Ronald Vroon

Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures

CONTACT INFORMATION
University of California, Los Angeles
Dept. of Slavic Languages & Literatures
326A Humanities Building, Box 951502
Los Angeles, California 90095-1502
Tel. (310) 825-8724 (office) or (310) 825-3856 (dept.)
Fax.: (310) 206-5263
E-mail: vroon@humnet.ucla.edu

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
1965-1967 Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan; English and Philosophy
1967-1969 B.A., Russian and English, University of Michigan
1971 M.A in Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan
1973-1974 Fulbright/IREX Grant for dissertation research in USSR (Moscow)
1975-1977 Residence in Moscow as translator for Progress Publishers, Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, Bulletin of USSR Copyright Agency; freelance interpretor for ABC News Division
1978 Ph.D., Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan

ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
1978-84 Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
1985-1987 Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania
1986 (Spring) Columbia University (Visiting Assoc. Prof.)
1987-1990 Associate Professor, UCLA
1990-present Professor, UCLA
1992-1998 Chair, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA
2000 (Spring) Visiting Professor, Leiden University, the Netherlands
2003 (Summer) Visiting Professor, University of Basel, Switzerland
2002-present: Chair, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA


COURSES TAUGHT AT UCLA
Graduate
Proseminar
Survey of Early 20th Century Russian Literature
Movements and Genres
Seminars

  • Russian Futurism
  • Russian Symbolism
  • Russian Poetry (Poetic Sequences)
  • The New Peasant Writers (Kliuev, Klychkov, Esenin)
  • Early Russian Romanticism
  • Velimir Khlebnikov
  • Literature and Mentality: Pasternak, Platanov, and Klychkov

Undergraduate
Introduction to Russian Civilization
Introduction to the Russian Novel
Dostoevsky
Survey of 20th Century Russian literature
Senior Seminar on Pasternak and Sholokhov
Russian Literature and World Cinema
Introduction to Eastern Christianity
Survey of Russian Drama

RECENT DISSERTATION SUPERVISION
Andrea Hacker, Velimir Khlebnikov's Doski sud'by: Text, Discourse, Vision (2002)
Anindita Banerjee, "The Origins of Russian Science Fiction" (2000)
Katya Hirvasaho, "A Stepchild of the Empire: Finland in Russian Colonial Discourse" (1997)
Karen McCauley, "Formalism and the Rise of Socialist Realism" (1995)
David MacFadyen "Joseph Brodsky and the Baroque" (1995)

CURRENT PROJECTS AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • A history of the poetic sequence ("poetic cycle") in the Russian literary tradition.
  • Aleksandr Sumarokov: Panegyric Odes (Ody torzhestvennye, St. Petersburg, 1774)) and Love Elegies (Elegii liubovnye, St. Petersburg, 1774): a critical edition that will include facsimile reproductions of both books, with variants, annotation and commentary, and an appendix with all panegyric odes and elegies not included in the 1774 collections. Also included is a collection of essays on the history, structure, aesthetics, prosody, language and ideology of the works, with contributions by M. L. Gasparov, A. B. Kamenskii, M. Levitt, E. P. Mstislavskaja, K. A. Ospovat, R. Vroon and V. M. Zhivov.
  • Velimir Khlebnikov: a textological analysis of the "Grossbuch"
  • Russian religious philosophy; the role and impact of archaizing tendencies, in particular the Old Belief, in the twentieth century.


PUBLICATIONS

Please note: graphemes employing diacritical marks are replaced below by their equivalent in the Library of Congress (LC) transliteration system (c with hachek = ch; z with hachek = zh; s with hachek = sh); all Russian-language texts are also transcribed using the LC system.

BOOKS (authored)

  1. Velimir Xlebnikov's Shorter Poems: A Key to the Coinages. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Materials, 1983.
  2. Velimir Xlebnikov's Krysa: A Commentary. Stanford: Stanford Slavic Studies, 1988.

BOOKS (edited and co-edited)

  1. Jurij Lotman. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Translated (with G. Lenhoff), with preface and annotations. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Materials, 1977.
  2. The Structure of the Literary Process. Ed. with P. Steiner and M. Cervenka. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1982.
  3. Velimir Khlebnikov. Collected Works, Vol. II. Tr. Paul Schmidt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
  4. Readings in Russian Modernism: To Honor Vladimir Markov. UCLA Slavic Studies. New Series II. Ed. with John Malmstad. Moscow: Nauka, 1993.
  5. Velimir Khlebnikov. Collected Works, Vol. III. Tr. Paul Schmidt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
  6. Poetika, istoriia literatury, lingvistika: sbornik k 70-letiiu Viacheslava Vsevolodovicha Ivanova. / Essays in Poetics, Literary History and Linguistics. Presented to Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. Ed. A. A. Visagin, R. Vroon, M. L. Gasparov et al. Moscow: Izd. OGI, 1999.
  7. A. P. Sumarokov. Ody torzhestvennye. Elegii liubovnye. Redaktsii i varianty. Stati'i. Kommentarii [A. P. Sumarokov. Panegyric Odes. Love Elegies. Redactions and Variants. Essays. Commentary]. Moscow: Izd. OGI (forthcoming, 2002).

ARTICLES

  1. "Gogol in Oblomovka." Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 3 (Spring 1972), 282-296.
  2. "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'The Seashore' ('Morskoi bereg') and the Razin Constellation." Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 12 (Spring 1974), 295-326.
  3. "V. V. Ivanov's Essays on the History of Semiotics in the USSR." Co-author G. Lenhoff. Dispositio: Revisita Hispanica de Semiotica Literaria, 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1976), 356-360.
  4. "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'Razin: Two Trinities': A Reconstruction." Slavic Review, 39, no. 1 (March 1980), 68-84.
  5. "Literature as Litigation: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago." Russian History, 7, no. 1-2 (1980), 213-238.
  6. "Velimir Chlebnikov's 'Chadzhi-Tarchan' and the Lomonosovian Tradition." Russian Literature, 9 (January 1981), 107-131.
  7. "Four Analogues to Khlebnikov's 'Language of the Gods.'" The Structure of the Literary Process. Ed. P. Steiner, M. Cervenka and R. Vroon. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1982. 581-97.
  8. "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'I esli v "Khar'kovskie ptitsy"...': Manuscript Sources and Subtexts." Russian Review, 42, no. 3 (July 1983), 249-270.
  9. "Puti tvorchestva: The Journal as a Metapoetic Statement." In Russian Literature and American Critics. Ed. K. Brostrom. Papers in Slavic Philology, 4. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Materials, 1984. 219-239.
  10. "Cycle and History: the Case of Aleksandr Blok's 'Rodina.'" Slavic and East European Journal, 28, no. 3 (Fall 1984), 340-357.
  11. "Neizvestnyi diptikh Velimira Khlebnikova" ["An Unknown Diptych by Velimir Khlebnikov"] Russkaja mysl': Literaturnoe prilozhenie, no. 3, June 1986, p.3.
  12. "Metabiosis, Mirror Images and Negative Integers: Velimir Chlebnikov and His Doubles." In Velimir Chlebnikov (l885-l922): Myth and Reality. Ed. W. Weststeijn. Studies in Slavic Literatures and Poetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, l986. 73-91.
  13. "The Calendar Poems of Velimir Chlebnikov: a Textual Critique." In Velimir Chlebnikov (l885-l922): Myth and Reality. Ed. W. Weststeijn. Studies in Slavic Literatures and Poetics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, l986. 73-91.
  14. "Cycle and History: Maksimilian Voloshin's 'Puti Rossii.'" Scando-Slavica, 31 (1986), 55-73.
  15. "Prosody and Poetic Sequences." In Russian Verse Theory: Proceedings of the 1987 Conference at UCLA. UCLA Slavic Series 18. Ed. Barry P. Scherr and Dean S. Worth. Columbus, Ohio: Slavic Publishers, Inc., 1990. 473-490.
  16. "The Citadel of the Revolutionary Word: Notes on the Poetics of Benedikt Livshits." Russian Literature, Vol. 27 (1990), 533-556.
  17. "Aleksei Kruchenykh's 'Razboinik Van'ka Kain' and the Literary Politics of LEF." Slavic Review, 50, no. 2 (1991), 359-370.
  18. "Benedikt Livshits' Patmos: the Cycle and its Subtexts." In The Silver Age in Russian Literature: Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990. Ed. John Elsworth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 104-135.
  19. "Velimir Khlebnikov and the Art of Verbal Duplicity." In Russian Modernism: Essays in Honor of Vladimir Markov. UCLA Slavic Studies. New Series II. Ed. with John Malmstad. Moscow: Nauka, 1993. 349-364.
  20. "The Old Belief and Sectarianism as Cultural Models in the Silver Age." Christianity and the Eastern Slavs: vol. 2: Russian Culture in Modern Times. Ed. Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno. California Slavic Studies, 17. University of California Press, 1994. 172-190.
  21. "Velimir Khlebnikov's Otryvki iz dosok sud'by: Notes on the Publication History and Three Rough Drafts." In Temy i variatsii. Themes and Variations: In Honor of Lazar Fleishman. Stanford Slavic Studies. Vol. 8. 1994. 326-342.
  22. "Simeon Polotsky." In Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 150: Early Modern Russian Writers. Ed. Marcus Levitt. Columbia, S.C.: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 1995. 291-307.
  23. "Chitalagaiskie ody" (K istorii liricheskogo tsikla v russkoi literature XVIII veka" ["The Chitalagai Odes (Towards a History of the Lyric Sequence in Russian Literature of the XVIII Century")]. In Gavrila Derzhavin: Simpozium, posviashchennyj 250-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia. Ed. E. Etkind and S. Elnitskaia. Norwich Symposia on Russian Literature and Culture, IV. Northfield, Vermont: The Russian School of Norwich University, 1995. 185-201.
  24. "The Manifesto as a Literary Genre: Some Preliminary Observations." International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 38 (1988/1995), 163-173.
  25. "Dmitrii Furmanov's Chapaev and the Aesthetics of the Russian Avant-garde." In Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-garde and Cultural Experiment. Ed. John Bowlt and Olga Matich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. 219-234, 329-332.
  26. "Karion Istomin." In Modern Encyclopedia of East Slavic, Baltic and Eurasian Literatures (MESBEL). Vol. 10. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1996. 188-198.
  27. "Aleksandr Sumarokov's Ody torzhestvennye (Toward a History of the Russian Lyric Sequence in the Eighteenth Century)." Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 50, no. 2 (1995-96), 223-263.
  28. "Khlebnikov i Platonov: predvaritel'nye zametki" ["Khlebnikov and Platonov: Some Preliminary Remarks"]. In Iazyk kak tvorchestvo. K 70-letiiu V. P. Grigor'eva. Moscow: Institut russkogo iazyka RAN, 1996. 55-65.
  29. "Genezis zamysla 'sverkhpovesti' 'Zangezi' (K voprosu ob evoliucii liricheskogo 'ia' u Khlebnikova" ["The Genesis of the Supertale Zangezi (On the Evolution of Khlebnikov's Lyric Persona)"]. In Vestnik Obshchestva Velimira Khlebnikova. Moscow: Gileia, 1996. 140-159.
  30. "The Garden in Russian Modernism: Notes on the Problem of Mentalité in the New Peasant Poetry." Revue des Études Slaves, 69, no. 1-2 (1997). 135-150.
  31. "The Poet and His Voices." In Velimir Khlebnikov. Selected Writings, Vol. III. Tr. Paul Schmidt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. 1-21.
  32. "Staroobriadchestvo, sektanstvo i 'sakral'naia rech' v poezii Nikolaia Kliueva" ["The Old Belief, Sectarianism and 'Sacred Speech' in the Poetry of Nikolai Kliuev"]. In In Nikolaj Kliuev: materialy i issledovaniia. Moscow: "Nasledie," 1998. 54-67.
  33. "Znak Bliznetsov: popytka podkhoda k pervomu sborniku stikhov Pasternaka" ["The Sign of the Twins: An Approach to Pasternak's First Collection of Verse"] In Pasternakovskie chteniia, II. Moscow: Nasledie, 1998. 334-354.
  34. "O semantike glasnykh v poetike Velimira Khlebnikova" ["On Vocalic Semantics in Velimir Khlebnikov's Poetics"]. In Poetika, istoriia literatury, lingvistika: sbornik k 70-letiiu Viacheslava Vsevolodovicha Ivanova. / Essays in Poetics, Literary History and Linguistics. Presented to Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. Ed. A. A. Visagin, R. Vroon, M. L. Gasparov et al. Moscow: Izd. OGI, 1999. 255-266. Rpt. with emendations in Poeziia i zhivopis'. Sbornik trudov pamiati N. I. Khardzhieva [Poetry and Painting: A Collection of Works to Honor the Memory of N. I. Khardzhiev]. Ed. M. B. Meilakh and D. B. Sarab'ianov. Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul'tury, 2000. 357-368.
  35. "Notes on the Renaissance of the Lyric Sequence in the Silver Age." in Zyklusdichtung in den slavischen Literaturen. Beiträge zur Internationalen Konferenz, Magdeburg, 18.-20. März 1997. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000. 563-580.
  36. "Principy tsiklizacii proizvedenii" [Principles of Literary Cyclization"]. In Teoriia literatury. 2 vols. Vol. 2: Osnovnye kategorii. Poniatiia. Literaturnoe proizvedenie. Moscow: Izd. "Nasledie," 2002 (forthcoming).
  37. "A. P. Sumarokov's Elegii liubovnye and the Development of Verse Narrative in the Eighteenth Century (Toward a History of the Russian Lyric Sequence)." Slavic Review, 59, no. 3 (Fall, 2000). 521-546.
  38. "Velimir Khlebnikov's 'Perevorot v Vladivostoke:" History and Historiography." Co-authored with Andrea Hacker. Russian Review, 60 (Winter, 2001). 36-55.
  39. "A Poet's Abdication: Velimir Khlebnikov's 'Otkaz' and its Pretexts."Slavonic and East European Review, 78, no. 4 (October, 2000). 672-87.
  40. "K probleme stanovleniia liricheskogo tsikla v russkoi poeziiî ["On the Origins of the Lyric Cycle in Russian Poetryî]. Tekst. Intertekst. Kul’tura. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Moskva, 4-7 aprelia 2001). Moscow, 2001. 29-33.
  41. "Qurrat Al-‘Ayn and the Image of Asia in Velimir Chlebnikov’s Post-Revolutionary Ouevre.î Russian Literature, 50 (2001). 335-362.
  42. "Max Nordau and the Origins of Russian Decadence: Some Preliminary Observations.î In Sine arte, nihil: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov v dar Professoru Milovoe Jovanovica. Ed. Kornelija Icin. Belgrad-Moscow, 2002. 85-100.
  43. "K istokam tsiklizatsii stikhotvornykh panegirikov v epokhu russkogo barokkoî [Sources for the Cyclization of Verse Panegyrics in the Epoch of the Russian Baroqueî]. In Tekst. Intertekst. Kul’tura. Sbornik dokladov mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Moskva, 4-7 aprelia 2001 goda. Ed. V. P. Grigor’ev and N.A. Fateeva. Moscow, 2001. 155-166.
  44. "On the Composition of Ippolit Bogdanovich’s Lira (Toward a History of the Russian Poetic Sequence in the 18th Century)."Russian Literature, 52 (2002), 181-200.
  45. "Literature and Mentality: Three Case Studies (Pasternak, Platonov, Klychkov).î Russistika, 13 (2003). 29-48.

REVIEWS

  1. Boris Poplavskii, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, ed. S. Karlinsky and A. Olcott. Slavic Review, 40, no. 2 (Summer 1981), 222-223.
  2. Russian: Stage One by G. Bitekhtina, D. Davidson, and N. Fedyanina. Slavic and East European Journal, 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982), 129-130.
  3. Xlebnikov and Carnival: An Analysis of the Poem "Poèt," by Barbara Lönnqvist. Slavic Review, 41, No. 2 (Summer 1982), 388-90.
  4. Velimir Khlebnikov: poète futurièn, by Jean-Claude Lanne. The Russian Review, 44, No. 4 (October l985), 409-410.
  5. Velimir Chlebnikov and the Development of Poetical Language in Russian Symbolism and Futurism, by W. G. Weststeijn. The Russian Review, 44, No. 2 (April l985), 188-190.
  6. Slovotvorchestvo i smezhnye problemy iazyka poeta, by V. P. Grigor'ev. Slavic and East European Journal, 33, No. 1 (Spring 1989), 130-131.
  7. Velimir Khlebnikov: A Critical Study by Raymond Cooke. In Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1989), pp. 429-31.
  8. Velimir Khlebnikov. Priroda tvorchstva, by R. V. Duganov. Slavic and East European Journal, 37, no. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 130-131.
  9. Jakobson-Budetlianin: Sbornik materialov, ed. by B. Jangfeldt. Slavic Review, 52, no. 2 (1993), pp. 404-405.
  10. Lenie Lauwers, Igor'-Severjanin: His Life and Works, in The Russian Review, 56, no. 2 (April 1997), 304-305.
  11. Natal'ja Pertsova, Slovar' neologizmov Velimira Khlebnikova, in Slavic Review,, no. 4 (Winter, 1997), 820-21.
  12. Susanna Vykoupil, Die romanischen Gedichtarten Igor' Severjanins zwischen Tradition und Innovation, in Slavic Review, 59, no 1 (Spring, 2000), 820-21.
  13. Review of Crispen Brooks, The Futurism of Vasilisk Gnedov. Russian Review, 61, No. 1 (January, 2002). 144-45.
  14. Review of Simeon Polockij. Vertograd mnogocvetnyj. Ed. Lidija Sazonova and Anthony Hippisley. Slavic and East European Journal, 46, No 1 (Spring, 2002).

INDEX OF KEY WORDS AND CONCEPTS
(A=ARTICLES, B=BOOKS, EB=EDITED BOOKS; R=REVIEWS)

Akhmatova: A36
Bal'mont: A35
Briusov, Brjusov: A35, A40
Blok: A10, A30

Bogdanovič, Bogdanovich: A44
Chapaev, CÈapaev: A25
Chlebnikov: See "Khlebnikov" below
Cycle: see "Sequence" below
Derzhavin, Deržavin: A23
Esenin, Yesenin: A30
Furmanov: A25
Garden:A30
Gnedov: R13
Gogol, Gogol':A1
Istomin: see "Karion" below
Jakobson: R9
Karion: A26, A41, A43
Khlebnikov: A2, A4, A6, A7, A8, A9, A11, A12, A13, A19, A21, A28, A29, A31, A34, A38, A39, A42, B1, B2, BE3, BE4, BE5, R2, R4, R5, R6, R7, R8, R11
Kliuev, Kljuev: A20, A30, A32
Klychkov, Klyčkov: A30, A45
Kruchenykh, Kručenych, Kručenyx: A17
Livshits, Livšic: A16, A18
Lotman: EB1
Lyric Cycle: see "Sequence" below
Manifesto: A24
Merezhkovskii, Merežkovskij: A35, A40
Minskii, Minskij: A35
Nordau: A40
Old Belief, Old Believers, Old Ritualism, Old Ritualists: A20, A30, A32
Pasternak: A9, A33
Petnikov: A9
Platonov: A28
Poetic cycle, poetic sequence: see "Sequence" below
Polotskii, Polockij, Polotsky: see "Simeon of Polotsk" below
Poplavskii, Poplavskij: R1
Sequence: A9, A10, A11, A14, A15, A18, A23, A27, A33, A35, A36, A37, A41, A43, BE7
Severianin, Severjanin: R10, R12
Simeon: A22, A41, A43, R14
Solzhenitsyn, Solženicyn: A5
Staroobriadchestvo, Staroobrjadčestvo: see "Old Belief" above
Sumarokov: A27, A37, B7
Voloshin, Vološin: A14
Xlebnikov: See "Khlebnikov" above