Research Interests

My current research explores the ways in which Nikolai Gogol's fictional world is shaped by his preoccupation with the deadly sin of acedia (despondency); this work has generated two articles, "Acedia and the Daemonium Meridianum in Nikolai Gogol's 'Povest' o tom, kak possorilsia Ivan Ivanovich s Ivanom Nikiforovichem'" (Russian Literature, April 2001), and "Nikolai Gogol's 'Old-World Landowners': A Parable of Acedia" (Slavic and East European Journal, Spring 2003). This project comes out of my continuing interest in the representation of evil in Russian literature, particularly in Gogol, which I treat in my book Russian Devils and Diabolic Conditionality in Nikolai Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (Peter Lang, 1999).

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Courses Regularly Taught: