Adam Weiner

Professor of Russian

Contact
Phone:
+1 (781) 283-2419
Email:
aweiner@wellesley.edu
Department
Russian
Comparative Literary Studies
Russian Area Studies

Interests include Nabokov, Dostoevsky, literary theory, and the ideological repercussions of Russian fiction.

I have taught Russian language and literature at Wellesley since 1994 and Comparative Literature since 1997. The courses I regularly teach are on Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Russian Film, Dystopian Literature, Magical Realism, and Translation. I also enjoy teaching the Russian language. My translation partner, Alex Demyanov, and I have translated works by Katya Kapovich and Dmitry Prigov.

My first book, By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia (Northwestern UP, 1998), was an inquiry into the image of the devil in the novels of Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Andrei Bely, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Vladimir Nabokov.

My second book, How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2016), is a polemic against the idea of "rational egoism," which has produced some of the worst written yet also catastrophically influential novels of all time.

I am currently writing two books: one on Vladimir Nabokov's fiction, the other on I.A. Richards' strange work as an education reformer.

In my free time, I enjoy hiking and travelling with my family and like to amuse myself with chess and high school math, which I am re-learning in order to help my children with their homework.

 

Education

  • B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Current and upcoming courses

Fedor Dostoevsky: The Seer of Spirit (in English)

RUSS276

Probably no writer has been so detested and adored, so demonized and deified, as Dostoevsky. This artist was such a visionary that he had to reinvent the novel in order to create a form suitable for his insights into the inner life and his prophecies about the outer. To this day readers are mystified, outraged, enchanted, but never unmoved, by Dostoevsky's fiction, which some have tried to brand as "novel-tragedies," "romantic realism," "polyphonic novels," and more. This course challenges students to enter the fray and explore the mysteries of Dostoevsky themselves through study of his major writings.

  • Fedor Dostoevsky's Short Stories (in Russian)

    RUSS376H

    In this course students will enter the world of Dostoevsky's short fiction and learn his explosive literary style, obsessive themes, and artistic strategies. Students will increase their passive and active vocabulary and improve their speaking, writing and reading fluency in Russian. We will discuss one work of short fiction (about 20 pages) each week of the semester. Students will translate excerpts from each work discussed. Each student will write a short essay on a story of her choosing and present it to the class. Class meets twice weekly for 75 minutes. All work will be in Russian.

  • Magical Realism

    CPLT284

    This course examines novels and stories whose basic reality is familiar up until the introduction of a magical element: a ghost, a demon, a talisman, a physical transformation, a miraculous transition in space or time. The revelation of a second plane of existence calls into question all assumptions about what one is accustomed to call reality.. Readings will be drawn from the works of following authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar, Laura Esquivel, Kelly Link, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, Salman Rushdie.