Valeria Sobol

Russian literature and culture of the eighteenth--nineteenth centuries; nineteenth-century Ukrainian Literature; empire and the Gothic; literature and science; race in nineteenth-century Russia.

I have recently published my second book, Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny (Northern Illinois UP, imprint of Cornell UP, 2020). The book explores the connection between the Gothic mode in Russian literature of the period and its imperial context. I argue that the Gothic genre served as a particularly apt form for “the imperial uncanny”—the effect of danger and uncertainty in the ambiguous colonial spaces within Russia’s borders where the characters’ imperial identities are challenged and destabilized. My next research project is on the discourse of race in nineteenth-century Russian literature and journalism.

Ph.D., Columbia University, 2003
Diploma of Higher Education, Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University, 1994

Prize for the Best Article in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture (2018-19) from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2015-16
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2014
Center for Advanced Study Associate, University of Illinois, 2014-2015
Center for Advanced Study Beckman Fellowship, University of Illinois, 2005-06

RUSS 511: Russian Literature, 1800-1855
RUSS 323/RUSS 523 Tolstoy
RUSS 320/RUSS 524 Pushkin
RUSS 424 Russian Modernism
RUSS 461 Russia and the Other
RUSS 418 Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature
RUSS 220 The Golden Age of Russian Literature
RUSS 225 Russian Literature and Revolution

Slavic Languages
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