A new permanent column, <em>Key to the Text</em>, prepared by the team of the School of Philological Sciences at the HSE Faculty of Humanities, has launched on the Arzamas media platform. The first instalment focuses on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel <em>The Idiot</em>: the authors explore the evolution of the meaning of the word ‘idiot’ from antiquity to the nineteenth century and its central role in the writer’s conception of the novel.

On March 16, the HSE Madelstam Centre together with Vladimir Dal State Literature Museum opened a museum dedicated to poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezhda. Below, HSE News Service talks about the exposition ‘Mandelstam Street: Osip and Nadezhda’.

On February 7, Professor Marcus Levitt (Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California, USA) visited the Faculty of Humanities to give a lecture about Mikhail Chulkov’s The Comely Cook. In his lecture, Professor Levitt examined the novel within the context of eighteenth-century Russian culture and, in particular, the tradition of ‘lubok’ literature.

On September 26 and 27, the HSE School of Philology hosted Professor Brian Baer of Kent University (Ohio, USA) for a lecture entitled ‘The Translator’s Biography in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Art, Politics, Identity’, followed by a workshop on ‘Teaching Translation Studies’. Following his lecture and workshop, Professor Baer spoke with the HSE News Service about his career as a translator, the role of the translator in society and his recommendations for international readers looking for exposure to Russian literature.

On May 23, Ellen Rutten, Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Amsterdam, delivered a lecture at HSE on her new book, ‘Sincerity after Communism’. An expert on Slavonic literature and culture, Professor Rutten is involved in numerous projects, including the Digital Emotions group, Sublime Imperfections, and ‘Russian Literature’, a journal where she serves as editor-in-chief.