Dr Sarah Young

Lecturer in Russian

Email
s.young@ssees.ucl.ac.uk

Phone Number
020 7679 8734

Fax
020 7679 8777

I began studying Russian at school, and got hooked on Russian literature after an early encounter with Gogol's Nose. A degree in Russian and French at Trinity College, Cambridge, including a year studying in Moscow and Minsk, was followed by a brief period translating books on chess theory from Russian. After studying for my Masters at the University of Manchester, I was supervised for my PhD by Malcolm Jones at the University of Nottingham, resulting in a thesis on the role of character in the structuring of the narrative of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

I subsequently held a Leverhulme Special (Early-Career) Research Fellowship at the University of Nottingham (2001-3), and also taught at the University of Leeds. From 2005-7, I taught nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature and social thought at the University of Toronto, before joining the Russian department at SSEES in September 2007.

Research Interests
My main areas of research are nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, thought and culture. I am specifically interested in questions of ethics and subjectivity in the development of narrative, including narratives of trauma and imprisonment; the tradition of Russian literature and the arts as the locus of political debate and dissent; and the relationship between religion and spiritual ideas and Russian literature.

My published work so far has focused on Dostoevsky, in my monograph, Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative, and a co-edited book of essays, Dostoevsky on the Threshold of Other Worlds. I am currently working on a book-length study of Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, as well as translations of some of Shalamov's stories.

Teaching and supervision
I am currently teaching the following undergraduate courses:

I welcome enquiries from prospective graduate students who are interested in pursuing research into any aspect of nineteenth-century Russian prose, or themes of dissent, trauma, memory and history in twentieth-century Russian literature.

Recent Publications

This page last modified Wednesday 26 May 2010.