About me

Picture
photo by Mihaela Pacurar
I am an Assistant Professor in the department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, and in the Program in Jewish Studies, at the University of Colorado Boulder.

I received my Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard. 

From 2010 until 2012 I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University. In the Fall 2012 semester I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies at Lafayette College. Currently, in the Spring 2013 semester, I am the Aresty Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. 

What's new:

  • My op-ed, "Goodbye, Lenin?" on the fall of Lenin's statue in Kiev during the ongoing protests there (The International New York Times, December 9, 2013)
  • My essay "How Schindler's List Got it Wrong" - on the new book on the Holocaust in Soviet cinema (The Forward, September 20, 2013)
  • My essay on Snowden and the airport where he is stuck and from which I emgrated, "Stuck in Sheremetyevo" The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, July 9, '13) 
  • My profile of Russian journalist and activist Masha Gessen, and a review of her book on Vladimir Putin, in Lilith Magazine (Fall 2012)

Book news:

Picture
The first complete English-language translation of the great comic novel The Zelmenyaners, by the Soviet Yiddish writer Moyshe Kulbak, is just out from Yale University Press! The book has my critical introduction and notes on the text. The link to the book on the publisher's website is here; order it through your local bookstore! 

Scheduled book talks:
Press about the book:
  • Interview with me by Mikhail Krutikov in The Yiddish Forward (1/31/2013)
  • Review by Mikhail Krutikov in The Yiddish Forward (2/4/2013)
  • Review by Rokhl Kafrissen for the Jewish Book Council (2/15/2013)
  • Review by Ezra Glinter in The Forward (2/20/2013)
  • Podcast (41 minutes long) produced by the Yiddish Book Center (6/4/2013) 
My tiny little essays on The Jewniverse: