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Jessica E. Merrill, Assistant Professor
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Ph.D.: University of California, Berkeley 2012
Jessica Merrill’s primary area of research is modern literary theory. Her current book project, Folklore Study and the Rise of Modern Literary Theory: Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism, presents a new understanding of the origins of the discipline. Her research in this field contributes to ongoing efforts to develop new formalist approaches to literature, including work in Historical Poetics and Digital Humanities. She also works on twentieth-century Russian and Czech literature and culture, and has begun a second book project on the discourses of truth and fiction in late Soviet and post-Soviet literature.
Research Interests: Literary Theory, Slavic Folklore and Folklore Theory, Russian and Czech Modernisms, Soviet and Post-Soviet literature and culture
* “Historical Poetics and Poetic Language: Rethinking the Concept of Literary Autonomy for Modern Literary Theory.” Poetics Today (forthcoming)
* “Fol’kloristicheskie osnovaniia knigi Viktora Shklovskogo ‘O Teorii Prozy’” [The Folkloristic Foundations of V. B. Shklovsky’s ‘Theory of Prose’]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [New Literary Review] 133 (June 2015)
<http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/44816849>
* “The Stalinist Subject and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.” The Russian Review 74 (April 2015)
< http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/russ.10770/full >
* The Role of Folklore Study in the Rise of Russian Formalist and Czech Structuralist Literary Theory. Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 2012