Kirill Ospovat is an associate professor in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+. He specializes in Russian literature of the Imperial Period (1700-1917) and the literary theory of the avant-garde. His research interests generally revolve around the interplay between literature, political theory, political theology and intellectual history in early modern and imperial Russia from a pan-European (German, English and French) perspective. His current book project deals with the economics of Russian sentimentalist fiction. As an assistant professor, Professor Ospovat completed Courtly Letters: Russian Literature and Visions of Absolutism in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (NLO Publishers, 2020), in addition to his previously published monograph which has established him as an international leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian culture.
A word from Dean Eric M. Wilcots:
Professor Ospovat’s new research project illuminating the political and theoretical underpinnings of the introduction of Western science into Russia under Peter the Great promises to extend his first-rate body of scholarship and draw interest from multiple fields and likely the wider public.