Department of Slavonic Studies

Department of Slavonic Studies

Susan Larsen's current research explores issues of gender and national identity in Russian culture from the late 18th century to the present. Her recent publications focus on contemporary Russian cinema, but she has also published articles on Russian theater, pulp fiction for adolescents, and late Soviet women's magazines, as well as several translations of Russian play and film scripts. She is currently completing a book on girls' culture in Russia from 1764 to 1917 and contemplating a new project on Soviet filmmakers' response to French and Italian cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Selected articles:



"Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters." In The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union (24 Frames Series), ed. Birgit Beumers, Wallflower Press (UK), 2007.

"National Identity, Cultural Authority and the Post-Soviet Blockbuster: Nikita Mikhalkov and Aleksei Balabanov." Slavic Review, Fall 2003.

"Girl Talk: Lidiia Charskaia and Her Readers." In Self and Story in Russian History, eds. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler. Cornell University Press, 2000.

"Melodramatic Masculinity, National Identity, and the Stalinist Past in Postsoviet Cinema." Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature. 24:1 (Winter 2000). Translation (in revised and expanded form) in O Muzhe(n)stvennosti [On Masculinity], ed. Sergei Ushakin. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002.

"In Search of an Audience: The New Russian Cinema of Reconciliation." In Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society Since Gorbachev, ed. Adele Barker. Duke University Press, 1999.

"Encoding Difference: Figuring Gender and Ethnicity in Kira Muratova's A Change of Fate." In Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late 20th- Century Russia, ed. Nancy Condee. Indiana University Press and the British Film Institute, 1995, pp. 113-129.

"Zhenshchina v zerkale sovetskoi pressy: Vzgliad so storony [Women in the Soviet Press: An Outsider's View]." Stanford Slavic Studies, 1993: 7. Reprint: Novaia volna: Russkaia kul'tura i subkul'tury na rubezhe 80-90 godov [The New Wave: Russian Culture and Subcultures in the Late 80s and Early 90s]. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1995.

"'I'm an Actor, Not a Writer'- Acting and Authorship in Bulgakov's Works." Theater 22:2 (Spring 1991), Special Issue: Russian and Soviet Classics Reconsidered.

Selected translations:



Andrei Platonov, "Father-Mother: A Film Scenario." New Left Review, Fall 2008.

Nikolai Koliada, Slingshot, produced at the San Diego Repertory Theater, October 22, 1989, published in Soviet Theatre 1990: 3. Reprint: abridged version with new introduction, in Out of the Blue: Russia's Hidden Gay Literature, ed. Kevin Moss. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1997.

Andrei Platonov, "The Hurdy Gurdy," Theater 20:3 (Fall 1989).