Sasha Senderovich, Assistant Professor of Russian Studies and Jewish Studies, is spending the current semester on research leave as a Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.Prof. Senderovich presented a chapter of his book in progress, Seekers of Happiness: Mobility, Culture, and the Creation of the Soviet Jew at the Jewish Studies Workshop at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on March 7. He also delivered a named Gochman Lecture at Harvard University on March 24 on his new research project on contemporary fiction by Soviet-born émigré Jewish writers in America.
Prof. Senderovich's collaborative translation, with Harriet Murav, of Soviet Yiddish writer David Bergelson's novel Judgment [Mides-hadin] has been offered a contract by Northwestern University Press; the book, which will contain a critical introduction co-written by the translators as well as text notes, is scheduled to appear in 2017 in the Northwestern World Classics series. Prof. Senderovich plans to incorporate this book into the syllabus for his CU Boulder course, "The Russian Jewish Experience."
His article, "Scenes of Encounter: The 'Soviet Jew' in Fiction by Russian Jewish American Writers" has been accepted for publication in Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, where it's expected to be published in 2017. His essay "Ex-Soviets Adopt America" on a new novel by the Russian Jewish American writer Boris Fishman appeared this March in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
On February 25, he conducted a public conversation with the writer Gary Shteyngart at an event organized jointly by the University of Connecticut's Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, CT. He also guest taught a seminar on Gary Shteyngart's memoir Little Failure earlier the same day at UConn-Storrs.