Nariman Skakov
Nariman Skakov
Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Focal Groups:Philosophy and Literature
Contact:
Building 240, Room 107
Phone: 650 724 3073
nariman.skakov@stanford.edu
Office Hours:
Wednesdays 10am-12pm or by appointmentBIO:
Nariman Skakov’s trajectory from a peaceful dweller of the wide and wild steppes of Central Asia to an overworked West-Coast academic included an intermediary stop in the UK, where he studied literary theory and cinema. He has a strong interest in Andrei Platonov, the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky and Rustam Khamdamov, literary theory (Bakhtin and Shklovsky in particular), Moscow conceptualism (Ilya Kabakov, Vladimir Sorokin and Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov), intersections between the textual and the visual, and the Soviet 'Orient'. His first monograph (The Cinema of Tarkovsky: Labyrinths of Space and Time) was published by I.B. Tauris in January, 2012.
EDUCATION:
D.Phil., Medieval and Modern Languages, University College, Oxford University, 2009.
M.Phil., European Literature, University College, Oxford University, 2006.
Certificate in Philosophy (Visiting student), Wadham College, Oxford University, 2004.
Courses
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SLAVIC340Win2012-13
‘The power of devastation [Platonov’s texts] inflict upon their subject matter exceeds by far any demands of social criticism and should be measured in units that have very little to do with literature as such,’ wrote Joseph Brodsky. Explores key texts of Andrei Platonov, who is frequently considered the greatest Russian prose writer of the twentieth century, and covers major critical approaches to his ‘devastating’ oeuvre. The texts will be read in Russian, discussion in English.
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SLAVIC236Aut2012-13
‘Time flows in a film not by virtue but in defiance of montage-cuts,’ wrote the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. An exploration of the phenomenon of long take (a single continuous shot which presents ‘a vision of time’) and its aesthetic and philosophical significance to the art of cinema. Key films by cult Russian/Soviet auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Paradzhanov and Aleksandr Sokurov will be used as case studies and read through the prism of film theory (Gilles Deleuze, Andre Bazin and Jean Epstein). Taught in English.
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SLAVIC194/394Aut2012-13
How do Russian literature and film imagine Russian identity – and, in contrast, the ethnic or national Other? Does political and literary theory analyzing national identity and the literary imagination elsewhere hold true in the Russian context? Texts include works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Blok, Mayakovsky, Platonov; Soviet and post-Soviet films; theory and history. Recommended for returnees from Moscow, Slavic majors, and CREEES MA students. Accepted for IR credit. Readings in English and films subtitled; additional section for Russian readers. Taught in English.
