Emily Wang

Biography

My research deals with Russian literature (especially poetry) and its relation to broader social trends, including the formation of intellectual and emotional communities, the intersection between politics and literature, and questions of racial and national identity. While I started studying Russian because as a melancholy teenager I loved the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, it wasn't until I had to start reading (and memorizing) poetry in Russian that I really became interested in this genre. In college, I remember feeling startled to learn that Alexander Pushkin's brother Lev would irritate his brother by circulating the poet's latest works at parties before he could publish them himself. The anecdote reminded me of the then-current debates surrounding Napster and file sharing and helped me realize that poetry played a very different role in nineteenth-century Russia than I had presumed based on the rarefied (and mandatory) position poetry held in my earlier English classes. Today,  it's still exciting for me to study how Russian-language poetry has been used to spur political movement, define identities, explore ideas, and inspire obsessions.