Statement on the Invasion of Ukraine

The faculty and staff members of the Amherst College Russian Department wish to express our solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they endure the brutal and illegal takeover of their country being prosecuted by Vladimir Putin. We are horrified by the suffering and bloodshed the Russian invasion is causing the citizens of democratic Ukraine. We categorically reject Putin’s false claim that Ukraine and Russia are one country and affirm Ukraine’s absolute right to self-determination. We continue our efforts to educate our students and the public about the history and legacies of the Russian and Soviet empires. We join all those, in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere, who oppose this act of aggression, and we join with the many in wishing for the safety of those threatened in the region. 

Featured Book of the Month

Book cover showing a flashy movie theater lit up at night

Nabokov Noir by visiting Professor Luke Parker

Nabokov Noir places Vladimir Nabokov's early literary career—from the 1920s to the 1940s—in the context of his fascination with silent and early sound cinema and the chiaroscuro darkness and artificial brightness of the Weimar era, with its movie palaces, cultural Americanism, and surface culture. Luke Parker argues that Nabokov's engagement with the cinema and the dynamics of mass culture more broadly is an art of exile, understood both as literary poetics and practical strategy.

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