My work focuses on the intersection and interaction of politics, the arts, and media in Russia from the 19th – 21st century.  I am interested in the strategy and tactics of the democratic movement's struggle against autocracy, as well as the tactics of state and police repression. My focus has been the extreme modes of political communication deployed in this context and their symbiosis with various media forms.  My first book, Written in Blood: Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture, 1861-1881 (University of Wisconsin, 2017) examined the way in which Russian literature contributed to the emergence of modern terrorism in Russia by providing its moral justification and iconic image. My second book, Dostoevsky's Provocateurs (Northwestern University, 2023) argues that provocation is a key mechanism of Dostoevsky's novelistic art and integral to Dostoevskian dialogue as conceived by Mikhail Bakhtin. My third book, Funny Dostoevsky (forthcoming from Bloomsbury 2024) edited together with Irina Erman, places comedy and humor at the center of Dostoevsky's artistic and spiritual vision. Currently, I am working on Russian YouTube as an "alternative Russia," a home to Russian independent journalism, progressive stand-up comedy, and resistance to Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine.

The wellspring of my scholarly interests remains the 19th century literary tradition and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I love Dostoevsky for his vast range, his philosophical and spiritual depths, and his unparalleled insights into human psychology. But also for his thrill-a-minute plots and his diabolical sense of humor. He foresaw us, he understood us, and unless we human beings radically evolve, he will always be a contemporary.

Scholarly interests: political communication (terrorism, provocation, information warfare, conspiracy theories); film and media theory and history; Dostoevsky; comedy and comic performance

Favorite courses taught: Russ 35 Dostoevsky and the Problem of Evil; Russ 07 Who is the Terrorist; Russ 14 The Age of Brainwashing: The History of Russian and Soviet Cinema; Russ 38.10/COLT 63.02 Modern Conspiracy.