Professor Katharine Hodgson

I am a Professor in Russian, with a focus on the study of literature written in Russian. My main research area is twentieth-century poetry. I was Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded project exploring changing attitudes towards the cultural legacy of the USSR since 1991. which led to two major publications: a 2020 book written with my colleague at Edinburgh Dr Alexandra Smith on poetic canons, cultural memory, and Russian national identity, and an edited volume, Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry: Reinventing the Canon (2017). I am currently looking at how Russophone poets of the twentieth century signalled their affinities with other poets in their poetic texts through features such as dedications, quotation, lyric apostrophe. I have also explored topics including poetry and translation; forthcoming publications include chapters on Evgenii Evtushenko, and on Joseph Brodsky.

I offer undergraduate modules in Russian studies with a focus on literary topics such as the representation of animals in Russian writing, though my first-year module Russia: Empire and Identity is more focused on the history of Russia's development as an empire. I also teach Russian language at all levels, including for the MA in Translation.

Research supervision:

I welcome research proposals in any area related to my research specialism, and would be particularly interested in proposed projects in the field of twentieth-century Russophone poetry, Russian literary canon formation, the culture of the Soviet period, Russian literature/culture and war.

I am currently supervising two doctoral research projects; one on Russian translation thinking in the Soviet Union during and after the post-Stalin Thaw, and another on the poetry and memoirs of Ida Nappelbaum, whose career spanned the years between the Silver Age of the early twentieth century, and the late-Soviet period of glasnost' and perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev.