About me

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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 and taught at Tufts, Lafayette College, and Rutgers University before landing in Boulder. 

What's new:

  • My essay "Crimean Crisis Revives a Classic Soviet Jewish Joke" on the return of Rabinovich, a classic hero of the Soviet Jewish joke (Tablet Magazine, April 1. 2014)
  • My review of Gary Shteyngart's memoir, Little Failure (Tablet Magazine, Jan. 6, 2014)
  • 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 on Snowden and the airport where he is stuck and from which I emigrated, "Stuck in Sheremetyevo" The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, July 9, '13) 

Book news:

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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)
  • Review by Bryan Cheyette in The Times Literary Supplement (5/24/2013)
  • Podcast (41 minutes long) produced by the Yiddish Book Center (6/4/2013) 
My tiny little essays on The Jewniverse:
  • On Dazbog, Denver's Soviet-themes coffee chain.