Reed College
Reed College

Russian Language & Literature

Themes of Recent Theses 

2024

  • Nina Golpaldas, "Take a Hundred Lines for the Memory of Those who Lived on Tubabao”: The Poetics of Exile and Displacement in Olga Skopichenko’s Verse. (Comparative Literature)
  • Jennifer Hadawi, Газель - غزل : on the Persian Element in Russian Symbolist Poetry. (Comparative Literature)
  • Ysidra Lopez Paczkowski, “The Zenith of Her Agony”: The Cinematic and Literary Memory of the Sexually-Violated, Jewish Woman in The Pawnbroker. (History-Literature)

  • Leah Stievater, Reading the Doppelgänger through Bataille. (Comparative Literature)

2023

  • Ronan Battistoni, Stories for the Slow Apocalypse: Iyashikei in the Anthropocene. (Comparative Literature)
  • Sadie Brink, Orthodoxy and Russian Symbolism: Life-Creation in the Works of Mother Maria Skobtsova. 
  • Quinlan Evans, The Smoke of Our Motherland: The Aesthetics of Industrial Ruin in Three Works from Russian-Speaking Ukraine.

  • Amelia Moriarty, Cringecore Ethics: Nabokov’s Poshlust Versus the Apathetic Imagination. (Comparative Literature)

2022

  • Marielle Czerniecki, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”: Dual Psychologies of Faith and Spiritual Peace in Tolstoian Fiction.
  • Alexander Fallow, The Familiar Face Flickers in the Crowd: The City and the Subject of the Soviet Thaw in I walk the Streets of Moscow.
  • Isabelle Sinclair, The Birth of an Artist: The Poetics of Myth-Making in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Essay “Natalia Goncharova: Life and Art.”

2021

  • Michael Lerner, Trotsky Writes the Russian Revolution: The Symbol of Explosion in Trotsky’s My Life and the History of the Russian Revolution and Its Meta-Symbolic Significance.
  • Austin Serif, The Portrait Narratives of Gogol and Wilde. (Comparative Literature)
  • Zack Youcha, On the Road to Recovery: Soviet Jewish Travelogues in a Thawing Landscape.

2020

  • Hillary Gerber, Stuck In-Between: An Analysis of Characters as Political Actors in the Work of Herta Müller and Sana Krasikov. (Russian/Anthropology)

2018

  • Brandon Marrow, Life as on the First Day of Creation: Historical and Poetic Myths about the First Soviet Agricultural Commune in Altai.
  • Fiona Rockwell, Cutting the Roots of Oppression: Exemplary Fictions of Krest’ianka, 1947-48.
  • Cansu Sarac, Two Short Stories by Nadezha Teffi: Translation and Commentary.
  • Jessica Wolfsohn, Aesthetics and Asceticism: God, Self, and Nation in Mikhail Nesterov’s Saint Sergius Cycle. (Comparative Literature)

2017

  • Timmy Straw Beezhold, “In Memory of Memory”: The Poetry of Maria Stepanova.

2016

  • Carlo D’Amato, Vladimir Putin's Winged Troika : The Role of Sanctions, Oil Price, and Weak Economic Institutions in the Russian Ruble Crisis of 2014 (Political Science/Russian)
  • Isabel Meigs, Gorenshtein in Berdichev: Finding the Mundane in the Meaningful
  • Orla O’Sullivan, Nostalgia, Deferred: An Evenki Poetics of Cultural Incubation
  • Ella Smith, Facture/Faktura: Exploding Artwork and Alchemy of Labor (Russian/Art)
  • Edmond Soun, The Absolute from Nothing: Vladimir Kobrin’s Film Art

2015

  • Sabine Bischofberger, "On the Shores of the Ionian Sea": A Translation
  • Sasha Peters, "The State Built by Stalin Still Lives": The Intersections of Soviet Industrialization and Russian Nationalism in Policy and Literature

2014

  • Olivia Capozzalo, Inscribing Memory: Lyrical Subject in the Memoir-Prose and Post-Holocaust Poetry of Boris Slutsky
  • Madeline Kinkel. Suspended and Without Salvation: Apocalypse and the Empty Christ in Andrei Platonov's "The Foundation Pit"
  • Amanda Strenz, Emigrants and Immigrants: Transnational Authors on Balancing and Creating National Identities.
  • Kate Weinreich. The (Im)possibility of Bearing Witness: Representations of Trauma in Soviet Literature
  • Chang Woo Seo. Staff Captain Rybnikov

2013

  • Rosalind Lewis. "Nadgrobnyj madrigal": Russian-American funerary Aesthetics in California and Oregon (Russian/Art)
  • Auden Lincoln-Vogel. Surreal Returns (Russian/Art)
  • Marija Perunovic. "The Rise and Fall of Ikar Gubelkijan": a Translation
  • Justin Radtke. Vasily Zhukovsky's Ballads: Their Themes and Christian-Spiritual Meanings
  • Joseph Jatcko. False Fathers: Marlen Khutsiev’s "Ilich’s Gate" and the Myth of Soviet Paternity (MALS)

2012

  • Caroline Brickman. Non-Memoirs: An Annotated Translation of Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman's "Ne-memuary"
  • Tess Halavy. Yesterday and Today: The Children's Books of Kornei Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak in the Early Soviet Era (Russian/Art)
  • Paul Hermanson. "The Perceiver Merges with the Artist": James Agee, Leo Tolstoy, and the Drive toward an Ideal of Artistic Communication (General Literature)
  • Alexandra Tatarsky. To the Letter: Theologies of Translation in Joseph Brodsky's "Isaac and Abraham"

2011

  • Ryan Connors. Larisa Shepitko's "Wings": Its Cinematic Aesthetic and Cultural Meaning
  • Elisabeth Garry. The Holy Fool in "Crime and Punishment" and "Wise Blood"
  • Katherine Marshall. The Figure of the Goalkeeper in Stalinist Culture
  • Lila Seidman. Selves Mimicking Stories Creating Selves (Russian/Psychology)
  • Andrew Wilder. Mandelstam's 1932: "Journey to Armenia, "Lamarck," and "To the German Language"

2010

  • Matthew Kendall. To a Heightened State: Sergei Eisenstein's "The General Line'"
  • Piper Wheeler. Like a Severed Head: Apocalypse in Isaac Babel's "Konarmiia"

2009

  • Adams Pope Carroll III. [Uezzhaet Poslednii t=Tramvai] : The Symbology of the Streetcar in 20th Century Russian literature
  • Sophie Case-Gabbard. An Exploration of Exile in Gaito Gazdanov's "Buddha's Return"
  • Hardie Duncan. The Early Films of Otar Iosseliani
  • Miriam Miller. Two Versions of "The Twelve Chairs" : Texts of Appropriation and Revolution
  • Jennifer Sherman. "Poshlost'" in the Russian Literary Tradition : Romanticism, Symbolism, and Nabokov

2008

  • Lauren Abman. Lethal journalism : Anna Politkovskaya and the High Art of Investigative Journalism (Russian)
  • Molly Cohen. Time for Another Apocalypse? : Shifting Conceptions of Russian Emptiness in the Works of Andrei Bely and Viktor Pelevin
  • Lisa Horner. Dmitrii Lipskerov's "Elena and Helmsman" : Translation and Analysis
  • Matt Zimo. The Tradition of Andrei Tarkovsky
  • Naomi Dickerson. KomMissia and the Russian Comics Subculture (research support from the Reed College Opportunity Grant)
  • James Meador. Moscow Tantric Blues: Bidiya Dandaron's Letters to Nataliya Kovrigina 1956-1959 (Russian/Religion)

2007

  • Jesse Hadden. A Foreign Affair: The Romance Tour in Post-Soviet Russia (Anthropology / Russian)
  • Hunter O'Folan. We All Think Differently?: A Translation and Analysis of Vasilii Shukshin's "Point of View"
  • Marlene Kelly. Semiotics of etiquette in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina": shifting forms of address and diglossia as markers of transgression in nineteenth century Russian aristocratic society

2006

  • Alea Adigweme. "See What a Husband You Have? You Can Make Us Some Jam": A Discussion of Marriage, Social Policy, and Culture in Abram Room's "Bed and Sofa"
  • Benjamin Boyce. Narrating Selfhood in Andrei Platonov's "Happy Moscow"
  • Hillary Brevig. Vladimir Sorokin's "Dostoevsky-Trip": Translation and Analysis
  • Lauren Pope. Where Do We Go From Here? Siberian Village Life After the Thaw

2005

  • Margaret Anderson. The Decline of Liberal Democracy in Putin's Russia (Russian / Political Science)
  • Sara Lafleur-Vetter. Russia At The "Post": Reading the Changing Role of Literature in Russia through the Prism of Post-Soviet Publishing Houses (Russian / Anthropology)
  • Daniel Lichterman. "The Headless Man": A Lifelong Literary Ambition Composed for the Desk: an Exploration of "Bricolage" and Storytelling within Isaac Babel's "Childhood Cycle" (English)
  • Jessica Sanders. "How Unfairly Writers Complain that We Don't Live in Romantic Times": Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "The Cuirassier"
  • Rebecca Sullivan. Iurii Olesha's "Strogii Iunosha" and the Stalinist Aesthetic

2004

  • Alison Beth Annunziata. Corporal Suffering and the Corporate Whole: An Examination of the Suffering Body-in-Text in Soviet and Post-Perestroika Narratives.
  • Rachael Horst. Cincinnatus' Criminal Intuition: The Contexts of Nabokov's "Invitation to a Beheading".
  • Michael Jack Rencewicz. The Children Re-Forged: "Pedagogicheskaia Poema" in its Stalinist Context.
  • Christopher Cabot Wood. Selected Poems of Dmitrii Prigov: Introduced, Translated into English and Annotated.

2003

  • Katherine Carr Chapman. In Kharms' Way.
  • Jacob Konick. The Figure of the Jew in Five Works by Anton Chekhov.
  • Jacob Alexander Ross. Aleksei Balabanov's Homme Fatal: Formulations of the Russian Hero in Response to Western Influence.
  • Angela Ann Wilson. Refashioning the Revolutionary: Conceiving "the Look" and Life of the Utopian Body.

2002

  • Catherine Eskra. The Fiery Angel[s] of Valerii Briusov and Sergei Prokofiev: Context, Technique, and Ambiguity.
  • Anastasia Kayiatos. Out of the Closet and into the Drawer: Anatomizing Evgenii Kharitonov's Queer Corpus.
  • Erin Pappas: Ideology and Metapragmatics: Speech as Trope and Representation in Two Texts by Turgenev.
  • Mara Zepeda. The Children's Curse: The Influence and Reinterpretation of Rousseau's "Emile" in the Childhood and Education of the Russian Superfluous Man.

2001

  • Sabrina Canfield. Death in the Poetry of Gavril Romanovich Derzhavin.
  • Darlene Pasieczny. Mayakovsky, Rodchenko and Deinka Walk into a Worker's Club... Vladimir Mayakovsky as Pictorial Device and the Institutional Identity of the Russian Avant-Garde. (2001 - Art History)
  • Victoria Pustynsky. Selecting a Language: The Use of "New" Vocabulary in Soviet and Post-Soviet Power Discourse.
  • Alyssa Reed. The Absurd Performance of Franz Kafka and Daniil Kharms: Experience in a Moving Universe. (2001 - General Literature: German and Russian)
  • Todd Ruhlen. A Translation of Three Stories by Victor Pelevin.
  • Ryan Stuewe. Off the Earthly Line: Death Defeats Kharms Defeats Death.

2000

  • Alexis Ruby Krock. The Urban Sublime. (2000 - General literature: English, French, Russian)
  • Meredith Catherine Safer. Edward Limonov's Eta ia, Edichka: The Poetics of Contrast.
  • Marcus Emmett Smith. Red Machine 4.0: Dziga Vertov and the Kino Eye. (2000- Master of Arts and Liberal Studies)
  • Margo Stern. Telling the Truth: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Evgenia Ginzburg and the Representation of the Gulag.

1999

  • Michael Kunichika. The Sanction of Epic
  • Grant Mainland. Dances of Death: Irony and Self-(de)formation in Lermontov and Blok