Mr Adam Fergus

M.St. European Literature (Russian), 2002
B.A. Modern Languages (German and Russian), New College, Oxford, 2000

University Teacher (Russian)

Contact

Email: a.fergus@sheffield.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 7412

Research

My D.Phil. thesis deals with questions of national identity in the literary and (would-be) political spheres of the post-1917 Russian emigration. It examines how the work of two major Russian émigré writers of the 1920s and 1930s relates to Eurasianism. This view of Russia as an entity distinct from Europe and Asia, to be realized in a state grounded in Orthodoxy, was the most important post-revolutionary reconceptualization of Russian national identity to be developed in the Russian emigration.

In a project entitled ‘The Limits of Literary Language: Vladimir Odoevskii and Fyodor Tyutchev as Russian Inheritors of the German Romantic Tradition’, I plan to investigate how Odoevskii and Tyutchev regarded the relationship between the scope of the literary language on the one hand and of philosophy and music on the other. In the 1820s-1830s, both had been heavily influenced by German Romanticism, especially by Schelling, Goethe and (in the case of Odoevskii) E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Teaching

I have taught Russian language at all levels, as well as Russian literature, thought and history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modules include:

• RUS103/104: Russian for Beginners
• RUS117: The Soviet Union 1917-1991
• RUS120: Introduction to Russian Culture
• RUS205/206: Russian Language Skills
• RUS376: Reforms and Revolutions in Russian Literature and Thought
• RUS372/373: Russian Language Advanced (Minor Course)

Publications: Book reviews

• Pamela Davidson, Vyacheslav Ivanov and C. M. Bowra… in Modern Language Review, 103/3 (2008), 920-921.
• Craig Brandist et al. (ed.), The Bakhtin Circle: In the Master’s Absence in Modern Language Review, 103/2 (2008), 613-614.
• Thomas Seifrid, The Word Made Self, in Modern Language Review, 102/2 (2007), 607-608.
• Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime… in Ab Imperio, 3 (2005), 565-572.
• Selected Essays: Viacheslav Ivanov ed. by Michael Wachtel and tr. by Robert Bird in Modern Language Review, 101/1 (2006), 305-307.
• Alyssa W. Dinega, A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva, in Slavonica, 10/1 (2004), 95-96.

Administrative duties

Departmental Examinations Officer
Departmental Library Co-ordinator