literature from Columbia University and the Certificate of the Russian (Harriman) Institute. The principal focus of her recent scholarly interest has been bilingual writers, initially the Russian bilingual writers of the ”First” Emigration, and among them, particularly Vladimir Nabokov, but now including writers in other languages and other periods. She has also published on the interaction of French and Russian literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, early Soviet prose and its relationship to utopian architecture,
the multi-generic works of Ilya Zdanevich/Iliazd as well as on Russian women writers. After several years on leave as Acting Provost of Brooklyn College and then, more briefly, of Hunter College, she has now returned to teaching and is currently writing an article on Olesha’s Envy and Soviet modernist
architecture in the late 1920s. At the Graduate Center, she has taught courses on the Interaction of French and Literature, and Bilingual/Polyglot writers. At Hunter College, she has taught courses on The Novel of the City, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Nabokov, and the Russian Theatre.
Areas of Interest
20th century literature of the Americas and Spain, 19th century/early 20th century British and American novel and short story (esp. Hawthorne, Conrad, Wharton), contemporary Spanish and Latin-American film (esp. Almodóvar), magical realism and the fantastic (esp. Borges, Cortázar, García Márquez, Morrison), immigrant and minority experience in the US, 20 th century American drama (Williams, O'Neil)
Languages
English, Spanish, French
Courses Taught
MIntroduction to Literature: Introductory English literature course involving the study of prose, poetry, and drama. Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Heart of Darkness; Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales; Shakespeare, Othello