USC
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
PhD Recipients (1992 to the Present)
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Kathleen Dillon
(PhD 1992)
Executive Director of ATSEEL
Dissertation title: "Pasternak's Verlaine: the Translations as Transcripts
of Influence"
(Program in Comparative Literature)
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Dragan Kujundzic
(PhD 1994)
Professor and Chair, Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University
of Florida, Gainesville.
Dissertation title: "Yury Tynianov: The Returns of History"
See Dissertation abstract
E-mail: dragan@ufl.edu
See his article of October 18, 2001 on Eichmann
in Jerusalem, Milosevic in the Hague
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Ljilija Grubiscic
(PhD 1996)
Director of Marketing and Communications, Flora L. Thornton School of Music,
University of Southern California
Dissertation title: "Painting As Text: Developments in Russian Art During
the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century"
See Dissertation abstract
E-mail: ljiljana@usc.edu
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Mark Konecny
(PhD 1998)
Curator, Institute of Modern Russian Culture University of Southern California
Dissertation title: "The Aesthetics of Performance in Experimental Russian
Culture of the 1910's"
See Dissertation abstract
E-mail: konecny@usc.edu
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Bartle Gorman
(PhD 1998)
Diplomatic Security Service, Department of State, Washington, D.C
Dissertation title: "A Necessary Epigone: The Fantastic and 'Dvoeverie'
in the works of A. K. Tolstoi"
See Dissertation abstract
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Karen L. Myers
(PhD 1999)
Dissertation title: "Public Myth and Private Self in the Russian Silver
Age: The Correspondence of Vera Kommissarzhevskaia (1864-1910)"
See Dissertation abstract
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Ekaterina Yudina
(PhD 1999)
Lecturer in Russian, Dept. of Comparative Lit & Foreign Languages University
of California, Riverside
Dissertation title: "Metropolis to necropolis: The St. Petersburg Myth
and its Cultural Extension in the late 1910s and 1920s"
See Dissertation abstract
E-mail: kyudina@hotmail.com
E-mail: ekaterina.yudina@ucr.edu
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Myriam Lefloch
(PhD 2000)
Dissertation title: "'Sovereign of many languages...': The Russian Academy
Dictionary (1789-1794) As a Socio-Historical Document"
E-mail: myriam_lefloch@yahoo.com
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Galina Pastur
(PhD 2000)
Dissertation title: "Terrible Screeching: Adaptations of Pushkin's Queen
of Spades in Theater, Opera and Film"
E-mail: frvalerii@earthlink.net
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Lora Mjolsness
(Wheeler) (PhD 2001)
Lecturer, Program in Russian Studies, University of California, Irvine
Dissertation title: "Children in Transition: Popular Children's Magazines
in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia"
E-mail: lora@uci.edu
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Frank Goodwin
(PhD 2001)
Assistant Professor, Dept. of German and Slavic Studies, University of Florida
Dissertation title: "The Debate Over Bakunin and Dostoevsky in Early
Soviet Russia"
E-mail: jegoodwi@germslav.ufl.edu
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Romy Taylor (PhD
2002)
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Arizona
Dissertation
title: "The Friendly Epistle in Russian Poetry: A History of the Genre"
Web: http://www.petuhov.com/romy/
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Frederick White
(PhD 2001)
Assistant Professor of German and Russian, Memorial University, Newfoundland,
Canada
Dissertation title: “Leonid Andreev Through the Prism of the Literary
Portrait”
E-mail: fwhite@mun.ca
Web: http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~fwhite/
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Mikhail Gronas
(PhD 2002)
recipient of the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize
Assistant Professor
at Dartmouth College
Dissertation Title: "Pushkin's Taste and Taste for Pushkin: Mechanism
of Individual Literary Taste as an Object of Systematic Reconstruction"
E-mail: gronasm@hotmail.com
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Alina Orlov (PhD 2003)
Monterey Defense Language Institute
Dissertation title: "Natan Altman and 'Jewish art' in Russia in the 1910s"
E-mail: alinaorlov@hotmail.com
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Elizabeth Durst (PhD 2003)
Currently: Lecturer, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University
of Southern California
E-mail: durst@usc.edu
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David Borgmeyer (PhD 2003)
Adjunct Assistant Professor
- St.Louis University
Lecturer - Fontbonne University
Adjunct Faculty - Webster University
Assistant Instructor of Russian - Washington University in St.Louis
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Allison Comins-Richmond
(PhD 2004)
E-mail: ace@usc.edu
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Dissertation Abstracts
Title: YURY
TYNIANOV: THE RETURNS OF HISTORY (TYNIANOV, YURY, RUSSIA)
Author(s): KUJUNDZIC, DRAGAN
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1994
Pages: 00001 Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA; 0208
Advisor: Chair: ALEXANDER ZHOLKOVSKY
Source: DAI, 55, no. 08A, (1994): 2421
Abstract:
The study is focused on the work of Yury Nikolaevich Tynianov (1884-1943), one of the leading critics of the Russian Formalist group. It is an attempt to reinscribe the works of Tynianov in the tradition of Russian Nietzscheanism, an approach which has been largely overlooked by the interpreters and the historians of the movement. The first part of the thesis, entitled "Theory," explores the implications of Nietzsche's thought in Tynianov's theoretical writings. The second part of the thesis, entitled "History," discusses the engagement of Tynianov's writing within the context of the Russian avant-garde, and, later, Stalinist culture. The chapter "Tynianov and the Forms of Literary-political Mummification," for example, discusses the ways in which the Formalists interpreted Lenin's political work as an artistic artifact. My reading of Tynianov's "Wax Effigy," on the other hand, expands on the question of history and elaborates upon Tynianov's parodic response to the cult of Lenin and to the ideology and practice of socialist realism. The chapters dedicated to Tynianov's criticism lead to the discussion of Tynianov's "Wax Effigy" in yet another way: these chapters are introduced in order to show how some of Tynianov's central critical topics and concepts, such as "interval," "parody" or " innovation," among others, find their most sophisticated elaboration in this story. Both parts of the thesis, the one dedicated to "Theory," and the one entitled "History," converge on the question of the historical. The discussion of Tynianov's critical analysis of the conditions of temporality of the work of art, or his reflections on history in the "Wax Effigy," and the convergence between the two, lead to the conclusion that Tynianov's works offer a complex and rich discourse on the questions of textuality, writing and history.
SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN
Accession No: AAG0575379
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SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN
LANGUAGE, MODERN
Accession No: AAI9600967
Title: PAINTING AS TEXT: DEVELOPMENTS IN RUSSIAN ART DURING THE SECOND HALF
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (VLADIMIR STASOV, PAVEL FEDOTOV, IL'IA REPIN)
Author(s): GRUBISIC, LJILJANA
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1996
Pages: 00336 Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA; 0208
Source: DAI, 58, no. 01A, (1996): 0003
Abstract:
This study is a critical examination of Russian cultural assumptions about literature and their impact upon Russian painting during the second half of the nineteenth century. A particular attention is placed on explicating the crucial role of Vladimir Stasov in re-shaping attitudes toward Russian painting. Working independently from the Academy-bound art establishment, he was instrumental in building the ideological construct that eventually become known as Russian Realism from a number of vague concepts originally labeled the "new" Russian art. This study is organized around three distinct yet closely related themes. First, there is the institutional history of Russian art. It, so to speak, forms the frame in which developments in the second half of the nineteenth century are illustrated. Second, there is the analysis of the critical assertions of Stasov and his contemporaries which have been greatly abridged to eliminate conceptual vagueness. Finally, there is the close analysis of three works: The Major's Courtship by Pavel Fedotov, Volga Barge Haulers and The Unexpected Return by Il'ia Repin. These paintings have been selected for their historical and critical significance. They stand as milestones in the development of what would become known as Russian Realism illustrative of the power and limitations of that concept. The title of this study--"Painting as Text"--alludes to two specific aspects of the subject: first, the cosmopolitan orientation and literary-bound practice of the Imperial Academy which encouraged its preferred genre of history painting to be viewed as a visual explication of a text--a sort of reverse ekhprasis; and second, the literary bias of Russian culture which tended to reduce developments in Russian painting to literary analogies. This literary bias, invoked by Stasov as well as his critical opponents, insured that the boundary between Russian literature and painting has remained ill defined. An attempt will be made here to bring clarification into this relationship by casting a critical eye upon the notion of the painting as text upon which the ideological construct known as Russian Realism ultimately rested.
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Title: THE AESTHETICS OF PERFORMANCE
IN EXPERIMENTAL RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE 1910'S (MODERNISM, FUTURISM) Author(s):
KONECNY, MARK CLARENCE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1998
Pages: 00461 Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA; 0208
Advisor: JOHN E. BOWLT
Source: DAI, 59, no. 08A, (1998): 3017
Abstract:
This dissertation analyzes the various elements of performance culture as it relates to Modernism and Futurism in Pre-Revolutionary Russian; among topics to be addressed are the interrelationship between theater and the poetic text, the mixing of high and low genres in Russian Modernism, cabaret, theater and the Futurist aesthetic. By identifying and evaluating the performative qualities of the diverse groups of Russian artistic groupings, this study places Futurism within the context of a larger cultural milieu--a milieu in which the eccentric experiments and ideas of the avant-gardists are to be seen not as anomalous, but as an intrinsic element in the new esthetic of the transfiguration of man. The relationship between the major Futurist groups and artists and the concepts of performance, parody, and improvisation in light of performance theory is elucidated. It is the contention of the author that Russian artistic movements of the 1910's, especially Futurism and Cubo-Futurism, must be reinterpreted as performance art, an art form that relies on the interaction of art and artist in a theatrical arena. The frequent critiques of Futurist poetry that stress its obscurity or incomprehensibility fail to take into account that the text is only a single element of the performance, much in the same way that the written script of the Commedia dell'arte does not convey the true message of the improvisatory theatrical form. When "art" or "literature" is seen as part of a larger whole, encompassing the role of the artist as actor (Gesamtkunstwerk), the tension between the written and spoken word, and the idea of oral culture, the "incomprehensible" text becomes more that just a cipher, it reveals itself to be a complex part of the cultural mosaic intentionally produced by the artist/performer. This dissertation examines primary poetical and dramatic texts, and works of visual art, and draws intertextual parallels with other works and movements, both within the Russian context and in the wider context of European Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism.
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SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN
THEATER ART HISTORY
Accession No: AAG9902830
Title: A NECESSARY EPIGONE: THE FANTASTIC AND "DVOEVERIE" IN THE WORKS OF
A. K. TOLSTOI (ALEKSEI KONSTANTINOVICH TOLSTOI)
Author(s): GORMAN, BARTLE BURKE
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1998
Pages: 00261 Institution: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA; 0208
Advisor: Adviser: ALEXANDER ZHOLKOVSKY
Source: DAI, 59, no. 08A, (1998): 3017
Abstract:
This dissertation reevaluates Tolstoi's position in the course of Russian literary history in that it establishes him as a "necessary" epigone, i.e., one who preserves and expands the fantastic strain of literature for future generations, especially the Symbolists. Tolstoi's place as a literary epigone is confirmed by analyzing a number of his works in relation to those by Pushkin, Lermontov and several Western writers; Tolstoi is then positioned as a necessary link between Russian writers of the first half of the nineteenth century and those of the Modernist period, especially Blok and Solov'ev; this connection is underscored specifically in terms of how Tolstoi develops the fantastic in Russian literature. Tolstoi's interest in the fantastic was a lifelong, evolving phenomenon, both personally and professionally. In arguing that Tolstoi is one of the foremost writers of the fantastic, the vast majority of his oeuvre is analyzed, including early prose works, his historical novel Kniaz' Serebrianyi, numerous lyrics, ballads and narratives-in-verse, as well as his play Don Zhuan. Close scrutiny of Tolstoi's texts leads one to discover that a particular cultural phenomenon known as "dvoeverie" (double or dual faith) recurs throughout much of the writer's corpus of works. In contrast to the Russian peasantry, who regularly mixed pagan and Christian rituals, the form of "dvoeverie" reflected in Tolstoi's texts is traced to cultural practices of the nobility, who outwardly followed the tenets of the Orthodox Church, but simultaneously participated in various occult sciences. Some of the most interesting examples of such an occurrence in Tolstoi's texts involve a combination of Spiritualism and Orthodoxy in a number of his lyrics written in the 1850s. Final analysis of these lyrics and other works indicate that when read from the point of view of Romanticism, they are indeed epigonic. However, when read in terms of Tolstoi's interest in the esoteric, many of his works illustrate a high degree of originality.
SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN
Accession No: AAG9902801
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Title: Public myth and private self in the Russian Silver
Age: The correspondence of Vera Kommissarzhevskaia (1864--1910)
Author(s): Myers, Karen Lisa
Degree: Ph.D.
Year: 1999*
Pages: 00340 Institution: University of Southern California; 0208
Advisor: John E. Bowlt
Source: DAI, 60, no. 12A (1999): p. 4456
Abstract:
During and after her lifetime, the early twentieth-century actress-entrepreneur Vera Fedorovna Kommissarzhevskaia was the object of contradictory mythologization. Symbolist poets like Aleksandr Blok idealized her as the "youth of these last, crazy, terrible but wonderful years." Conservative critic Aleksandr Kugel' further bolstered the actress's identity with the younger generation and, conversely, with the marker of conservative attitudes towards female social behavior, femininity, by dubbing her the "fragile child of her time." Kommissarzhevskaia was the "lyrical note" on the Russian stage, yet her voice also "echoed the world orchestra" (Blok). Like a prescient mystic, the actress was eulogized as the "unfurled banner of a promised Spring" (Blok). But the determination with which she advocated theater reformation likened her to a "Joan of Arc" (Osip Mandel'shtam); her tours were "Religious Processions" (Aleksandr Serebrov) and her talent and conviction "led her to Golgotha" (Nikolai Evreinov). This varied typology was founded on a complex base composed of the actress's personal and professional ideology, cultural modeling, and her audiences' aesthetic and political orientation. In this dissertation, I analyze the conflict between public and private representations of the self, based on a study of the actress's personal letters: the fundamental object of inquiry is to determine to what extent Kommissarzhevskaia directed her own-myth making or commodification. I proceed with an analysis contrasting discourse and thematic concerns found in the actress's epistolary self-representations with three primary public images: the Symbolist Eidolon, the femme fragile, the militant martyr. I argue that Kommissarzhevskaia's personal letters can be seen as cultural artifacts: self-reflexive women's writing that encapsulates the period's dominant literary impulses, social themes, and aesthetic preoccupations through the experience of the individual.
SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN THEATER WOMEN'S
STUDIES
Accession No: AAI9955055
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Title: Metropolis to necropolis: The St. Petersburg myth and
its cultural extension in the late 1910s and 1920s (Russia)
Author(s): Yudina, Ekaterina L.
Degree: Ph.D.
Year: 1999
Pages: 00184 Institution: University of Southern California; 0208
Advisor: Adviser John E. Bowlt
Source: DAI, 61, no. 09A (1999): p. 3598
Standard No: ISBN: 0-599-94784-5
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the literary and visual culture of St. Petersburg during the period marked by the outbreak of World War I and October Revolution. Dramatic changes that shook the foundations of society led to a series of basic transmutations reflected in the works of art. Although the theme of the transformation of metropolis to necropolis was a distinguishing feature of Modernist discourse (implied in Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg ), it became a central component of St. Petersburg culture in the late 1910s-1920s. During this decade the city of St. Petersburg was renamed twice--at the beginning of World War I as Petrograd and then, after Lenin's death, as Leningrad--and also ceased to be the capital. Loss of name can be understood as loss of identity, a sign of death, a transition from logos to chaos. Of the various St. Petersburg prophecies--the most important, the prediction of the death of the city--came true. Its citizens witnessed this process of decay and artists reflected this in their works. This dissertation demonstrates the existence of a cohesive Petersburg text in the historical and cultural period of the late 1910s-1920s and reveals its syntagmatic concept and themes, such as visions of the city as Necropolis, as Noah's Ark, as Museum, and as Collective Memory. Sources of various genres including literary and documentary texts and works of art are analyzed within the contemporary context reconstructing to a certain extent the conditions of life in the dying city. In the framework of the existing scholarship, the dissertation examines the neglected yet crucial phenomenon of the disintegration of St. Petersburg culture. Analyzing St. Petersburg literature and art of the late 1910s and early 1920s, it explores the signs of the city's devastation and decay and not the distopian encroachment of the "brave new world." While construction became the general cliché for the post-revolutionary art in Russia, dissolution of St. Petersburg and its cultural heritage provides an important balancing metaphor and a rich field of research.
SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: LITERATURE, SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN ART HISTORY HISTORY,
MODERN HISTORY, EUROPEAN
Accession No: AAI9987636