Rossen Djagalov

Assistant Professor

Rossen Djagalov is an Assistant Professor of Russian at New York University . His interests lie in socialist culture globally and, more specifically, in the linkages between cultural producers and audiences in the USSR and abroad. His forthcoming manuscript, “Premature Postcolonialists: Soviet-Third-World Literary and Cinematic Encounters in the Age of Three Worlds" reconstructs the Soviet genealogy of postcolonial literature, film, and ultimately, theory. His second book project, “The People’s Republic of Letters: Towards a Media History of Twentieth-Century Socialist Internationalism,” examines the relationship between the political left and the different media (proletarian novel, singer-songwriter performance, political documentary film) that at different times played a major role in connecting its publics globally. Before coming to NYU, he taught at Koc University, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum and a tutor at Harvard's History and Literature program. He is a member of the editorial collective of LeftEast.

Education

B.A. 2002, Williams College (Russian and Astrophysics); Ph.D. 2011, Yale University (Comparative Literature)

Areas of Research/Interest

(Post-)Soviet culture, Second-World modernity, Soviet-Third World literary and cinematic engagements, media history of international leftist culture, Marxism


Fellowships

  • 2017-2018 Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, HSE, Moscow
  • 2017-2018 Visiting Scholarship at Wolfson College, Oxford University
  • 2012-2013 Postdoctoral fellow/lecturer at the Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania
  • 2010-2011 ACLS/ Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship
  • 2008-2009 SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship

Publications

  • "The Red Apostles: Imagining Revolution in the Global Proletarian Novel.”
    Slavic and East European Journal 61.3(Autumn 2017), p. 396-422.
  • “Literary Monopolists and the Forging of the Post-WWII People’s Republic of Letters.”
    In Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses. Ed. by Natalia Skradol and Evgeny Dobrenko (London: Anthem Press, 2017).
  • (with Masha Salazkina) “Tashkent 1968: a Cinematic Contact Zone.”
    Slavic Review 75.2(Summer 2016), p. 279-298.
  • “Guitar Poetry, Democratic Socialism, and the Limits of 1960s Internationalism”
    The Socialist 60s: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by Diane Koenker and Anne Gorsuch (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP, 2013), p. 148-66.
  • “The Antipopulism of the Intellectuals,”
    Neprikosnovennyi Zapas 1(75) 2011) (in Russian). Reprinted in German translation in Transit: Europäische Revue (Winter 2011/2012).
  • “Guitar Poetry as the Genre of 1960s Democratic Socialism.”
    Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 100(2010) (in Russian)
  • “’I don’t boast about it, but I’m the most widely read author of this century”: Howard Fast and International Leftist Literary Culture, ca. mid-20th Century.”
    Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review 26.1(Fall 2009), p. 40-55.
  • (with Christine Evans) “Moscow, 1960: Imagining Soviet-Third World Friendship”
    In Soviet Union and the Third World: USSR, State Socialism, and Anticolonialism during the Cold War. Ed. by Andreas Hilger. Munich: Oldenborg Verlag, 2009, p. 83-107. (in German)
  • “Pamiat’/Memorial: Rasputin, Aitmatov, and the Search for Soviet Memory.”
    Pamiat’/Memorial: Rasputin, Aitmatov, and the Search for Soviet Memory 8(2009), p. 27-43.
  • “Varlam Shalamov and the Ways of Soviet Existentialism.”
    in Varlam Shalamov at 100: Conference Materials. Ed. by Irina Sirotinskaia. Мoscow. Moscow: Griffon, 2007, p. 55-72. (in Russian)
  • “Towards an Evolution of Literature-centeredness in the Poetry of Alexandr Galich.”
    in Galich: New Articles and Materials. Ed. by Andrei Krylov. Moscow: IuPAPS, 2003, p. 211-218. (in Russian)