CV Highlights

Employment History

2016-2021 Associate Professor of Russian and Chair, Russian Department, Bowdoin College

2005-2016 Associate Professor of Russian, Department of German and Russian, University of Notre Dame

1999-2005 Assistant Professor of Russian, Department of German and Russian, University of Notre Dame

Education

Ph.D., 1998 Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Major: Russian Literature; Minor: Polish Literature; Advisor: David M. Bethea, Vilas Distinguished Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature; Dissertation: “Exorcising the Beloved: Problems of Gender and Selfhood in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Myths of Poetic Genius”

M.A., 1992 Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Madison

B.A., 1990 Brandeis University, summa cum laude

Major: English and American Literature (highest honors); Minor: Mathematics

Language Institutes

1996 Institute of Polish Language and Culture, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

1990 Ohio State University Russian Language Program, Pushkin Institute of Russian Language Moscow, Russia

Major Grants, Fellowships, Awards

2022 Translation Fellow, National Endowment for the Arts

2014 Distinguished Faculty Fellow, University of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (fall)

2012 First prize, Compass Award, international poetry translation contest held under the auspices of Cardinal Points journal, for my translation of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poem of the End

2011 Joint third prize, The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Competition, international poetry translation contest held under the auspices of the Stephen Spender Trust, for my translation of Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Two trees desire to come together…”

2005-2006 Faculty Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities 

2002 “Outstanding Academic Title” designation for my book A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva, Choice magazine

1997-1998 Dissertation Fellowship, Social Science Research Council 

1996 Detling Dissertation Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison (fall)

1996 Language Study Grant, American Council of Learned Societies (summer)

Works in Progress

Dangerous Verses: Alexander Pushkin and the Ethics of Inspiration, scholarly monograph (Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies series, University of Wisconsin Press) [under advance contract]

Pushkin, short biography treating Alexander Pushkin’s life and works (Critical Lives series, Reaktion Books) [under advance contract]

Vega's Fugitive: Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, selected and translated by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie [submitted to Northwestern University Press]

Anatolii Dimarov, And There Will Be People, translated from the Ukrainian by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie (in progress)

Romance and Violence in the Caucasus, translated by Alyssa Dinega Gillespie (three classical literary texts concerning Russian imperial expansion in the early 19th century: Alexander Pushkin’s “Captive of the Caucasus,” Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky’s Ammalat-Bek, and Taras Shevchenko’s “The Caucasus”) [submitted to NYRB Books]

Publications

Scholarly Books

Поэтическое воображение Пушкина [Pushkin’s Poetic Imagination], translated into Russian by Oxana Yakimenko, edited by Olga Barash, managing editor Kseniia Tverianovich, in the Современная западная русистика [Contemporary Western Rusistika] book series (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2021)

Marina Tsvetaeva: Po kanatu poezii [Marina Tsvetaeva: Along the Poetic Tightrope], translated into Russian by M. E. Malikova, edited by A. E. Barzakh, in the Современная русистика [Contemporary Russian Studies] book series of the Institute of Russian Literature/Pushkin House, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2015) (480 pp.) [a revised and updated Russian-language version of A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva] 

A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001) (xvii + 285 pp. [named a Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2001]

Edited Books

Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, in the Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies book series (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) (xx + 482 pp.)

Russian Literature in the Age of Realism, vol. 277 in the series Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Group) (xxi + 498 pp.)

Refereed Journal Articles

“‘Vot muza, rezvaia boltun’ia…’: Poetic Form as a Window onto Pushkin’s Playful Ethical ‘Doublespeak,’” Pushkin Review 21 (2019): 35-51

“Through a Glass Darkly: Doubling and Poetic Self-Image in Pushkin’s ‘The Gypsies,’” Russian Review 68.3 (July 2009): 451-76

“Between Myth and History: An Interpretation of Osip Mandel’shtam’s Poem ‘V Peterburge my sojdemsja snova,’” Russian Literature 56.4 (fall 2004): 363-95

“Sidestepping Silence, Ventriloquizing Death: A Reconsideration of Pushkin’s Stone Island Cycle,” Pushkin Review 6/7 (2003-2004): 39-83

“Poem as Performance: A New Interpretation of Sep-Szarzynski’s Sonnet V ‘On the Impermanent Love for Things of This World,’” Slavic and East European Journal, 47.4 (winter 2003): 569-88

“Thirsting for Angelic: Death and Reciprocity in Tsvetaeva’s Poems to Rilke,” special issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, ed. Leonid Livak, 37.1-2 (spring-summer 2003): 3-27

“Sexual Transcendence in Tsvetaeva’s Poems to Pasternak,” Slavic Review 59.3 (fall 2000): 547-71

“Bearing the Standard: Transformative Ritual in Gorky’s Mother and the Legacy of Tolstoy,” Slavic and East European Journal 42.1 (spring 1998): 76-101

“Ambiguity as Agent in Pushkin’s and Shakespeare’s Historical Tragedies,” Slavic Review 55.3 (fall 1996): 525-51

Book Chapters

“Pushkin as Camouflage: Pasternak’s Posthumous Dialogue with Tsvetaeva in Doctor Zhivago,” in Unacknowledged Legislators: Studies in Russian Literary History and Poetics in Honor of Michael Wachtel, ed. Lazar Fleishman, David M. Bethea, and Ilya Vinitsky (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020), 675-712

“The Last Stump and the Forgotten Leaf: Images of Trees in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poetry of Identity and Alienation,” in “A Convenient Territory”: Russian Literature at the Edge of Modernity. Essays in Honor of Barry Scherr, ed. John M. Kopper and Michael Wachtel (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2015), 105-37

“Taboo and Transcendence: The Role of Secrecy in Pushkin’s Mythopoetics,” in Poetry and Poetics: A Centennial Tribute to Kiril Taranovsky, ed. Barry P. Scherr, James Bailey, and Vida T. Johnson (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2014), 39-60

“Beyond Pushkin as Dogma,” introduction to Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, ed. Alyssa Dinega Gillespie (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 3-38

“Bawdy and Soul: Pushkin’s Poetics of Obscenity,” in Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, ed. Alyssa Dinega Gillespie (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 185-223

“Murderous Mirror Magic: Pushkin’s Mythopoetic Reflections on Transgression and the Artistic Impulse,” Russian Literature and the West: A Tribute for David M. Bethea, edited by Alexander Dolinin, Lazar Fleishman, and Leonid Livak, 2 vols. (Stanford: Stanford Slavic Studies, 2008), 1:41-65

“‘Ten trakt daleki, ten smutek.’ Kreacja wygnania w wierszach Marii Pawlikowskiej-Jasnorzewskiej i Mariny Cwietajewej,” in Polonistyka po amerykańsku: Badania nad literaturą polską w Ameryce Północnej (1990-2005), edited by Halina Filipowicz, Andrzej Karcz, and Tamara Trojanowska (Warsaw: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk Wydawnictwo, 2005), 206-28 [Polish translation of “That Distant Road, That Sadness”]

“That Distant Road, That Sadness: The Creation of Exile in Poems by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska and Marina Tsvetaeva,” in Russkaia emigratsiia. Literatura. Istoriia. Kinoletopis’, edited by V. Khazan, I. Belobrovtseva, and S. Dotsenko (Jerusalem: Gesharim & Moscow: Mosty kul’tury, 2004), 88-108

Encyclopedia Articles

“Joseph Brodsky,” in Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 1: Agnon-Eucken, ed. Bruccoli Clark, vol. 329 in the series Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Group, 2007), 184-202 [expanded version of 2003 article]

“Osip Mandel’shtam,” in Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Since 1914—Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter, 5 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), 3:1718-21

“Joseph Brodsky,” in Russian Writers Since 1980, edited by Marina Balina and Mark Lipovetsky, vol. 285 in the series Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Group, 2003), 17-39

Selected Translations

Ivan Franko, “Semper Idem” [from Ukrainian] and 7 poems from Russian (by Lermontov, Tiutchev, Pushkin, Pasternak, A. K. Tolstoy, and Gippius), in Picturing Rachmaninoff, by Stephen Cook (pianist) with Alyssa Gillespie (translator): recordings of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 9 Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39 for piano in combination with masterpieces of painting and poetry; revised edition with new poems and paintings (first published in 2010)

Taras Shevchenko, “The Caucasus" [from Ukrainian], with an introductory essay by Taras Koznarsky, Literary Hub (November 29, 2022)

Four Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva (“The Sibyl,” “Two Trees,” “O Sorrow Floods My Eyes!,” “God Bent Under”), a musical composition by Mark Abel, scored for soprano with piano and English horn accompaniment; this vocal work was composed using my translations of Tsvetaeva’s poems; score published by Oceangoing Music (catalogue no. CVR 5264), 2019; CD titled The Cave of Wondrous Voice released on the Delos record label May 1, 2020

“Again I visited…” and “The Snowslide” by Alexander Pushkin, in Pushkin Review 21 (2019): 209-211

Five poems by Jewish-Russian poets (Leon Mandelstam, “The People,” Semyon Nadson, from “The Woman” and “I grew up shunning you, O most degraded nation…,” Vladislav Khodasevich, “Not my mother but a Tula peasant woman…,” “In Moscow I was born. I never…”), in Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature: An Anthology, edited by Maxim D. Shrayer (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018)

Six poems by Russian Modernist poets (Zinaida Gippius, “She”; Nikolai Gumilev, “Giraffe”; Osip Mandelstam, “Tristia”; Marina Tsvetaeva, “Hands up—and jump…,” “Flawlessly, matchlessly life lies…,” “Dawn on the Rails”), in Russian Silver Age Poetry: Texts and Contexts, edited by Sibelan Forrester and Martha Kelly (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2015)

Polina Barskova, “Sweetness of the sweetest slumber…,” in Atlanta Review 21.2, special issue on contemporary Russian poetry edited by Alex Cigale (Spring/Summer 2015): 42

Marina Tsvetaeva, “Fate does not will it that strong and strong…” (from The Two), New England Review 34.3-4 (2014): 145

Twenty-one poems by Russian-Jewish poets (Ilya Erenburg, Afanasy Fet, Simon Frug, Vladislav Khodasevich, Leon Mandel’shtam, Nikolay Minsky, Semyon Nadson, Arkady Shteynberg, Dmitri Tsenzor), in Anthology of Russian-Jewish Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry, 1801-2001, vol. 1, ed. Maxim D. Shrayer (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2007)

Marina Tsvetaeva, “Stikhi k Chekhii: Mart (8),” in Marina Tsvetaeva: Lichnye i tvorcheskie vstrechi, perevody ee sochinenii (Moscow: Dom-muzei Mariny Tsvetaevoi, 2001), 407-8

Original Poetry

“Winter Ètude on the Death of Joseph Brodsky” and “This winter has been long…,” in Cardinal Points Journal: The Literary Journal of the Slavic Studies Department, Brown University 6, edited by Alexandra Berlina, Irina Mashinski, and Boris Dralyuk (New York: StoSvet Press, 2016): 154-56

Scholarly and Creative Projects

Founding Editor, Myths and Taboos in Russian Culture, book series for Academic Studies Press (a scholarly publisher specializing in Slavic Studies and Jewish Studies, Brighton, Massachusetts) (2013-present)

English translator for Жираф [Giraffe], animated short film by Natalia Mirzoyan, Kinostudia Soyuzmultfilm (2022)

Creative collaboration with contemporary classical composer Mark Abel on his new chamber piece Four Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva; this vocal work was composed using my translations of Tsvetaeva’s poems, 2019

Live performance, Picturing Rachmaninoff: Music, Poetry, and Painting in Concert: on-stage readings of the original Russian versions and my new English translations of eight poems (by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tiutchev, A. N. Tolstoi, Gippius, Tsvetaeva, and Pasternak), with projected images of paintings and Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux Op. 39 performed by pianist Stephen B. Cook, University of Notre Dame (March 18, 2010)

Guest curator, Darker Shades of Red: Official Soviet Propaganda from the Cold War, an exhibit at the University of Notre Dame Snite Museum of Art (September 19-November 14, 2004)

Advanced Seminar

“Travels with the Muse: Pushkin’s Inspirational Myths,” invited two-hour senior scholar seminar, AATSEEL National Conference, San Diego, CA (February 7, 2020)

Recent Invited Talks

“Angry Bards: Patriotism and Grievance in Poems by Pushkin, Shevchenko, and Brodsky” (“Klevetnikam Rossii,” “Kavkaz,” “Na nezavisimost’ Ukrainy”), invited talk at the conference Pushkin after 1831 (Dedicated to the 190thAnniversary of “The Bronze Horseman”), international online conference sponsored by Academic Studies Press (December 11, 2023)

“Переводя Цветаеву не переводя дыхания: музыка и ритмика цветаевских стихов в английском переводе” [Translating Tsvetaeva Breathlessly: Music and Rhythm in Tsvetaeva's Verses in Translation], invited talk at the conference Актуальные проблемы лингвистики, лингводидактики и переводоведения [Current Problems of Linguistics, Language Pedagogy and Translation Studies], Military Engineering-Technical University, St. Petersburg, Rusia (April 22, 2021)

“The Bronze Guest behind the Door, or ‘как памятник Пушкина однады пришел к нам в гости’: Pushkinian Hauntings in Tsvetaeva’s Poetry,” invited talk at the 3rd Princeton Pushkinalia: “...Вновь я посетил...”: Pushkin in Transit, Princeton University (January 11, 2020)

“Fools, Kings, and the Poet’s Trauma,” invited talk at the 2nd Princeton Pushkinalia: Pushkin Offshore, University College of the Cayman Islands (January 11, 2019)

Courses Taught

At Bowdoin College

Russian Language

Elementary Russian I (fall 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)

Elementary Russian II (spring 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)

Russian Literature and Culture Taught in English

One Thousand Years of Russian Culture (fall 2016, spring 2020)

Post-Soviet Russian Cinema (spring 2017, 2019)

Rebels, Workers, Mothers, Dreamers: Women in Russian Art and Literature Since the Age of Revolution (fall 2017)

Nature and the Environment in Russian Culture (fall 2018)

Russian Literature and Culture Taught in Russian

Pushkin (fall 2019)

Additional Courses

Introduction to Translation Theory, and Practicum in Translating 19th-Century Russian Poetry, advanced independent study (spring 2020)

At University of Notre Dame

Russian Language

Beginning Russian I (fall 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012)

Beginning Russian II (spring 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013)

Advanced Russian I (fall 2009, 2013)

Advanced Russian II (spring 2010, 2014)

Russian Literature and Culture Taught in English

Post-Soviet Russian Cinema (spring 2004, fall 2008, spring 2012, spring 2014)

Women in Russian Literature (spring 2013)

One Thousand Years of Russian Culture (fall 2009, fall 2012)

Russian Literature and Culture Taught in Russian

Russian Romanticism (fall 2003, spring 2007, fall 2013)

Pushkin (fall 2000, spring 2009, fall 2011, spring 2016)

Chekhov (fall 2001)

Introduction to Russian Poetry (spring 2000)

A Space for Speech: Russian Women Memoirists (spring 2001)

Literary and Interdisciplinary Seminars

Single and Double Selves (Sophomore Interdisciplinary College Seminar) (fall 2011, spring 2016)

Russian Literature and the Arts through History (Freshman Seminar) (fall 2000, 2004)

Chasing the Troika: Russia’s Literary Search for Self (Freshman Seminar) (fall 1999)

Additional Courses

Russian and East European Studies Cultural Enrichment (fall 2008-spring 2014)

Heritage Russian, independent study (fall 2012)

Joseph Brodsky, directed readings course (spring 2002)

Languages

English: native. Russian: near-native in all modalities.  Ukrainian: advanced in all modalities. Polish: advanced reading ability. German: intermediate reading ability.

Last updated: June 2024