Larissa V. Rudova

Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor of Modern Languages and Professor of German and Russian; Coordinator of the Russian Section
With Pomona Since: 1991
  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Professor Rudova is the author of two monographs on Boris Pasternak and co-editor of Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (2008, 2011). Her numerous publications focus on Soviet and post-Soviet children’s and YA literature and film, modern Russian literature and culture, Russian cinema, and gender studies. She recently co-edited a volume of scholarly articles, Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood: Myths and Realities (2023), that examines childhood as a philosophical, literary, and visual category. She has taught such courses as Russian and East European cinema; representations of women in Russian literature and film; European, Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet fairy tales; comedy and humor in Russian culture; contemporary Russian culture and society; modern Russian literature; European and Russian modernism; Russian poetry; Russian and East European Research Seminar.

    Rudova’s research also shines a light on Russian literature for children and young adults, focusing most recently on beauty and femininity in Russian works for adolescent girls.

    Research Interests

    • Russia’s mediasphere
    • Contemporary Russian literature and culture
    • Russian and European modernism and avant-garde literature and art;
    • Soviet and post-Soviet cultural politics
    • Russian and East European cinema
    • Representations of gender in popular culture and the media
    • Children’s literature and culture; childhood studies
    • Life-writing
    • Socialist fashion and consumer culture
    • Fashion theory
    • Russian literary theory

    Areas of Expertise

    RUSSIAN

    • Modern and post-Soviet Russian literature and mass culture
    • Russian and European modernism
    • Russian film
    • Children's and young adult literature and culture
    • Gender in Russian culture
    • Socialist fashion and consumption
  • Work

    Work

    Books

    Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood: Myths and Realities. Co-edited with Marina Balina and Anastasia Kostetskaya. New York: Routledge, 2023.

    Russian Children’s Literature and Culture. Co-edited with Marina Balina. Routledge, 2008, 2011.

    Understanding Boris Pasternak. U of South Carolina Press, 1998.

    Pasternak's Early Fiction and the Cultural Vanguard. Peter Lang, 1994.

    Selected Articles

    “Introduction: The World of Russian Childhood.” Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood. New York: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 1-19.

    “From Socialist Realism to Mash-up Fiction: The Evolution of Arkadii Gaidar’s Timur and His Team.” Filoteknos: Children’s Literature, Cultural Mediation, Anthropology of Childhood, vol. 12 (2022): 307-319.

    “Transformative Vision and Abiding Traditionalism: Gender in the Canon of Soviet Children’s Literature.” Canon in Move: Ways and Subjects in Formation. Eds. Zofia Zasacka and Dorota Michułka. Forthcoming.

    “From Nature to ‘Second Nature’ and Back.” The Pedagogy of Imagery: Depicting Communism for Children. Eds. Marina Balina and Sergei Oushakine. University of Toronto Press, 2021.

    “Embracing Eccentricity: Cinderella and the Avant-Garde Imagination.” Brill Companion to Soviet Children’s Literature and Film. Ed. Olga Voronina. Brill, 2019, pp. 417-439.

    “Erich Kästner’s Playful Characters in the Cultural Space of Stagnation” (Veselye syshiki Erikha Kestnera v kul’turnom prostranstve zastoia). Detskie chteniia/ Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Research Institute of Russian Literature/Russian Academy of Sciences) 15:1 (Fall 2019): pp. 127-144.

    "The Second Congress of Soviet Writers and Boris Pasternak's Lyrical Poetry." The Second Congress of Soviet Writers. The Ideology of the Historical Transition and Transformation of Soviet Literature. 1954. (Vtoroi s''ezd sovetskikh pisatelei. Ideologiia istoricheskogo perekhoda i transformatsiia sovetskoi literatury. 1954). Eds. Konstantin Bogdanov and Valery Viugin. St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 2018. 596, pp. 270-288.

    “Storying War Childhood in Albert Likhanov’s Russian Boys.” Filoteknos: Anthropology of Childhood 8 (2018): pp. 63-74.

    “Fictional and Historical Remembering of the Great Patriotic War and War Childhood: Events and Heroes Great and Small.” Editor’s Introduction to the cluster, “Russian and Eastern European War Childhood.” Filoteknos: Anthropology of Childhood 8 (2018): pp. 7-12.

    “New Plots for the New German Child, or Mikhail Il’in’s ‘Poetry of Science’ in East German Children’s Literature”/ “Novye siuzhety dlia novogo nemetskogo rebenka, ili ‘poeziia nauki’ Mikhaila Il’ina v detskoi literature GDR.” Detskie chteniia/ Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Research Institute of Russian Literature/Russian Academy of Sciences) 13:1 (2018): pp. 141-152.

    “’Cross-Writing’ and War Memory: Fridrikh Gorenshtein’s Autobiographical Story, ‘The House with a Turret.’” AvtobiografiЯ: Journal on Life Writing and the Representation of the Self in Russian Culture 4 (2015): pp. 29-46.

    “Masculinity in Soviet and Post-Soviet Children's literature: Transformation of Timur and his Team.” (Maskulinnost’ v sovetskoi i postsovetskoi detskoi literature: transformatsiia Timura i ego komandy”). Detskie chteniia/Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature 2:6 (2014): pp. 88-103.

    “‘Who is the Fairest of Them All?’ Beauty and Femininity in Contemporary Russian Adolescent Girl Fiction,” The Russian Review 73:3 (July 2014): pp. 389-403.

    Selected Review Essays and Book Reviews

    “Russian Children’s Literature and Childhood Research in the Post-Soviet Age: Past-Present-Future,” with Marina Balina. The Russian Review 81:1 (January 2022): 122-132.

    “Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911–2011.” (“Stil’ ikon: modnaia fotografiia, muzei i khudozhestvennoe znachenie”). With Hans Jürg Rindisbacher. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture/Teoriia mody 50 (Winter 2018-2019): 295-317.

    “How Fashion Constructed Soviet Identity.” Review of Fashion, Consumption and Everyday Culture in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1985. Ed. Eva Hausbacher, Elena Huber, Julia Hargaßner. Teoriia mody/Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 46 (Winter 2017-2018): 323-329.

    “Chagall for the Stage: An International Journey.” With Hans Jürg Rindisbacher. The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms (Aug. 15, 2018).

    “When Fashionable Men Reign: 300 Years of Dressing Men.” Review Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715-2015. LACMA April 10-August 21, 2016. With Hans J. Rindisbacher. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture (Teoriia mody: odezhda, telo, kul’tura) 42 (Winter 2016-2017): 299-306.

    The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales by Hermynia zur Mühlen. Translated and edited by Jack Zipes. The European Legacy 27:7-8 (2022): 858-860

    Moscow Has Ears Everywhere: New Investigations on Pasternak and Ivinskaya by Paolo Mancosu. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2019. Russian Review 79:1 (2020): 130-132.

    An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook by Sara Pankenier Weld. The Lion and the Unicorn 43:1 (2019): 136-139.

    Russische Kinderliteratur im europäischen Exil der Zwischenkriegszeit by Nadia Preindl. Slavic Review 77:1 (Spring 2018): 281-282.

    Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject. By Constantin Parvulescu. Slavic Review 76:1 (May 2017): 232-234.

    Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Yong People (1574-2010) by Ben Hellman. Detskie chteniia/Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Research Institute of Russian Literature/Russian Academy of Sciences) 11 (2017): 259-263. (In Russian)

    Russia’s New Fin de Siècle: Contemporary Culture Between Past and Present. Ed. Birgit Beumers. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2013. The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 22:1 (2017): 114-116.

    Sowjetische Kindheit im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Generationsentwüfe im Kontext nationaler Errinnerungskultur. By Oxane Leingang. Slavic Review75:3 (Fall 2016): 797-799.

    Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde by Sarah Pankenier Weld. International Research in Children’s Literature Quarterly 9:2 (2016): 226-228.

    Fashion, Consumption and Everyday Culture in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1985. Ed. Eva Hausbacher, Elena Huber, Julia Hargaßner. The Russian Review 74:4 (October 2015): 724-725.

    Ben Hellman. Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Yong People (1574-2010). The Russian Review 73:3 (July 2014): 465-467.

  • Education

    Education

    Ph.D.
    University of Washington

    Fluent Languages

    • English
    • Russian
    • German

    Recent Courses Taught

    • Post-Soviet Russian Culture and Society
    • Research Seminar: Topics in Russian and East European Studies
    • Russian Cinema
    • Russian Short Fiction: Tales of Passion, Crime, Wars and Revolutions
    • The Great Utopia: Russian Literature and Culture from 1900 to the Present
    • Politicizing Magic: Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales
    • Critical Inquiry Seminar