Katya Hokanson
Education
B.A., 1984, Russian, Williams College
A.M., 1988 and Ph. D., 1994, Slavic Languages & Literatures, Stanford University
Other
1989-90 Leningrad State University, Leningrad, USSR Dissertation Research (International Research and Exchanges Board Fellowship)
Spring 1983 Leningrad State University, Leningrad, USSR (Council on International Educational Exchange four-month language program)
Statement
Katya Hokanson received her Ph. D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Humanities from Stanford University in 1994. Her current book project is Technologies of Empire: Representing Russia at the 1900 Paris World Exposition.
Prof. Hokanson’s first book, Writing at Russia's Border ( University of Toronto Press, 2008) argues that it was the literature produced at the periphery of empire that brought Russia to prominence and gave it a "national" character for the first time. Her second book, A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia (University of Toronto Press, 2022), deals with literature, travel writing, art and discourses of scientific discovery in Central Asia and beyond in the nineteenth century, and addresses the writing and imperial consciousness of women.
Other publications include “Tolstoy, Taraknath Das, Mohandas Gandhi and Their Transnational Reading Publics,” Tolstoy Studies Journal (Vol. XXXIV, 2022): 18-30, “The Geography of Russian Romantic Prose: Bestuzhev, Lermontov, Gogol, and Early Dostoevsky,” Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, ed. Paul Hamilton, Oxford University Press, 2016: 533-553, “The ‘Anti-Polish’ Poems and ‘I Built Myself a Monument…’: Politics and Poetry,”in Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, edited by Alyssa Gillespie, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 283-317. “Russian Women Travelers in Central Asia and India,” in The Russian Review (January 2011) “Suwarrow, Souvaroff: Byron's Russia and Pushkin's Political Poems of 1831,” in Zapadnyi pushkinizm i rossiiskii baironizm: problemy vzaimosviaze (2009), “In Defense of Empire: ‘The Bronze Horseman’ and ‘To the Slanderers of Russia,’” Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center (2008), “‘Barbarus hic ego sum’: Pushkin and Ovid on the Pontic Shore,” Pushkin Review 8: 2005, "Onegin's Journey: The Orient Revisited" ( Pushkin Review 3: 2000), "The Captivating Crimea: Visions of Empire in 'The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,'" inRussian Subjects: Nation, Empire, and Russia's Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally (Northwestern University Press, 1998), and "Literary Imperialism, Narodnost', and Pushkin's Invention of the Caucasus" ( The Russian Review 53: 1994).
Prof. Hokanson's current research interests include the history of Russian colonialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the writing of Aleksandr Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and Russian women writers of the nineteenth century. Her teaching focuses on Russian and European literature of the nineteenth century and literary theory.
Publications
Books
Writing at Russia’s Border, University of Toronto Press, 2008.
A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia, University of Toronto Press, 2022.
Published Articles and Book Chapters (refereed)
“Tolstoy, Taraknath Das, Mohandas Gandhi and Their Transnational Reading Publics,” Tolstoy Studies Journal (Vol. XXXIV, 2022): 18-30.
“The Geography of Russian Romantic Prose: Bestuzhev, Lermontov, Gogol, and Early Dostoevsky,” Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, ed. Paul Hamilton, Oxford University Press, 2016: 533-553.
“The ‘Anti-Polish’ Poems and ‘I Built Myself a Monument...’: Politics and Poetry,” in Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, edited by Alyssa Gillespie, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 283-317.
“Russian Women Travelers in Central Asia and India,” The Russian Review 70 (January 2011): 1-19.
“‘Barbarus hic ego sum’: Pushkin and Ovid on the Pontic Shore,” Pushkin Review 8: 1-15, 2005.
“Onegin’s Journey: The Orient Revisited,” Pushkin Review, vol. 3, December 2000: 151- 168.
“The Captivating Crimea: Visions of Empire in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’” in Russian Subjects: Nation, Empire, and Russia’s Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally, Northwestern University Press, 1998: 123- 148.
“Literary Imperialism, Narodnost’, and Pushkin’s Invention of the Caucasus,” The Russian Review, vol. 53, July 1994: 336-352.
Non-refereed Publications
Articles
“Suwarrow, Souvaroff: Byron's Russia and Pushkin's Political Poems of 1831,” Zapadnyi pushkinizm i rossiiskii baironizm: problemy vzaimosviazei. Materialy XIX mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii Rossiiskoi assotsiatsii prepodavatelei angliiskoi literatury. Moscow, Literary Institute in the name of M. Gorky (2009): 163-178.
“In Defense of Empire: ‘The Bronze Horseman’ and ‘To the Slanderers of Russia,’” Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, ed. Tetsuo Mochizuki, 21st Century COE Program Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 17: 149-166, Hokkaido University Slavic Research Center, April 2008.
Translations
“Why Pushkin Did Not Become a Decembrist,” by Igor Nemirovsky, in Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, edited by Alyssa Gillespie, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 60-83.
“Pushkin and Metropolitan Philaret,” by Oleg Proskurin, in Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations, edited by Alyssa Gillespie, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 112-156.
Works In Progress/Under Submission
Books
Technologies of Empire: Representing Russia at the 1900 Paris World Exposition, book manuscript in progress.
Articles
“Russian Rule in Turkestan: The View of a ‘Parisienne,’” submitted to The Russian Review.
“Black Dwellings Along the River: Reading the End of Crime and Punishment Through a Pushkinian Lens,” being revised to submit to Canadian Slavonic Papers.
Book Reviews
Susan Layton, Contested Russian Tourism: Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century (Academic Studies Press, 2021), The Russian Review, October 2022 (Vol. 81, No. 4), pp. 760-61.
Arsenyev, Vladimir. Across the Ussuri Kray: Travels in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains.
Translated with annotations by Jonathan Slaght (Indiana University Press, 2016),
Studies in Travel Writing, 2017, Vol. 21 (4), pp. 443-445.
Gould, Rebecca. Writers & Rebels: The Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), The Russian Review, July 2017, vol 76 (3),
pp. 544-5.
Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2011), Slavic And East European Journal, to be published in SEEJ 57.4 (Winter 2013, pages pending).
Sanna Turoma, Brodsky Abroad: Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, Slavic Review, vol. 71, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 975-6.
Bruce Grant, The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 46 (2012): 84-5.
Chester Dunning with Caryl Emerson, The Uncensored Boris Godunov: The Case for Pushkin's Original Comedy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), Pushkin Review / Pushkinskii vestnik 12-13 (2009-10): 153-55.
David Bethea, ed., The Pushkin Handbook (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), Slavic and East European Journal, 52.3, Fall 2008.
Laurence Kelly, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov and Imperial Russia’s Mission to the Shah of Persia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), October 2007 The Russian Review.
Margaret Ziolkowski, Alien Visions: The Chechens and the Navajos in Russian and American Literature (University of Delaware Press, 2005). The Russian Review,vol. 65, issue 3, July 2006: 525-6.
Two Hundred Years of Pushkin, vols. 2 and 3, ed. Robert Reid and Joe Andrew, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics (Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2003), Slavic and East European Journal 50.2, Summer 2006: 319-21.
Ewa M. Thompson, Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (Greenwood Press, 2000), Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 2001: 264-266.
Paul M. Austin, The Exotic Prisoner in Russian Romanticism, Vol. 9, Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature, ed. Thomas R. Beyer Jr. (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), Slavic Review, vol. 58 no. 2, 1999: 458-459.
Adrian Wanner, Baudelaire in Russia (University Press of Florida, 1996), Comparative Literature, vol. 49 no.4, 1997: 374-376.
Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge University Press, 1994), The Russian Review, vol. 55, No. 3, July 1996: 502-503.
Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature: A Study in Cultural Mythology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), The Russian Review, vol. 53, No. 4, October 1994: 562-563.