Ilya Vinitsky


Assistant Professor

Office Hours: TBA

Email: ivinitsk@sas.upenn.edu

Fall 2008 Courses

RUSS130 Russian Ghost Stories
RUSS202 Tolstoy (Benjamin Franklin Seminar)

Education

Ilya Vinitsky received his diploma with honor in teaching Russian Language and Literature at Moscow State Pedagogical University in 1991, took his Ph.D. (kandidat filologicheskikh nauk) in Russian Literature at Moscow State Pedagogical University in 1995, and received his PhD habilitation (doctor filologicheskikh nauk) in 2005.

Research interests

Vinitsky's main fields of expertise are eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Russian literature, the history of psychiatry, and nineteenth- century intellectual and spiritual history. He was a recipient of the Dashkov Scholarship of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Harriman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an “Open Society” Foundation Fellowship.

Teaching history

Ilya Vinitsky has been a member of the University of Pennsylvania Faculty since Fall 2003, having joined the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the rank of Assistant Professor. Before coming to Penn, he taught at Columbia University (2000) and the University of Pittsburgh (2000-2003) as a Visiting Assistant Professor.

Vinitsky teaches courses focusing on literary, ideological, religious, and political issues, including “Madness and Madmen in Russian Culture,” “Russian Nights: Ghosts in Russian Culture,” “From the Other Shore: Russia and the West,” and “The Haunted House: Russian Realism in European Context.” He also teaches Benjamin Franklin seminars on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and a number of graduate courses at Middlebury College Russian Summer School.

Publications

Vinitsky’s most recent books are Interpreter’s House: Poetic Semantics and Historical Imagination of Vassily Zhukovsky (NLO, 2006, in Russian) and a collection Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (Toronto University Press 2007; co-edited with Angela Brintlinger). His most representative publications include:

“Amor Hereos: the Occult Sources of Russian Romanticism,” Kritika (forthcoming; spring 2007)

"Where Bobok Is Buried: The Theosophical Roots of Dostoevskii's 'Fantastic Realism'," Slavic Review, Volume 65, Number 3, Fall 2006: 523-543.

“A Cheerful Empress and Her Gloomy Critics: Catherine the Great and Eighteenth Century Melancholy Controversy.” In: Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture. Ed. by Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky, Toronto University Press: 2007.

"The Invisible Scaffold: Execution and Imagination in Vasily Zhukovsky’s Works.” In: Violence in Russian Literature and Culture. Ed. by Marcus Levitt and Tatiana Novikova (forthcoming; in English)

“Russian Dead Poets Society: Spiritualist Poetry as a Cultural Phenomenon.” In: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (NLO) 2005, #2 (in Russian)

““Exegi Testamentum”: Gogol’s Posthumous Ode.” In: Ulbandus 6, 2002, 85-112 (in English)

“Signora Melas, or an Italian Soprano in Russia.” In: Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature, and Society. Ed. A.B.Wachtel. Northwestern University Press, 1998, 230-254 (in English).

Research Projects

Vinitsky has recently completed a book about Modern Spiritualism and Russian Culture in the Age of Realism. Based on his current research, Vinitsky has given guest lectures at Harvard University (2006), the New College (Oxford University, 2004), and Northwestern University (2006). His other project is a book on a cultural history of Russian literature which he is writing together with Professor Andrew B. Wachtel of Northwestern University.