Jon Stone Professor of Russian and Russian Studies
Biography
My area of specialty is early Russian modernism, European Decadence, and the print
and material culture of the fin de siècle.
I am the author of The Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (Scarecrow Press, 2013), The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (Northwestern University Press, 2017), and Decadence and Modernism in European and Russian Literature and Culture: Aesthetics
and Anxiety in the 1890s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
I have served on numerous College and professional committees and projects that have
worked to innovate the liberal arts curriculum, study and promote interdisciplinary
teaching and scholarship, and foster community engagement through the humanities.
Education
Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of California, Berkeley)
Dissertation: “Conceptualizing ‘Symbolism’: Institutions, Publications, Readers, and the Russian Propagation of an Idea”
M.A., Slavic Languages and Literatures (University of California, Berkeley)
B.A., Russian Literature (Columbia University)
Research
- Russian Symbolism and Decadence
- Modernist periodical studies
- Comparative theories of Decadence
- History and theory of the book
- Sociology of texts
Publications
Books
The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (Scarecrow Press, 2013)
Translations
Articles and Book Chapters
“Aleksandr Blok as the Model Modernist” in Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses, eds. Carol Ueland and Ludmilla Trigos (Lexington Books, 2022).
“O!?!?!: Reading and Readers in the Silver Age (1890s-1900s)” in Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia Vol. 2, Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds., (Milan: Di/Segni, 2020).
“The Journal as Archive: Vesy and the Russian Reader’s Encounter With Decadence” Volupté 3.1 Summer 2020 (special issue on the Decadent Archive, edited by Kirsten MacLeod)
“Decadent Style with a Symbolist Worldview: Andrei Bely, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, and the Perils of Surfaces” Modernism/Modernity 21:1 ( January 2014): 269-282.
"Aleksandr Blok and the Rise of Biographical Symbolism" Slavic and East European Journal 54:4 (Winter 2010): 626-642.
Decadence and Modernism in European and Russian Literature and Culture: Aesthetics
and Anxiety in the 1890s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (Scarecrow Press, 2013)
Translations
The Symphonies by Andrei Bely (Columbia University Press, 2021).
“The Venetian Stanzas” by Joseph Brodsky (fine press edition designed, illustrated,
and printed by Dmitrii Saenko, Nikodim Press, St. Petersburg, 2017).
Articles and Book Chapters
“Journals” in The Oxford Handbook of Russian Poetry, eds. Catherine Ciepiela, Luba Golburt, and Stephanie Sandler (Oxford University
Press, forthcoming in 2023).
“Aleksandr Blok as the Model Modernist” in Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses, eds. Carol Ueland and Ludmilla Trigos (Lexington Books, 2022).
“O!?!?!: Reading and Readers in the Silver Age (1890s-1900s)” in Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia Vol. 2, Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds., (Milan: Di/Segni, 2020).
“The Journal as Archive: Vesy and the Russian Reader’s Encounter With Decadence” Volupté 3.1 Summer 2020 (special issue on the Decadent Archive, edited by Kirsten MacLeod)
“Декадентская Метафизика: Зинаида Гиппиус, Брэм Стокер и тревожная эпоха Fin de siècle”
in Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (1/2018)
“Еще раз о Фукс: Пародия и подражание в раннем творчестве В.Я. Брюсова” in Брюсовские чтения 2013. (Yerevan/Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2014).
“Making the Symbolist Book/Fashioning the Symbolist Reader: The Case of Aleksandr
Dobroliubov's Collected Verses” in Reading in Russia. Literary Communication and Practices of Reading, 1760-1930, Damiano Rebecchini and Raffaella Vassena, eds. (Milan: Di/Segni, 2014).
“Decadent Style with a Symbolist Worldview: Andrei Bely, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, and the Perils of Surfaces” Modernism/Modernity 21:1 ( January 2014): 269-282.
"Aleksandr Blok and the Rise of Biographical Symbolism" Slavic and East European Journal 54:4 (Winter 2010): 626-642.
“The Literal Symbolist: Solov’ev, Briusov, and the Reader of Early Russian Symbolism”
The Russian Review 67:3 (July 2008): 373-386.
“Polyphony and the Atomic Age: Bakhtin’s Assimilation of an Einsteinian Universe”
PMLA 123:2 (March 2008): 405-421.
“Palitra simvolistov i ottenki Belogo: Estetika tsveta v rannei poetike A. Belogo”
in Andrei Belyiizmeniaiushchemsia mire: k 125-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia. Moscow: Nauka, 2008: 508-514.
Courses Taught
Russian Language, Literature, and Culture
- Elementary Russian language
- Intermediate Russian language
- Third-year Russian language
- Nabokov/Platonov: Revolution, Exile, and Artistic Genius in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Literature
- Monsters, Loose and Tight: Russia’s Great Books
- Business in Today’s Russia: Culture, Society & Capitalism (cross-listed with Business, Organizations, and Society Dept.)
- Russia’s Literary Titans: Major Works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
- Intermediate Russian Language Maintenance through Readings in Russian Culture
- Nabokov/Platonov: Literature, Revolution, and Exile in 20th-Century Russia
- Language and Culture of Contemporary Russian Business
- Readings in Russian Literature of the City
- Cold War Cultures (Cross listed with American Studies Dept.)
- From Tsars to Commissars: An Introduction to Russian Culture (summer travel course)
- World Literatures: Introduction to Comparative Literary Studies
- Literary Degenerates: Decadence and Turn of the Century
- European Literature: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian and American Years
- Good Books/Bad Deeds: Murder, Magic, and Mayhem in Russian Literature (a First-Year Seminar)
- Russian Realities and Realisms (a Connections 1 course)
- Banned Books and Jailed Writers (a Connections 2 course)