Commentary
When there’s a Putin/Harry Potter emergency, who ya gonna call?
cnn.com, March 28, 2022
My contribution to a forum in Law, Culture and the Humanities on public intellectuals during and after Trump.
Unstuck in Time explores the fictional and ideological reconfigurations of time in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse
All the Russias, June 1, 2021
There is no scenario in which a sentence containing the name “Putin” and the words “Navalny’s underwear” does the president any good.
All the Russias, December 23, 2020
A modest proposal for socializing at online conferences.
Feeding the Elephant: A Forum on Scholarly Communications. The H-Net Book Channel, November 4, 2020.
It’s finally happened: I’m actually angry about an anti-Trump ad.
All the Russias. July 2, 2020.
How we work during the pandemic.
ASEEES Newsnet, June 2020.
Imagine an obituary for O.J. Simpson which talks about his acting career and his role in a series of famous TV commercials, but leaves out the fact that he played football. Oh, and that pesky murder trial.That’s basically what the New York Times did in its obituary for Eduard Limonov.
All the Russias. March 19, 2020.
As contemporary Russian discourse moves further and further not just to the right, but to a world in which even the most improbable conspiracy theories can be publicly entertained with a straight face, questions of intent and belief inevitably come to the fore. In Russia, as in America, liberal intellectuals bash their pointy but figurative heads against an equally figurative wall, half-asking, half-lamenting, “How can people really believe all this?” Or its corollary: “Do these people really believe what they’re saying?”
ASEEES Blog, January 17, 2020
Like most people I know, I watched the Notre Dame Cathedral fire with a sense of growing despair. There’s no need to rehearse all the reasons why this event is so horrible, but it is worth noting how personal it can feel. If you’ve traveled in Europe, you’ve probably been to Notre Dame. It’s not just historic, it’s historical: constructed over the course of three centuries, it embodies multiple architectural styles in a single building.
All the Russias. April 17, 2019.
Americans have been anxious about Russians for a few years now, with stories that they’re fixing our elections, attacking our power grids, ruining social media, and taking Don Jr. seriously. But Russia Beyond recently published a story that made my blood run cold: “Are Russians more obese than Americans?’
All the Russias.. February 5, 2019
When your country is run by a corrupt, lying bully with complete disdain for the rule of law, it’s easy to get self-righteous. You can grow overconfident about the virtues of the people who join you in opposing the forces that are charting out a path toward dictatorship and ruination.
And if you think that’s depressing, wait until I stop talking about America and start talking about Russia..
All the Russias. February 5, 2019
As some of you know, I spent a couple of years writing the first draft of Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism on my blog. Now that the book is coming out (from Cornell University Press, this March), I’m back to work on my next projects. And one of them is…another book whose rough draft will be posted on a blog.
All the Russias January 10, 2019
A funny thing happened to me while I was writing my book on conspiracy theory and contemporary Russia: my obscure little corner of Russian cultural studies suddenly threatened to become relevant.
All the Russias October 14, 2018.
Also on the SEEJ blog.
Previously, on The Walking Dead…
Well, no, obviously, this is The Americans (Season Six, Episode 2), but by the time the hour was over, I couldn’t help but feel that I was watching a lot of dead men and women walking.
All the Russias April 5, 2018
In a stunning turn of events, murdered Russian opposition journalist and author Arkady Babchenko is alive and well in Kiev.
All the Russias May 30, 2018
The Americans: The Marriage Plot against America
When The Americans began in 2013, it was a response to the 2010 Anna Chapman/Illegals spy scandal that failed to shock the nation. The news that Russia had populated suburban New Jersey with agents whose most likely shot at producing valuable information was a well-crafted Google search was more the stuff of comedy than drama. The whole affair got its first television deal before The Americans ever aired, when Chapman was given a regular program on Russia’s REN TV devoted to conspiracy theories.
All the Russias March 29, 2018
In his recent interview with Megyn Kelly, Russian President Vladimir Putin set off alarm bells in the U.S. media. Criticizing the United States for “throw[ing] 13 Russians to the media,” he added: “Maybe they are not even Russians, but Ukrainians, Tatars or Jews, but with Russian citizenship, which should also be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship or a Green Card. Maybe the U.S. paid them for this.”
The Washington Post. March 12, 2018 (The Monkey Cage).
Also in All the Russias as “Was Putin Targeting Jews?” March 12, 2018.
In the middle of January, freshmen cadets at an aviation academy in Ulyanovsk (a provincial town bearing Lenin’s original last name), posted a clip inspired both by the Benny Benassi’s 2002 “Satisfaction” and a 2013 all-male British army parody, surely never intending to become the latest flashpoint in contemporary Russian culture wars.
All the Russias. February 27, 2018
As the noose tightens around the Trump administration, and most of my friends place their bets as to which enabler is going to take the fall next (Go, Jared!), I worry that some Western pundits have gone overboard. While investigating or critiquing alleged collusion with Russia, we need to be careful that we are not inadvertently bolstering the Russian case for American and European paranoia. We may not be colluding with Russia, but we are handing over propaganda victories free of charge.
All the Russias. December 5, 2017
The only thing gratifying about this weekend’s uproar over Matt Taibbi’s Moscow days is that Russia watchers were 20 years ahead of this particular news cycle. Apparently, scandal is a renewable resource.
The Huffington Post. October 30, 2017
All the Russias. October 29, 2017
How do you build drama around an election with a foregone conclusion? An election that has barred the participation of the most viable opposition candidate (with “viable” as the operative word only when grading on a serious curve)?
In Russia’s case, the answer, apparently, is Ksenia Sobchak.
All the Russias, October 23, 2017
Donald Trump has a knack for rendering otherwise neutral phrases toxic, colonizing them as though they were the site of a future white nationalist ethnostate. From “Believe me” to “beautiful” to “a lot of people don’t know,” innocent collections of words are now doomed to sound like quotes from our president’s 5th-grade vocabulary.
All the Russias, October 16, 2017
Is Russia engaged in a concerted effort to undermine American democracy, or are we living through a twenty-first century version of red baiting (in the absence of actual Reds)?
The Huffington Post October 9, 2017.
All the Russias, October 9, 2017
Now that All the Russias has turned 5 (its birthday passing unnoticed last month even by its proud, but distracted papa), it is time for the blog to venture out into the world and stand on its own two feet. So I am delighted to announce some big changes.
All the Russias, October 4, 2017
Occasionally on All the Russias, we speak with Slavic scholars about a new or recently completed project. Today’s entry in this series is a bit different: Geoff Cebula is a Slavist and freelance translator with a Phd from Princeton, but the book he has just published (Adjunct) is not a Slavic monograph. It’s fiction, a cross between the campus novel and a genre that shall remain nameless in the interests of avoiding spoilers. But many of our readers either have worked or are currently working as adjuncts (or perhaps simply working with them); the professional plight of the novel’s protagonists is likely to be all too familiar.
All the Russias, August 1, 2017
There are really only two problems with The Putin Interviews, Oliver’s Stone’s four-hour series on Showtime: Vladimir Putin and Oliver Stone. One of these men is completely paranoid about American hegemonic power and convinced that Russia can be a a constructive counterbalance on the world stage. The other is the president of the Russian Federation.
The Huffington Post,, June 16, 2017
All the Russias, June 16, 2017
For years now I’ve had a standard answer to a standard question (“How did you get interested in Russian?”). I explain that when I was growing up, I thought my family was Russian, but then when I went to college, I found out we were just Jews. But by then it was too late.
All the Russias, March 9, 2017
The election of Donald Trump is the mother of all American political disasters, a craven, yellow streak down the back of the body politic. The debasement of public discourse is, at this point, no surprise, but who would have expected it to trickle down to the American media’s coverage of Russia?
All the Russias, January 16, 2017
Has “Springtime for Hitler” finally met its match?
What, after all, could be a better example of bad taste than a figure-skating routine performed by a man and a woman dressed as concentration camp inmates, complete with stripes and yellow stars? Clearly, Mel Brooks chose the wrong season for his Hitler-themed broadway scam. Winter is coming, accessorized with Holocaust kitsch.
The Huffington Post, December 15, 2016
All the Russias, December 1, 2016
Pity the poor Russia expert. We’re like the old Maytag repairman, sitting in our forgotten offices, hoping someone will need our help.
But when our experience is called upon, it’s usually not good news. No one seeks out a grizzled old veteran of the theory wars to solve a Dostoevsky emergency. Pundits and politicians don’t look to us for help with the latest Tolstoy crisis.
The Huffington Post, November 21, 2016
All the Russias, November 21, 2016
Russia’s winters just got a lot colder: last week, the government banned PornHub. Given that 92% of all Internet use in Russia involves porn (according to one estimate) this is great news for Netflix subscribers—streaming video is going to be a lot faster.
The Huffington Post, September 22,, 2016
All the Russias, September 19, 2016
It’s hunting season for mythological creatures, from New Jersey Muslims celebrating the World Trade Center attack to transgender bathroom predators, not to mention Jeb Bush supporters, we are getting used to seeing things that aren’t there. So it should be no surprise that the most popular gaming app is dedicated to finding imaginary monsters: Pokémon Go.
All the Russias, August 17, 2016
The Huffington Post, August 17, 2016
Is Donald Trump carrying Vladimir Putin’s baby?
This is not a headline from The National Enquirer (a newspaper that Trump himself has deemed worthy of respect), but if recent chatter on The Daily Beast, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post suggest, there must be some “experts” out there who could assure me that a Trump/Putin lovechild is a clear and present danger.
The Huffington Post, July 27, 2016
All the Russias, July 25, 2016
It’s not easy guarding the purity of the Russian state. In addition to the existential threats posed by rainbows, LGBT parades, Ukrainian libraries, and imported cheddar, Russia faces a new enemy: Netflix.
The Huffington Post, June 24, 2016
All the Russias, June 23, 2016
Now nearing the end of its fourth season, The Americans is a confounding success. It’s hard to figure out which of its triumphs is the most unlikely: that it has millions of Americans rooting for KGB agents to outsmart our country every week, or that the FX network has produced a critical darling that is not entirely awash in testosterone.
Public Books. June 2, 2016.
Excerpted as: “The Post-Soviet Future of FX’s The Americans: A Modest Proposal.” All the Russias. June 3, 2016.
Forget strategic weapons and missile shields: in the race towards deliberate, self-destructive ignorance, Russia and the United States are, as usual, neck and neck. While the American South is working itself up into a frenzy over nonexistent transgender predators (“Is your washroom not breeding breeders?”) and Texas State Senators fight the scourge of gay space colonies, representatives of a Russian government think-tank remind us once again that the spread of AIDS is really the wages of sin.
All the Russias. June 2nd, 2016.
As “AIDS, Condoms, and Rank Stupidity.” The Huffington Post, June 8, 2016
Vegans: occasionally self-righteous but well-meaning advocates of good health and animal welfare, or traitors to the Motherland? And why would post-Soviet nationalists see seitan as a path to Satan?
The Huffington Post. June 2, 2016.
All the Russias. May 31st, 2016.
For just a day, it looked like a liberal Russian’s nightmare: the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) was proposing the removal of classic stories by Anton Chekhov, Alexander Kuprin and Ivan Bunin from the school curriculum, because they allegedly promoted “free love.” “Free love,” for those of you under 60, basically covers adultery, “hooking up,” and serial monogamy (“You call it sin; we call it college.”)
The Huffington Post. March 17, 2016.
As “Papa Don’t Preach: The Church, Chekhov, and Checks and Balances.” All the Russias, March 16th, 2016.
Donald Trump has collected a lovely bouquet of endorsements in his path to the presidency: Chris Christie, David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the KKK. It’s the kind of praise that would make a mother proud, if your mother happened to be Leni Riefenstahl. And now he can add Russian philosopher, TV personality, and Duck Dynasty lookalike Alexander Dugin.
The Huffington Post. March 3, 2016.
All the Russias, March 2nd, 2016.
Say what you will about presidential candidate Ben Carson, but his performance in Saturday’s Republican debate has moved his party forward. After years of Republicans comparing Barack Obama to Hitler, we now know that the GOP is our only hope against a rival totalitarian dictator: Joseph Stalin.
The Huffington Post. February 16, 2016.
“Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for Ben Carson.” All the Russias. February 15th, 2016
Writing a book is a lonely, isolating endeavor. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.
All The Russias, November 11, 2015
French translation of “Caught in a Bad Romance” (below) by Ophélie Siméon.
La vie des idées. October 20, 2015.
Russia fares poorly in the headlines, and not just because the news is so often bad. The Anglo-American world’s limited knowledge about its culture and history saddles Russia with painfully obvious clichés, often involving the words “red” and “revolution.” But the banality prize must go to the inevitable “From Russia, with Love.”1 It has been almost 60 years since Ian Fleming published a James Bond novel by that name (and more than 50 since the movie was released), yet the phrase, like Bond himself, does not seem to be headed to retirement any time soon.
Public Books, October 15, 2015
All the Russias, October 15, 2015
For years I have been alone in my circle of friends in having a love/hate relationship with David Brooks. Again and again I found myself taking sides in our ongoing debate: is David Brooks thoroughly awful or only somewhat awful?
The Huffington Post, September 11, 2015
All the Russias, September 11, 2015
The Paleo Diet has finally been knocked from its perch as the stupidest food trend of the twenty-first century, replaced by an even stranger phenomenon: the Russian government’s mass, televised destruction of banned imported food.
The Huffington Post. August 14, 2015.
As “Russian Propaganda and the Return of the Repressed; or, Why the Cheese Never Stands Alone.” All the Russias. August 14, 2015.
Jenny Kaminer: I became interested in this topic when I first encountered literary works—namely, Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s novella The Time: Night—that seemed to be challenging or flying in the face of precisely this deeply rooted cult of motherhood. The question that motivated my research early on was, quite simply: what does it mean to be a bad mother in the context of a culture where, as the philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev famously put it, “motherhood is the fundamental category”?
All the Russias. May 21, 2015.
In a world where brother battles brother, and Russia and Ukraine find themselves in a virtual state of war, Only One Man could restore peace and harmony. One Man. Sandwiched between two bleached blondes. Riding an inflatable dolphin. And wearing nothing but a jockstrap.
The Huffington Post. March 24, 2015.
All the Russias. March 23, 2015.
Boris Nemtsov has been dead for less than three days. During this time, the media and blogsosphere have understandably gone into overdrive in the attempt to figure out exactly what happened. Journalists are trained to answer the key questions “who, what, when, where, how, and why”, but the most important ones in this case (who and why) are obviously at the center of the most intense speculation.
We will never really know.
The Huffington Post. March 3, 2015.
All the Russias. March 2, 2015.
Is the “new Cold War” a sequel, or just a sad set of re-runs? Once again, New York faces a Russian spy scandal whose participants really should have taken the title Get Smart literally. But as the movie tag lines go: This time, it’s personal. Because it apparently involves a university very close to home.
The Huffington Post. February 23, 2015.
All the Russias. January 27, 2015.
What do a measles outbreak in Disneyland and Washington’s panic over Russia’s leadership have in common? Both of them are red scares that should have died out by the 1960s.
And, as of today, they have one more thing in common: junk science about autism.
The Huffington Post. February 6, 2015.
All the Russias. February 5, 2015.
If you’ve been on Facebook in the past 24 hours, you’ve probably heard the story of Samuel Forrest, a baby born with Down Syndrome in a hospital in Armenia. The mother gave the father an ultimatum: it’s me or the baby. The father kept the baby, and the mother filed for divorce. Naturally, everyone applauds the father; meanwhile, the mother comes off as a cross between Medea and Maleficent.
The Huffington Post. February 6, 2015.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business.
The Huffington Post. January 12, 2015.
All the Russias. January 9, 2015.
How race gets parsed in Russia and Ameriac.
The Washington Post. January 8, 2015.
It’s only the first week of the year, but it’s already time to follow up on an unspoken New Year’s Resolution for the All the Russias blog. We had big plans when we launched this blog back in 2012, plans that included a number of projects that we still haven’t gotten around to developing (interviewing senior scholars in Russian Studies, for instance).
All the Russias. January 7, 2015.
The Russian Federation has an image problem. A large segment of the Western media has reduced the birthplace of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to a caricature of invasion-happy, gay-bashing ultranationalists led by a shirtless man on a horse
So of course, the obvious solution is to deck the skies of Moscow with one of the most internationally recognized symbols of evil this side of the swastika. Yes, in honor of the final installment of the eighty-seven-part Hobbit film series, a Russian art group recently decided to crown the Moscow International Business Center with the All-Seeing Eye of Sauron.
The Huffington Post. December 11, 2014
All the Russias. December 11, 2014.
Is it possible to make official Russian homophobia even more laughable? There’s an app for that.
The Huffington Post. November 7, 2014.
All the Russias. November 5, 2014.
There is something almost comical about the idea of suing parents for raising their children wrong, like a cross between Nick at Nite and Kafka.Is Being a Bad Parent a Crime?
The Huffington Post. September 18, 2014.
The September 2014 edition of the Russian GQ includes “The Gentleman’s New Kama Sutra,“ 23 rules for navigating the complex world of 21st century sex with the help of 19th century values. It’s tempting to posit that the editors are actually aliens who learned about Earth culture entirely from binge-watching Mad Men (with the occasional break for Animal House and Porky’s).
The Huffington Post. September 17, 2014.
All the Russias. September 16, 2014.
Set largely in Donetsk in June 2014, “Sucking Strelkov” isn’t just ripped from the headlines; it has strip-mined them, resulting in all the aesthetic charm that the metaphor implies.
The Huffington Post. September 12, 2014.
All the Russias. September 11, 2014.
To all the well-meaning people who see inclusion as the only desirable goal for special needs children, I say: thanks, but no thanks.
The Huffington Post. September 12, 2014.
Is the war in Ukraine real? On the face of it, this is a remarkably stupid question. Thousands have died, over a million have been displaced, and European international relations have sunk into a morass. On a basic, human level, the war is tragically real.
The Huffington Post. September 9, 2014.
All the Russias. September 8, 2014.
All it takes is an hour or two of Russian state television to learn that someone is plotting against Russia. Watch for a few more hours, and you’ll find that everyone is plotting against Russia. Watch for a few more days, and the truth comes out: Russia is plotting against Russia.
The Huffington Post. July 28, 2014.
All the Russias. July 28, 2014.
It’s not easy keeping an open mind about what’s going on in Russia when government officials are so intent on keeping minds closed. Nor is it easy to refrain from taking cheap shots when the Ministry of Culture issues press releases that look as though they were drafted by the Russia bureau of The Onion.
The Huffington Post. July 21, 2014.
All the Russias. July 21, 2014.
In all the fuss about Russia possibly invading Ukraine, a shocking revelation about Russian-American relations has gone all but unnoticed. Long-dead underground rock idol Viktor Tsoi, the front man for the classic group known as “Kino,” sang songs that had been written for him in Hollywood at the behest of the CIA. As part of a plot to destroy the Soviet Union.
All the Russias. April 17, 2014.
My parents’ generation used to evaluate virtually any geopolitical event according to what now looks like a comical standard: “Is it good for the Jews?” When invoked today, this question is both set-up and punch line, gently mocking our elders’ preoccupation with ethnic welfare while not entirely rejecting it, either. The question is raised not out of hope that “the Jews” (whoever they are) might end up doing really well, but out of the fear that they will be screwed (again).
All the Russias. March 26, 2014.
Like most of the people who bother to read this blog, I’m finding it difficult to think about anything besides the looming war between Russia and Ukraine. As I’m glued to my computer screen, I’m reminded of the previous crises in the former Soviet Union, crises I usually weathered in front of a TV switched to CNN. But there are differences.
All the Russias. March 2, 2014.
The Russian government has gotten back into the story business. This is bad news for people who like to tell stories of their own, but good news for people who like to tell the same old stories.
PEN America. February 14, 2014.
The Huffington Post. February 14, 2014.
If you’re an art impresario, fashion designer, and related to two (count ‘em, two) Russian oligarchs by blood and by common-law marriage, it can’t be easy finding a new thrill. If you’re Dasha Zhukova, editor of the Garage fashion magazine, what’s left to do?
Obviously, there can be only one answer: photograph yourself sitting on a chair designed to look like a black woman decked out in fetish gear.
On Martin Luther King Day.
All the Russias. January 24, 2014.
It’s not easy being punk. It’s even harder to keep believing in punk (or, by extension, anarchism, activism, and the like). For a style of life and art that seems hell-bent on offending, punk lays down a surprising number of unwritten rules. The first commandment: Thou shalt not sell out.
All the Russias. January 7, 2014.
I was going to end the year with my thoughts on Putin’s latest words and deeds, but then something got in the way: Ksenia Sobchak.
All the Russias. December 30, 2013.
Testicles, titanic trunks, tourists, and pickled corpses. I offer these words up as the answer in a Russia-themed round of Jeopardy. The question is, of course, “What can be found on Red Square?”
All the Russias. December 4, 2013.
Sex Secrets of the Russian Classics
Reason #137 to study Russian literature: apparently, it will teach children about sex. This is a good thing, because no one else in Russia seems to want to.
All the Russias. September 20, 2013.
When our undergraduates come back in the fall and start talking about their plans to study abroad, we in Russian Studies have to ask ourselves a question: what do we say to our LGBT students who are thinking about studying in the Russian Federation?
All the Russias. August 6, 2013.
I’ve been on a bit of a holiday from All the Russias, taking my customary, relaxing summer vacation (i.e., teaching four classes), and doing my best not to let the news from the (ex-) Mother-in-Law-Land keep me from my appointed rounds.
And then some fool had to give Edward Snowden a copy of Crime and Punishment.
All the Russias. July 25, 2013. x
When Ryan Fogle, Third Secretary at the American Embassy in Moscow, was arrested for attempting to recruit a Russian security-services officer, the world sat up and took notice. Then it snickered and sat down again.
All the Russias. May 17, 2013.
What do Americans see when they look at the faces of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? And do Russians see the same thing?
All the Russias. May 2, 2013.
Forgive me for seeming to trivialize a tragic story that has already been overexploited, but I have to ask: has anyone out there noticed how much Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looks like a young Neil Gaiman?
All the Russias. April 23, 2019.
Vladimir Putin hasn’t been having much luck with female anatomy lately.
All the Russias. April 9, 2013.
Two days after his body was found by a bodyguard in his Berkshire home, Boris Berezovsky shocks the blogosphere by remaining deceased.
All the Russias. March 25, 2013.
I’ve made no secret of my mixed feelings about Ksenia Sobchak: she’s a party girl who epitomized post-Soviet Russia’s “golden youth,” a spokesperson for the contemporary protest movement, and a compellling and competent television talk show host. Recently, however, she met her match, interviewing a man whose career and public persona is even more incoherent than her own: Alexander Nevzorov.
All the Russias. March 12, 2013.
When acclaimed filmmaker German, director of such classics as My Friend, Ivan Lapshin (1984) and Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998) , died last week, the New York Times published an unsatisfying obituary with an appalling headline: “Aleksei German, director of Anti-Soviet Movies, Dies at 74.”
All the Russias. February 26, 2013.
As I reported on this blog just a month ago, The Americans on FX seems to be aiming at the niche of “guilty pleasure for people over 40,” or Mad Men for the middle-aged and nostalgic. Taking us back to the Bad Hair Year of 1980, The Americans tells the story of two Soviet spies (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) who have spent nearly two decades in suburban deep cover, raising children and stealing top secret information in a low-tech preview of post-yuppie multitasking.
All the Russias. February 26, 2013.
This week, FX (“The Channel That Wishes It Were HBO”) introduced “The Americans,” a drama about KGB spies in deep cover in the DC suburbs at the dawn of the Reagan Era. The premise (that communists could be hiding in the A-frame next door) should be powerful, but it faces the same problem that challenges the show’s undercover leads: it feels rather domesticated.
All the Russias. February 1, 2013.
For those of you not already consumed by fire in the molten pits or, worse, living without wi-fi, there are no more shopping days left before the Mayan Apocalypse. For the long-dead Mayans themselves, this particular doomsday is rather moot, yet it is precisely this overlooked apocalyptic jetlag that brings me to Russia.
All the Russias. December 21, 2012.
When Sting released his song “The Russians” in 1985, I thought the chorus was one of the most asinine things I’d ever heard on the radio (and keep in mind that this was during the reign of Duran Duran): “I hope the Russians love their children, too.” Yes, it was a rhetorical gesture to remind us of what was at stake in the event of a global nuclear war, but really: did anyone think the Russians hated their children? Or that in a millennium of existence as a culture, they still hadn’t made up their minds?
All the Russias. December 18, 2012.
When Mitt Romney declared Russia the “number 1 geopolitical foe” during the recent US presidential campaign, he would have been on much firmer ground had he simply added “of Madonna and Lady Gaga.” Granted, Romney would have been an unlikely proponent of a pro-diva plank in the Republican platform, but he would at least have shown that he’s been paying attention.
All the Russias. December 13, 2012.
Here’s a question for you post-new critics out there: if a student completely misunderstands the historical context of a novel, but is otherwise on target, how severe should the consequence be to his or her grade? It’s something of a paradox: if a tree falls in imperial Russia, but the student thinks it was chopped down in Orwell’s Oceania, does it make an intelligible sound?
“All the Russias. November 29, 2012.
Like all good Slavists with a research budget, we here at “All the Russias” are off to New Orleans this week, for the annual conference of ASEEEEEEES (I can never keep track of how many “E”s there are in the acronym, so I always err on the side of caution).
All the Russias. November 14, 2012.
All fashionistas are alike; all fashion victims are victims in their own way.
Everything was in confusion in the retail aisles when it was announced that the Banana Republic’s new fall line for women and men would be inspired by the upcoming film adaptation of Anna Karenina.
October 26, 2012.
Is it possible to be disappointed in Ksenia Sobchak? Or would that be like feeling let down that water is so wet?
October 24, 2012.
The Pussy Riot case has already run the gamut of available genres, from performance art to legal drama to kangaroo court. Now it’s taken a turn towards soap opera.
All the Russias. October 12, 2012.
Why does the first piece of good news in the Pussy Riot case feel like bad news?
All the Russias. October 10, 2012.
Forget Reading Lolita in Tehran–the strangest place I found myself reading Nabokov was in a Russian literature class.
“Reading Nabokov in Greenwich Village (A Pedagogical Field Note)”All the Russias. October 9, 2012.
A purely administrative update today, to let you know about some new and developing options for communication.
All the Russias. October 5, 2012.
This past week, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly considered taking a bold stance on the protection of human rights in these troubled times. There was just one catch: the “humans” in question are still inside the womb.
“All the Russias. September 28, 2012.
Branded, the recent film written and directed by Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksandr Dulerain, is a shining example for the much-ballyhooed “reset” of Russian-American relations. Bradshaw and Dulerain have proven that when the former adversaries join hands and work together, they can produce truly spectacular crap.
All the Russias. September 19, 2012.
The dependably inventive G. Willow Wilson has just come out with a novel called Alif the Unseen, which somehow combines gray hat Arab hackers, would-be Islamic terrorists, and troublemaking djinns into a narrative that never feels overstuffed. Alif takes place in an unnamed City somewhere in the Middle East, and Wilson (a longtime resident of Cairo whose initial claim to fame was her memoir about her conversion to Islam) juggles politics and magical realism with remarkable flair. So what does this have to do with Russia?
All the Russias. September 19, 2012.
he Russian state may not be expansionist, but the Russian blogosphere certainly is. To be convinced, all you need to do is go onto LiveJournal (an ironic name for a platform that is nearly dead in the anglophone world, but enjoying a happy afterlife on the Runet).
All the Russias. September 18, 2012.
Authoritarian Fun Fact: when the political culture and mechanisms of power all revolve around one man (sexist language intended), the accidental consequences of that man’s actions can be both disheartening and hilarious (when they are not tragic and reprehensible).
All the Russias. September 17, 2012.
Some mornings I get the distinct feeling that my customized Google page has mixed up “news from Russia” with “news of the weird.” And I know that, as someone working on contemporary media and popular culture, I’m vulnerable to the accusation of paying attention to the bizarre rather than the typical. So as I drink my coffee and scroll through the morning’s headlines, I make a special effort to read articles about oil and economics to the bitter end. Really, I’m trying. But then the universe sends me this
All the Russias. September 14, 2012.
Show of hands by all the Russia watchers out there: in any of the scenarios in which Russia not only returned to the news, but became a cultural flashpoint, did anyone imagine that the key words would be “pussy riot?” “Riot,” perhaps, but… Here I’ll leave it to my readers to complete the thought.
All the Russias. September 13, 2012.
Welcome to “All the Russias,” the multimedia blog of the Jordan Center for the Study of Russia at New York University. This blog represents the first step in the Jordan Center’s long-term plans to integrate Russian Studies more thoroughly into the new media landscape.
All the Russias. September 13, 2012.
In an otherwise routine e-mail message I wrote this morning, addressed to a student who was anxious about missing class due to illness, I told her that she could turn in her assignment late with no penalty, and closed with a few words of comfort: Walker, Wisconsin, Madison, Maddow, Tea Party, Obama. I have no doubt that she found those words reassuring—really, who wouldn’t? But she might also have been a tad puzzled.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 29, 2011): B2.
My 2001 predictions about the field in 2020. So, yeah, I got it wrong.
AATSEEL Newsletter 44.1 (2002).