Fellows » Current Fellows » IHUM Fellow: Tom Roberts, PhD
Tom Roberts holds a B.A. in Literary Studies and Russian from Middlebury College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University, with a Ph.D. Minor in Religious Studies. His dissertation examines moments of revelation or “epiphany” in nineteenth-century Russian fiction, investigating the relationship between transcendence and prose aesthetics in Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Chekhov. The project draws on related topics in Eastern Orthodox theology and aesthetics, phenomenology, critical theory, and narratology, and relates to Tom’s broader interests in the European novel, Western philosophy, and religious studies. His research interests also include Russian modernist prose (Mandelstam, Nabokov, Platonov), and the cinema of Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Parajanov, and Jancsó, as well as other topics in film studies. He is currently preparing articles on Tolstoy’s aesthetics, and the transposition of religious and philosophical motifs in related works by Suvorin, Chekhov, and Muratova. In addition to his academic interests, Tom enjoys listening to music, cycling, and cooking with his girlfriend, Emily. His hometown is Atlanta, and he lives in San Francisco.