Eric Naiman – Slavic Languages and Literature (Russian) – works in the fields of ideological poetics, sexuality and history, Soviet culture, the gothic novel. Teaching and research interests include Nabokov, Platonov, Law and Literature, University Fiction, Dostoevsky and Bakhtin. His most recent book is Nabokov, Perversely. He is also the author of Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology, and the co-editor of two collections of articles: Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia and The Landscape of Stalinism. His work has appeared in Comparative Literature, Representations, Signs,the Times Literary Supplement and Russian Review (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; J.D. Yale). For an example of his work, see http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1243205.ece
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Slavic Languages & Literatures)
J.D. Yale Law School
Teaching: 19th and 20th Century Russian Literature. Nabokov. Dostoevsky and Modernism. Law and Literature. Early Soviet Culture. Literature and Ideology. The Body in Russian Culture. Graduate seminars have included: The Gothic Novel; The Master and Margarita; Andrei Platonov; Early Dostoevsky; Mikhail Bakhtin; Poetic Justice: Dostoevsky and Nabokov in the Shadow of the Law.
Research interests: Early Soviet Culture. Gender Studies. Andrei Platonov. History of Soviet Medicine. Vladimir Nabokov.
Current projects: Andrei Platonov. Vladimir Nabokov. Soviet subjectivity. Fiction of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, “University Fictions”.
Selected publications:
Books
Nabokov, Perversely (Cornell University Press, 2010).
co-edited, with Christina Kiaer, Everyday Life in Revolutionary Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
co-edited, with Evgeny Dobrenko, The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003).
Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology. (Princeton University Press, 1997).
Articles
“AI Meets Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor,” Times Literary Supplement, January 26, 2024. Link to PDF
“But Seriously, Folks: Pierre Bayard and the Russians,” in Reading Backwards: An Advance Retrospective on Russian Literature, ed. Muireann Maguire and Timothy Langen. Openbook Publishers, 2021. Link to PDF
“’Husband and Wife’: An Approach to the Gothic in Anna Karenina, in Critical Insights: Anna Karenina, ed. by Robert C Evans (Amenia, N.Y.” Salem Press, 2021, pp.39-57.
“‘There was Something Almost Crude about it all…..’ Reading the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment hard against the grain,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 62:2 (2020), 123-43.
“Gospel Rape,” Dostoevsky Studies 22 (2018), 11-40.
“Their Mutual Friend: On the Trail of the Woman Who Introduced Dickens to Dostoevsky,” The Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2013, 16-21. Link to online version
“Hermophobia: On Sexual Orientation and Reading Nabokov,” Representations, 2008, no.101, 116-43.
“Children in The Master and Margarita,” Slavic and East European Journal, Winter 2006, vol.50, no.4, 655-75.
“A Filthy Look at Shakespeare’s Lolita,” Comparative Literature, Winter 2006, vol. 58, no. 1, 1-23.
“Perversion in Pnin (Reading Nabokov Preposterously),” Nabokov Studies, 7 (2002/2003).
“‘Introduction’ to Andrey Platonov, Happy Moscow, trans. by Robert Chandler. (London: Harvill Press, 2001).
“V zhopu prorubit’ okno: seksual’naia patologiia kak ideologicheskii kalambur u Andreia Platonova,” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 32, 1998.
“Shklovsky’s Dog and Mulvey’s Pleasure: The Secret Life of Defamiliarization,” Comparative Literature, vol.50, no.4 (1998).
“When a Communist Writes Gothic: Aleksandra Kollontai and the Politics of Disgust,” Signs, vol. 22, no. 1, 1996.
“Historectomies: The Metaphysics of Reproduction in a Utopian Age,” in Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture, ed. J. Costlow, S. Sandler and J. Vowles (Stanford Univeristy Press, 1993).
“Of Crime, Utopia and Repressive Complements: The Further Adventures of the Ridiculous Man.” Slavic Review, 50 (1991).