Research Expertise and Interest

Slavic languages and literatures, Russian symbolism and post-Stalin literature, women in Russian literature, Zinaida Gippius, Russian emigre literature, conceptualization of love in Russian culture, theory and practice of private life

Research Description

Olga Matich's research interests are Russian Modernism and post-Stalin literature; Russian diaspora; literature and the visual arts; representations of the body and sexuality; and the modern city. Her most recent publications include "Three Russian Dancers: Decadence, Art Nouveau, Degeneration" (Experiment, 2004); "Pokrovy Salomei: Eros, smert' i istoriia" (Erotizm bez beregov, 2004); Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Siecle (2005); and "The White Emigration Goes Hollywood" (Russian Review, 2005).

Her current reasearch includes a study of Andrei Bely's Petersburg, Russia's paradigmatic modernist novel, from the perspectives of the city map; of detective fiction that places the narrative under surveillance; and of the relation of modernist fiction to contemporary avant-garde painting. She is also collaborating with two other specialists of modern Russian culture at three US universities in developing a web-based research and pedagogical tool on The International Legacy of Russian Modernism (1890s - 1920s). In conjuction with this ongoing digital project, she is working with a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley in designing a web-based cultural map of Petersburg. Besides well-known historical and cultural sites, the map will allow users to navigate the industrial sites of the city and those associated with everyday life, such as the pathways taken by cattle from the city's ports and train stations to the slaugherhouses, and then to the shops and restaurants; or the early tram lines established through the city at the beginning of the 20th century.