Dr Maria Rubins

Lecturer in Russian Literature

Email
m.rubins@ssees.ucl.ac.uk

Phone Number
020 7679 8814

Fax
020 7679 8777

I was born and grew up in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Because I dreamt of world travel from my early childhood, I decided to become an interpreter, even before beginning to learn any foreign language. After graduating from a specialised English-language school, I went on to study literature, French, and Russian language teaching methodology at Saint Petersburg State University. In the final years before graduation and immediately thereafter, I worked as an interpreter and translator, and taught Russian to foreign students at the Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. Later, I moved to the United States, where I pursued a comparative study of Russian and French literature, with a brief interlude studying Czech language and culture at Charles University in Prague. After I received a doctoral degree from Brown University, I lived in Boston, New York, Washington, and Houston, and taught Russian literature and language at various American universities. In 2004, I moved to Europe and took up a lectureship position in the Russian Department of UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. As a member of Institut d'Etudes Slaves and an Associate Member of the Centre d'Etudes sur la Russie, le Caucase et l'Europe Centrale of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), I also collaborate with French colleagues on a number of research projects, workshops and seminar series. In my spare time, I do freelance work for the BBC Russian Service, in particular preparing programmes on the culture of the Russian diaspora; write travelogues about trips to exotic lands; and translate books of more general appeal (my latest project is the annotated translation into Russian of Judith Gautier's memoirs about her friendship with Richard Wagner, published in 2007 by the Logos Publishing House of Saint Petersburg).

Research Interests
My research is primarily focused on Russian émigré culture, Russian-French literary relations, contemporary francophone Slavic authors (Andreï Makine and Milan Kundera, in particular), and the Russian-language community in Israel. Besides many articles published in international scholarly journals, I have authored a monograph entitled Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures: Ecphrasis in Russian and French Poetry (New York: Palgrave, 2000) and edited a comprehensive encyclopaedia volume on literature of the Russian diaspora (Russian Émigré Writers of the Twentieth Century. Detroit, Washington, D.C., London: A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book Research, 2005).

Teaching and supervision
I teach BA and MA courses in Russian literature, language and culture, including:

• Nabokov and Russian Émigré Literature (MA).
• The Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (MA).
• Contemporary Russian Culture (MA) - this is a team-taught course, where I conduct sessions on bilingual Slavic authors and on literature of Russian diaspora in Israel.
• Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (BA).
• Intermediate Russian (BA).
• Intermediate Russian (MA).
• Reading Skills in Russian (BA).

Currently, I supervise Elena Kravchenko's PhD thesis on Sasha Sokolov's prose fiction.

Current Projects
Currently I am working on a monograph on the younger generation of Russian émigré writers of the inter-war period, based in Paris.

Recent Publications

This page last modified Wednesday 27 October 2010.