Dr. Kevin O'Brien

Kevin O'Brien received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (with a dual emphasis on literature in English and in Russian) from UC Berkeley. He also studied at St. Petersburg University in Russia. His course topics and literary interests are quite diverse, though among his areas of specialization are 19th and 20th century Russian literature, modernisms, poetry, and lyrical prose. He recently co-taught a course (with Wendy Salmond) on the 20^th c. Russian Avant-garde in art, film, and literature. His book publications include Saying Yes at Lightning: Threat and the Provisional Image in Post-Romantic Poetry, Kino-Eye: The Film Writings of Dziga Vertov (translation), and Elena Guro's The Little Camels of the Sky(translation).

 He is on sabbatical Spring 2014, working on a book on Tolstoy's War and Peace. The aim of the book is to demonstrate a pervasive underlying principle that gives unity and meaning to the vast and complex world of War and Peace.

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications

Forthcoming: “Tolstoy’s Connection vs. Separation Paradigm,” a chapter in an anthology of essays on War and Peace, edited by Leighton Brett Cooke, for Grey House Publishing.

Recent Talk: “Virginia Woolf Rewriting Tolstoy” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual conference. Boston 2013.

Translation of "We: Variant of a Manifesto" by Dziga Vertov in The Russia Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, Duke University Press, 2010