Jason Cieply

Jason Cieply is a scholar of early-Soviet and contemporary Russian culture and teaches courses in 20th- and 21st-century Russian culture and Russian language. His current book project, Voices of Soviet Enthusiasm: Narrating Revolutionary Feeling, explores the emotional experience of revolution. In it, Cieply focuses on how educated writers imitated the speech of the working classes, employing an experimental, affect-oriented narrative form in the hope of discerning the voice of the future socialist person in the chaotic intonations of the revolutionary present.

His second project attempts to counter the recent re-emergence of “totalitarian” models of Russian society. To do so he investigates the artistic, political, and everyday strategies by which late- and post-Soviet actors have pursued personal or collective sovereignty within quasi-authoritarian societies.

Cieply completed his doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures in 2016 and, in addition to Hamilton, has since worked at Wellesley College and Williams College. In his free time plays guitar and rides his motorcycle.

Recent Courses Taught

Revolution of the Living Word: Popular Music, Mass Film, Performance, and New Media in Russia
First-Term Russian
Second-Term Russian

Research Interests

Nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature contemporary Russian culture; Russian language pedagogy; intellectual history; dialectical aesthetics; affect; reception theory; subjectivity; sociology of religion; political and economic theory; voice, film and media studies; theories of literary silence; revolution; theories of proletarian culture; the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche in the Soviet Union; theater and performance; Andrei Platonov; Mikhail Zoshchenko; Fedor Dostoevsky; Mikhail Bakhtin; Dmitrii Prigov; Roman Osminkin.

Select Publications

• “The Silent Side of Polyphony: On the Disappearances of ‘Silentium!’ from the Drafts of Dostoevskii and Bakhtin.” Slavic Review 75, no. 3: 678-701, 2016. 
• “The Dialectics of Skaz: Towards an Apology for Possession by the Voice of the Class Other.” Translit in Translation, no. 2, 2018.
• “Dialektika skaza: k apologii oderzhimosti klassovo chuzhdym golosom.” Translit, no. 20: 26-39, 2017. 

Professional Affiliations

Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages 

Appointed to the Faculty

2019

Educational Background

Ph.D., Stanford University
M.A., Stanford University
B.A., Kenyon College