Contact Information
University of Michigan
Slavic Languages & Literatures

3016 MLB
Phone (734) 647-2142
Fax 734.647.2127

Fields of Study 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and culture


About Michael Makin

Advising: Michael Makin is the advisor for the undergraduate concentration and minor in Russian. He also answers general questions on the Department's undergraduate programs. He is the author of the following brochures:

• Twenty Questions on Russian Language and Literature at the University of Michigan (PDF)
• The Russian-speaking Communities of Ann Arbor and the Detroit Suburbs: a Brief Guide for Students
  
• The Why Study Russian? PDF

Courses: Michael Makin teaches courses on Russian culture and literature, primarily since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Recent courses include:

• Russian 322 – Russia Today
  
• Russian 474- New Writing in the New Russia
  
• Russian 462/856- Dostoevsky
  
• Slavic 240- Slavic Folklore and Modern Society
  
• Russian 463/855- Chekhov
  
• Russian 499- Senior Seminar in Russian, Images of the Provincial in 19th- and 20th-Century Russian Culture

Recent mini-courses include:

• LHSP 151.004 "The Magic and Mystery of St Petersburg"
  

Recent course collaborations include:

• Great Books 291- "Great Books of Modern Literature"(lectures on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment)
• LHSP 100 – “Communities of the Book” (lectures on “Russian Orthodoxy: Community and Text” and “Russian Orthodoxy: Between Antiquity and Modernity”)
  
• Lecture in REES 395 (Survey of Russia and the Soviet Union) on the Russian Intelligentsia
  
• Lectures in RC Langs 323, Russian Readings Course: Culture of the Russian Table on “Vesel’e Rusi: alcohol in Russian Culture”; Moscow-St Petersburg on “The Two Capitals – Literary Poles”.

Research: Michael Makin's research interests include Russian poetry and prose of the twentieth century, contemporary Russian culture, problems of Russian textuality, and the life and culture of the Russian provinces. His current research interests include: the life and works of the poet Nikolai Klyuev (he is a regularly participant in the annual Klyuevskie chteniya in the poet's home region, participated in the recent RAN Karelia conference "Olonetskie stranitsy zhizni i tvorchestva: Nikolai Klyuev i problemy etnopoetiki", and has contributed to the web sites Klyuevoslov and Tvorchestvo novokrest'yanskikh poetov, as well as to other publications on the poet, in addition to his own publications, a selection of which may be found below); Russian museum culture, especially Russia's literary museums; "phantom" and fragment texts in Russian literature (his new book project on the subject is entitled Broken Russian).

Selected Publications

Nikolai Klyuev: Time and Text, Place and Poet, forthcoming, Northwestern University Press, expected date of publication – March, 2010.

Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetics of Appropriation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993 (Chapter Three – The Poemy-skazki)

Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetika usvoeniya, Dom-Muzei Mariny Tsvetaevoi, Moscow, 1997 (Russian translation of Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetics of Appropriation)

Alternative Chronicles of Russian Poetry: Essays by Mikhail Aizenberg (Russian Studies in Literature, Spring, 1996).

Discontinuous Discourses in Modern Russian Literature, co-editor, with Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd, Macmillan (UK), St Martin's (US), 1989.

On Karel Capek: a Michigan Slavic Symposium, co-editor, with Jindrich Toman, Papers in Slavic Philology, number 5, Michigan Slavic Publications, 1992.

Selected Recent Articles:

"Paradoksy ‘Kremlya'", Narymskaya poema N. Klyueva "Kreml': intrepretatsii i kontekst, ed. V. A. Domanskii, Tomskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Tomsk, 2008, 147-80.

"Nikolai Kyuev i Mel'nikov-Pecherskii: zagadki i predpolozheniya", In Memoriam: Eduard Bronislavovich Meksh, ed F.Fjodorovs and J.Szokalski, Daugavpils Universitates Akademiskais apgads „Saule", Daugavpils , 2007, 166–182.

"Whose Kliuev, Who is Kliuev? Polemics of Identity and Poetry", Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 85, no 2, (2007), 231-70.

"Nikolai Klyuev i Nil Sorskii", XXI Vek na puti k Klyuevu: Materialy Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii "Olonetskie stranitsy zhizni i tvorchestva: Nikolai Klyuev i problemy etnopoetiki", posvyashchennoi 120-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya velikogo russkogo poeta Nikolaya Klyueva 21-25 sentyabrya 2004 g., ed. E. Markova, Karel'skii Nauchnyi tsentr, Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, Petrozavodsk, 2006, 87-98.

"Nikolai Kliuev – Prophet of Loss", SEEJ, Vol. 49, no 4 (2005), 591-611.

"Iz Sibiri v kushchi raya: poslednee stikhotvorenie Nikolaya Klyueva", Literaturnoe nasledie N. Klyueva: kartina mira i obraz cheloveka, vypusk 2, ed. V. Domanskii. Sibirika: Tomsk, 2005, 46-62.

"Vytegorskii' sbornik Nikolaya Klyueva ‘L'vinyi khleb'", Vytegra: kraevedcheskii al'manakh, vypusk 3, Rus', Vologda, 2005, 171-84.

"Nikolai Klyuev v angolyazychnom mire", Petryaevskie chteniya '01: tezizy, doklady, ed. V. N. Kolupaeva and A. L. Rashkovskii (Kirov-na-Vyatke, 2001), 72-80; full version, Sever, 4-5-6 (2002), 230-35; revised and expanded version, Kluevoslov, 2005, "Nikolai Klyuev v angolyazychnom mire".

"Britanskii pervootkryvatel' Nikolaya Klyueva", Krasnoe znamya (Vytegra), 18 October, 2001), full version "Britanskii pervootkryvatel' pozdnego Klyueva" ", Nauka i biznes na Murmane: nauchnoprakticheskii zhurnal, seriya Dukhovnaya praktika (4, 2002), 11-13; also online on Kluevoslov at "Britanskii pervootkyrvatel' Nikolaya Klyueva".

Forthcoming Articles:
"Nikolai Klyuev v amerikanskom universitetskom klasse", Vytegorskii vestnik, 2 (Vytegra).

"The Super-natural in the Prose of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya", Proceedings of Michigan Petrushevskaya Symposium, ed. Nyusya Milman, Slavica, Bloomington, Indiana.

"The Life of Texts and the Texts of Lives: the Case of Marina Tsvetaeva", article, collection on aesthetics and totalitarianism, ed. Peter Davies and John Haynes, Edinburgh and London

Selected Journalism
"Terakt, vzglyad iz Ameriki", Argumenty i fakty, 4 October, 2001

"Videniya budushchego v russkoi kul’ture", Krasnoe znamya (Vytegra), 26 June, 2001, reprinted in tenth-anniversary sbornik of Dept of Culturology, Vyatka State Pedagogical University (January, 2002).