My primary area of specialization is mid-19th century Russian prose and criticism. My dissertation work was a reception study of the critical and cultural legacy of Russia's first "professional" literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky, as well as the underexplored period of the "mrachnoe semiletie," seven years of cultural repression bounded by the European revolutions of 1848 and the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855. More recently, I've become fascinated with death and the "Chekhovian ending" as a thematic and structural dominant in Anton Chekhov’s stories and plays.

Since my arrival at MU in 2000, I have taught a range of courses, from elementary Russian to graduate seminars, and many others in between. While there have been perennial favorites, I am as happy to teach courses on new topics as I am the more familiar. A common thread through all of my courses is the intersection of literature, culture, and history; increasingly, they are also geared to promote undergraduate and graduate student career readiness, so that our students graduate with demonstrable skills in critical thinking and problem-solving; oral and written communications; and intercultural fluency.