Dr Alexandra Smith

25 Pages·2017·0.2 MB·English

by  Alexandra Smith

Dr Alexandra Smith: Short CV. (March 2017.)
Reader in Russian Studies, Department of European Languages and
Cultures, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, The University
of Edinburgh, 50 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JX ;
[email protected]

Education: BA Hons: Herzen State Pedagogical University, St
Petersburg, 1980; PhD: SSEES, UCL, University of London, 1993.

Work: University of Edinburgh: 1 January 2007- current. Previous
employment: University of Essex (Tutor in Russian, 1987-1990);
University of Bristol (Lecturer in Russian, 1993-94); University of
Canterbury, New Zealand (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Senior Lecturer
above the Bar, 1995-June 2006); University of Sheffield (Lecturer in
Russian, July –December 2006).

Relevant training and experience: School of Languages, Literatures
and Cultures’ Coordinator for Equality and Diversity (2008-2016);
participant of the training course “Research Leaders” organized by the
College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh in
2012-13; Head of Russian, University of Canterbury (1999- 2003); Head
of Russian (University of Edinburgh: 2008-2009; 2012 (S2); 2014-15;
2007-18 (S2)); Chairperson of the Association of Australian and New
Zealand Slavists (2003-2008).
Administrative duties since 2007: Director of MSc Programme in
Theatre and Performance (2015- 2017); Organiser of several courses,
including The Introduction to European Theatre course; The Great
Russian Novel course; the Post-Soviet Word, Image and Memory
course; the Golden and Silver Ages of Russian literature course; year-
rd
abroad coordinator; coordinator of the 3 year Russian course for
visiting students; member of the LLC’s Library committee; LLC’s
Equality and Diversity coordinator (2008-2016); member of the of
LLC’s group of assessors of research grants; Head of Russian (2008-
2009; 2011-12 (S2); 20014-15; 20017-18 (S2).
Professional service: member of the editorial and advisory boards of
several journals, including “New Zealand Slavonic Review”, “Australian
East European and Slavonic Studies”, "The Dostoevsky Journal: An
Independent Review”, “Experimental Poetics and Aesthetics", and
"AvtobiographiIA" (University of Padua), and member of the Editorial
Board of the series "Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama
and Performance" published by Edinburgh University Press; Member of
the Northern Theory School network:
http://www.northerntheoryschool.co.uk

Current teaching: second- and fourth-year Russian courses on
literature and culture; contributor to second -year DELC courses on
European Theatre, European Cinema and Prose Fiction in Comparative
perspectives; Contributor to MSc course on the Fantastic Fiction, and to
MSc programmes on Comparative and General literature, and on
Theatre and Performance Studies; Director of the MSc in Theatre and
Performance Programme; Coordinator of Introduction to European
Theatre course; The Golden and Silver Ages of Russian literature
course; The Great Russian novel course, and the Post-Soviet Word,
Image and Memory course (not offered in 2016-2017).

Postgraduate supervision: I am currently supervising 6 PhD students as
Principal Supervisor (PhD projects in Comparative Literature; European
Theatre; Russian literature). Since 2007 I have supervised 5 PhD
projects to successful completion, including 2 co-supervised projects.

Nominated for the Best Overall Teacher award in 2014-15 and in
2015-16.

Research activity (since 2003)
In 2003-2007 – participation in an international inter-disciplinary project
on post-Soviet Petersburg culture led by the University of Helsinki; in
autumn 2008: an award of the British Academy Overseas Conference
grant (for participation in the AAASS conference in November 2008):
£400; in December 2010: an award of the AHRC grant jointly with Dr
Katharine Hodgson (University of Exeter) for a 3-year project:
"Reconfiguring the Canon of Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry, 1991-
2008" (£429,000 - with funding for 1 post-doctoral fellow and 2 PhD
students). Its objective is to explore the ways in which the contemporary
Russian literary world has reshaped the canon of 20th-century poetry;

th
2010-13: participation in the one international project on Russian 19
th
and 20 century auto/biographical writing led by the University of
Padua, Italy; autumn 2012: an award of the grant by the Centre for
Research, Central and East European Studies (funded by the two major
funding bodies such as AHRC and British Academy), University of
Glasgow, towards an international conference/workshop "Word and
Image in Russian Contexts" (£3, 990). It took place on 1.02.2013 at
Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh; A small grant from the
LLC towards the organisation on 4 October 2013 (together with
Professor Olga Taxidou (English Literature) of a one-day
workshop/seminar on Russian and European modernist theatre and
performance; a £ 5,000 LLC impact grant jointly with Nicola McCarty
(playwright, director, Lecturer in Creative Writing University of
Edinburgh) for organizing an international event at Traverse theatre
(29.05.2014); another LLC impact grant towards the translation and
production of 2 Russian plays at Oran Mor. A joint project with the
National Theatre of Scotland (October 2014- May

2015). In 2015-16: co-edited a book on the Russian poetry canon for
Open Book Pubslishers (Cambridge; forthcoming in April 2017).

RECENT GRANTS: a joint award with Dr Isabelle Darmon
(Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh) from the
Principal’s teaching Award for the project “Theory on Stage” (£1,495)
in April 2016; Moray Endowment Fund Award (£2,000) (2015-16; for
the Research assistant for the monograph (co-authored with K.
Hodgson) "The Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry Canon and Post-
Soviet National Identity").
Publications:
Books
“The Art of Memory: Russian 20th-c. Elegy ”(in preparation).

"Canonicity, 20th-c. Poetry and Russian National Identity (1991-2008)
(with Katharine Hodgson) (Oxford, Peter Lang, forthcoming in 2017-18)

[Co-edited with Katharine Hodgson and Joanne Shelton] “Twentieth-
Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon” (Cambridge: Open
Book Publishers, 2017) [504 pp.]

“Montaging Pushkin: Pushkin and Visions of Modernity in Russian
20th-century Poetry” (Rodopi Press, Amsterdam / New York: 2006).
[361 pp.]

“Pesn ́ peresmeshnika: Pushkin v tvorchestve Mariny Tsvetaevoi”,
Tsvetaeva Museum and Ellis Lak, Moscow, 1999. [252pp.]

“The Song of the Mockingbird: Pushkin in the Work of Marina
Tsvetaeva”. Peter Lang, Bern / Berlin/ New York / Paris / Wien, 1994.
[211pp]

Edited Special Editions of Journals
th
Co-edited with David Wells. A special issue on Russian 20 -c. poetry,
Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, volume 30, 1-2, 2017,
forthcoming in 2017.

Alexandra Smith and Catherine Ciepiela, editors. Russian Literature :
Marina Cvetaeva, Volume 73, Issue 4, Pages 493-644 (15 May 2013).

Articles in Refereed Journals
“Lev Tolstoy in the Age of Kinoglasnost’: Mikhail Shveitser’s The
Kreutzer Sonata as a Critique of Russian Erotic Utopia and Soviet
ideology,” Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, volume 29,
nos. 1-2, 2015, pp.31-61.

“Anastasiia Tsvetaeva (1894-1993) as a Gulag writer”, Gulag Studies,
vols 7-8, 2014-2015, pp.28-49.

Marina Tsvetaeva's Memoir on Maksimilian Voloshin in the Context of
Artistic and Intellectual Trends of the 1910s-30s, Wiener Slawistischer
Almanach, Band 71, 2013, pp.189-210.

Searching for a New Self: Truth-telling and Double Vision in Joseph
Brodsky's Essay 'In a Room and a Half' (1985)", AvtobiografiIa, volume
2, part 1, 2013, pp.152- 169;
http://journals.padovauniversitypress.it/avtobiografija/content/searching-
new-self- truth- %C2%ADtelling-and-double-vision-joseph-brodsky’s-
essay-room-and-half

Consuming Utopian Thought in an Anti-Utopian Age: The Reception of
Andrej Platonovʼs Čevengur in Todayʼs Russia", Russian Literature,
volume 73, issue 1/2, 2013, pp.209-227.

(with Catherine Cieliela). "Marina Cvetaeva and Her Readers", Russian
Literature, Amsterdam, volume 73, issue 4, 2013, pp.539-563. "The
Transcendent Power of the Image: Marina Cvetaeva's Vision of Russian
Icons and the Mother of God in the 1910s- 20s", Russian Literature,
Amsterdam, volume 73, issue 4, 2013, pp.539-563.

"Мемуарная проза Марины Цветаевой как анти-памятник: очерк
'Живое о живом

'(1932 г.) в контексте мифотворческих тенденций российского и
европейского модернизма 1910х-30х годов", AvtobiografiЯ, volume
1, 2012, pp.167–210.
[http://journals.padovauniversitypress.it/avtobiografija/]

“Reconfiguring the Utopian Vision: Tret′iakov’s Play I Want a
Baby!(1926) as a Response to the Revolutionary Restructuring of
Everyday Life”, Australian Slavonic & East European Studies, Vol. 25,
Nos. 1–2 (2011), pp.107–120.
[http://miskinhill.com.au/journals/asees/25:1-2/reconfiguring-utopian-
vision]

"Nikolai Evreinov and Edith Craig as Mediums of Modernist
Sensibility", New Theatre

Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, No. 26, 2010, pp. 203-216.

‘The Effacement of History, Theatricality and Postmodern Urban
Fantasies in the Prose of Petrushevskaya and Pelevin’, Die Welt der
Slaven, LIV, 2009, pp. 53-78.

"The Reach of Modern Life: Tynianov's Pushkin, Melancholy and the
Critique of Modernity’, Wiener Slawisticher Almanach, Bd. 61, 2008,
pp. 85-108.

[http://periodika.digitale-
sammlungen.de/wsa/Blatt_bsb00064689,00087.html]

“A Case of Fluid Identity: Boris Pasternak as Flâneur and an Invitation
au Voyage”, Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, band 58, 2006, pp. 117-
139. [http://periodika.digitale-
sammlungen.de/wsa/Blatt_bsb00050166,00117.html]

“Fictionality, Theatricality and Staging of Self: A New Look at
Pushkin’s ‘Egyptian Nights’, Slavonic and East European Review ,
University of London, volume 84, number 3, July 2006, pp. 393-418.

“Bypassing Death, Life Creating and Last Poems of Four Russian
Modernists: Nikolai Gumilev, Nikolai Otsup, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna
Akhmatova”, Australian Slavonic & East European Studies, vol.18, 1-2,
2004, pp.87-102. “Toward the Poetics of Exile: Marina Tsvetaeva’s
Translation of Baudelaire’s ‘Le Voyage’”, Ars Interpres, No.2,
Stockholm-Moscow-New York, May 2004, pp.179-199. (or: http://ars-
interpres- 2.nm.ru/a_s_an_2.html).

“Andrei Tarkovsky as Reader of Arsenii Tarkovsky’s Poetry”, Russian
Studies in Literature: Special Issue: Russian Literature on the Silver
Screen, [edited by John Givens], vol.40. No.3, USA, Summer 2004,
pp.46-63.

“Vladimir Nabokov As Translator of Russian Poetry”, Wiener
Slawistischer Almanach, Band 51, 2003, pp.133-166.
[http://periodika.digitale-
sammlungen.de/wsa/Blatt_bsb00010117,00135.html]

“The Picaro Myth in the Leningrad Alternative Writing of the Sixties:
Andrei Bitov, Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Kushner”, Australian
Slavonic and East European Studies, vol.17, Numbers 1-2, 2003, pp.79-
100.

“Writing As Performance: The Case of Marina Tsvetaeva”, New
Zealand Slavonic Journal, vol.37, 2003, pp.143-153.

“New Interpretations of Nabokov”, Slavonica, Manchester, Vol.9, No.2,
November 2003, pp.127-130.

“The Return of the Flâneur in Platonov’s Story ‘Doubting Makar’”, in:
Livingstone, Angela, editor. “Andrei Platonov: Special Issue, Volume
2”, Essays in Poetics, volume 27, Keele, Autumn 2002, pp.124-138.

“The Memoirs of Emma Gershtein and Nikolai Khardzhiev and Russian
Modernist Canon”, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies,
volume 15, Numbers 1-2, Melbourne, 2001, pp.75-92.

“The Enigma of Mikhail Prishvin: Prishvin’s Pre-Soviet and Soviet
Diaries”, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 2001, pp.79-92.

“Surpassing Acmeism? – The Lost Key to Cvetaeva’s ‘Poem of the
Air’”, Russian Literature, [special issue: The Silver Age], XLV-II, 15
February 1999, Amsterdam, pp.209-222.

“The Poetics of Expressiveness and Some Aspects of Non-Verbal
Communication in Pushkin’s Work”, Australian Slavonic and East
European Studies, vol.13, Number 2, 1999, pp.95-114 (This essay was
co-winner of ASEES’s Pushkin Prize contest).

“The Representation of Memory in Petrushevskaia’s Prose”, Essays in
Poetics, Keele, 1999, pp.182-201.

“In Populist Clothes: Anarchy and Subversion in Petrushevskaya’s
Latest Fiction”, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1997, Wellington,
pp.107-127.

“Dance as Theme and Structure in Russian Modernism”, Essays in
Poetics, Autumn 1996, vol 2, Keele, pp.19-34.

“The Tsvetaeva Theme in Akhmatova’s Late Poetry”, Australian
Slavonic and East European Studies, vol.10, No.2, 1996, Melbourne,
pp.139-156.

[Smith, Alexandra and Crone, Lisa.] “Cheating Death: Tsvetaeva and
Derzhavin on the Immortality of the Poet”, Slavic Almanac: Volume 3,
University of South Africa Press, 1995, pp.1-30.

“Tsvetaeva Resurrected”, The Slavonic and East European Review,
October 1993,

London, pp.693-700.

“Recent Books on Tsvetaeva”, The Slavonic and East European Review,
July 1990, London, pp.512-51.

“Literary Portrait in the Poetry of Pasternak and Tsvetaeva”, Essays in
Poetics, Keele, Sep. 1990, pp.94-101.

“The Cnidus Myth and Tsvetaeva’s Interpretation of Pushkin’s Love for
Nataliia Goncharova”, Essays in Poetics, Keele, September 1989, pp.83-
102.

Book Chapters
“Marina Tsvetaeva’s images of the Mother of God in the context of
Russian cultural developments in the 1910s-20s”, in Shevtsov, V. &
Adams, A. (eds.).

Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern and Post-Soviet Russia,
DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2017, pp. 193-216,
forthcoming.

(with Katharine Hodgson) “Introduction: Twentieth-Century Russian
Poetry and the Post-Soviet Reader: Reinventing the Canon”, in
Katharine Hodgson, Joanne Shelton and Alexandra Smith, editors.
Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, Cambridge:
Open Book Publishers, 2017, pp.1-42.

“The Post-Soviet Homecoming of First-Wave Russian Émigré Poets and
Its Impact on the Reinvention of the Past”, in Katharine Hodgson,
Joanne Shelton and Alexandra Smith, editors. Twentieth-Century
Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon, Cambridge: Open Book
Publishers, 2017, pp.347-384.

“Marina Cvetaeva in the Artistic Imagination of Russian Poets of the
1960s-1990s”, in Forrester, Sibelan E.S., A Companion to Marina
Cvetaeva: Approaches to a Major Russian Poet, Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2017, pp.239-269.

“ The Muse of Lament or the Muse of Compassion? The Reception of
Anna
Akhmatova in Great Britain” in Victoroff, Tatiana, editor.Anna
Akhmatova et la poesie europeenne, Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt
am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang Publishing Group, [Vol.
Series: Nouvelle poetique comparatiste / New Comparative Poetics -
Volume 36], 2016, pp. 265-293.

“Pushkin as a Cultural Myth: Dostoevskii’s Pushkin Speech and Its
Legacy in Russian

Modernism,” in Andrew, Joe and Reid, Robert. Dostoevskii’s
Overcoat:Influence, Comparison, and Transposition, Amsterdam, New
York, NY: Rodopi, 2013, pp.123-147.
"Through the Lens of Soviet Psychoanalysis of the 1920s: Ivan
Ermakov's Readings of Pushkin's Poetry", in Dinega, Alyssa, editor. The
Other Pushkiniana: Taboo Texts, Topics, Interpretations, The University
of Wisconsin Press, 2012, pp.350-377.

"Jane Harrison as an Interpreter of Russian Culture in the 1910s-1920s",
in Cross, Anthony. editor. A People Passing Rude: British Responses to
Russian Culture, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2012, pp.170-190.
(See:
http://www.openbookpublishers.com/htmlreader/PPR/chap12.html)

"The Image of Marina Tsvetaeva in the Emigre Memoirs, Criticism and
Scholarship," in Adamovitch, Marina; Smotodinska, Tatiana; Ermolaev,
Natalia, eds. Russian Emigration at the Crossroads of the XX-XXI
Centuries: Proceeding of the International Conference Dedicated to the
70th Anniversary of the New Review/Novyj Zhurnal, New York: The
New Review Publishing, 2012, pp.186-201.

"Russian Women Poets on the Death of the Poet, the Modernist Canon
and the Postmodern Condition," in Marsh, Rosalind. New Women's
Writing in Russia, Central and Eastern Europe: Gender, Generations and
Identities, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2012,
pp.300-319. "Russian Children's Literature," in Literary Encyclopedia,
edited by Clark and Cornwell;
http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=16293
(published in March 2011)

"Peterburgskii tekst v novykh kontekstakh: Serebrianyi vek kak mesto
pamiati," (The Petersburg Myth in New Contexts: The Silver Age as a
Mnemonic Space"), in Pesonen, Pekki et al, editors. Evropa v Rossii:
Sbornik statei, Moscow: Helsinki University/Novoe literaturnoe
obozrenie, 2010, pp.417-433.

“Aleksandr Fadeev”, in Adams, Bruce. The Supplement to the Modern
Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet and Eurasian History, Vol. 10, Gulf
Breeze, FL, Academic Publishers, 2008.