Contact Information
3080 LCLB
707 S Mathews
M/C 170
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Interests
Russian literature and culture of the eighteenth--nineteenth centuries; nineteenth-century Ukrainian Literature; empire and the Gothic; literature and science; race in nineteenth-century Russia.
Research Description
I am a scholar of late eighteenth- and nineteenth century Russian literature and culture, with an additional specialization in Ukrainian literature. One of my major research interests at the outset of my scholarly career was the interaction between literature and medicine or science more generally, as reflected in my first monograph Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination (2009). Later I developed I a new research interest in Gothic literature and its adaptation in the Russian imperial context, which resulted in the book Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny (2020). Haunted Empire argues that the Gothic genre served as a particularly apt form for “the imperial uncanny”—the effect of danger and uncertainty in the ambiguous colonial spaces within Russia’s borders where the characters’ imperial identities are challenged and destabilized. My additional research agendas include the cultural history of emotions, the discourse of race in post-reform Russia, and the nineteenth-century Russian radicals' engagement with Ukraine.
Education
Ph.D., Columbia University, 2003
Diploma of Higher Education, Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University, 1994
Awards and Honors
The Campus award and the LAS Dean's award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2023
Prize for the Best Article in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture (2018-19) from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2015-16
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2014
Center for Advanced Study Associate, University of Illinois, 2014-2015
Center for Advanced Study Beckman Fellowship, University of Illinois, 2005-06
Courses Taught
UKR 201-202: Second-Year Ukrainian I and II
RUSS 512: Russian Literature, 1855-1905
RUSS 511: Russian Literature, 1800-1855
RUSS 323/RUSS 523 Tolstoy
RUSS 320/RUSS 524 Pushkin
RUSS 424 Russian Modernism
RUSS 461 Russia and the Other: The Caucasus in the Russian Cultural Imagination
RUSS 418 Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature
RUSS 220 The Golden Age of Russian Literature
RUSS 225 Russian Literature and Revolution
Additional Campus Affiliations
Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center
Program in Comparative and World Literature
European Union Center
Center for Global Studies
Highlighted Publications
Books
1. Sobol, Valeria. Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny. Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, imprint of Cornell University, Press, 2020. Shortlisted for the 2021 AATSEEL prize for best book in literary studies. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501750571/haunted-empire/#bookTabs=1
Podcast interviews:
- “History of Literature” (at 25 minutes): https://open.spotify.com/episode/0zvRGtMeOj1I8jNYBdK9hf
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/593-vladimir-propp-with-mike-palindrome-the-russian/id1048375034?i=1000646827723
- “Russian Rulers History”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/385372/14162732
- "The Slavic Connexion": https://www.slavxradio.com/sobol
Edited Books
Steinberg, Mark, and Valeria Sobol. Interpreting emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011.
Journal Articles
Sobol, Valeria. “From ‘Female Malady’ to an Environmental Condition: Hysteria in the Russian Scientific Discourse of Fin-de-Siècle.” Der Wiener Slawisticher Almanach 89 (2022): 163-91.
Sobol, Valeria. "’Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish’s Gothic Ukraine." Slavic Review, vol. 78, no. 3, 2019, p. 390-409. Winner of the Prize for the Best Article in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture (2018-19) from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies.
Sobol, Valeria. "On Mimicry and Ukrainians: The Imperial Gothic in Pogorelsky’s Monastyrka." East/West, vol. 16-17, 2013, p. 369-387.
Sobol, Valeria. "The Uncanny Frontier of Russian Identity: Travel, Ethnography, and Empire in Lermontov’s ‘Taman’." Russian Review, 2011.
Sobol, Valeria. "‘Pochemu zimoi ne byvaet groma?’ Gurov, Job, and Chekhovian Epistemology in ‘Dama s sobachkoi’." Russian Literature, vol. 66, 2009, p. 217-233.
Sobol, Valeria. "In search of an Alternative Love Plot: Tolstoy, Science, and Post-Romantic Love Narratives." Tolstoy Studies Journal, vol. 19, 2007, p. 54-74.
Sobol, Valeria. "'Febris Erotica': Alexander Herzen's Post-Romantic Physiology." Slavic Review, vol. 65, no. 1, 2006, p. 502-22..
Sobol, Valeria. "Nerves, Brain, or Heart? The Physiology of Emotions and the Mind-Body Problem in Russian Sentimentalism." Russian Review, vol. 70, no. 1, 2006, p. 1-14.
Sobol, Valeria. "'Yes, We Are Scythians': The Image of Russia in Josef Skvorecký's The Cowards." Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 49, no. 1, 2005, p. 79-93.
Book Contributions
Sobol, Valeria. “Eastern Europe.” The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World, ed. Katie Barclay and Peter N. Stearns (London and New York: Routledge, 2022): 139-53.
Sobol, Valeria. “‘Shadows, Dead People, and Specters’: Gothic Aesthetics in Ivan Goncharov’s The Ravine.” Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Lyudmila Parts and Ingrid Kleespies (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021): 115-131.
Sobol, Valeria. “Refleksy liubvi: teoriia I. M. Sechenova i liubovnye narrativy russkogo realizma." In M. Vaisman, A. Vdovin, I. Kliger, K. Ospovat, eds. Russkii realism XIX veka: Obshchestvo, znanie, povestvovanie. Moscow: NLO, 2020. 452-473.
Sobol, Valeria. "'Zakoldovannyi zamok' v romane L.N.Tolstogo "Voina i mir": skazochnye motivy v opisanii pomest'ia Bolkonskikh." Proceedings of the Ninth International Scholarly Conference “Lev Tolstoy and World Literature.”, 2016, p. 163-170.
Sobol, Valeria. "‘Komu ot chuzhikh, a nam ot svoikh’: variazhskoe prizvanie v russkoi literature kontsa XVIII veka." Tam, vnutri. Praktiki vnutrennei kolonizatsii v kul’turnoi istorii Rossii, Moscow: NLO 2012, p. 186-216.
Recent Publications
Sobol, V. (2022). Eastern Europe. In K. Barclay, & P. N. Stearns (Eds.), The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World (pp. 139-153). (Routledge Histories). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003023326-12
Sobol, V. (2020). Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny. (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501750595
Sobol, V. (2020). “Refleksy liubvi: teoriia I. M. Sechenova i liubovnye narrativy russkogo realizma”. In M. Vaisman, A. Vdovin, I. Kliger, & K. O. (Eds.), Russkii realism XIX veka: Obshchestvo, znanie, povestvovanie (pp. 452-473). NLO.
Sobol, V. (2019). ’Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish's Gothic Ukraine: Panteleimon Kulish's gothic Ukraine. Slavic Review, 78(2), 390-409. https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2019.94
Sobol, V. (2018). Andrii Danylenko. From the Bible to Shakespeare: Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819-1897) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 5(1), 205-207. https://doi.org/10.21226/ewjus382