Funny Dostoevsky: New Perspectives on the Dostoevskian Light Side

Lynn Ellen Patyk is Associate Professor of Russian at Dartmouth College, USA. Her first book, Written in Blood: Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture, 1861-1881 (a Choice Outstanding Title for 2018) traced Russian literary culture’s contribution to the emergence of revolutionary terrorism. Her second book, Dostoevsky’s Provocateurs (forthcoming, 2023) argues that provocation is Dostoevsky’s creative and communicative macrostrategy. She currently serves as associate editor of The Russian Review and has published articles and reviews on Dostoevsky, revolutionary terrorism, war, and provocation in The Russian Review, Slavic Review, Slavonic and East European Review, The American Historical Review, and the L.A. Review of Books.

Irina Erman is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of German and Russian Studies at The College of Charleston, USA. She has published articles on Dostoevsky, 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and contemporary literature in The Russian Review, The Journal of Popular Culture, and the Russian Literature journal. Her chapter on Gogol and Dostoevsky is forthcoming in TheRoutledge Companion to Absurdist Literature. Her article on A. K. Tolstoy won the inaugural Levin Article Prize for best article published in The Russian Review in 2020.