Mikhail EpsteinSamuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature

Mikhail Epstein is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature. Born in Moscow, he moved to the USA in 1990 and joined Emory's faculty in 1991. His research interests include cultural and literary theory, the history of Russian literature and philosophy (particularly Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and 19-20th cc. poetry), Western and Russian postmodernism, contemporary intellectual trends, semiotics and linguistics, and new methods and interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities. He is especially interested in the practical extensions and applications of the humanities and their creative contributions into the areas of their study.

He is the author of 37 books published in English and Russian, and more than 700 articles and essays, many of which have been translated into 21 languages. His books include Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture (with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover),  2016; The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto (2012); After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (1995), Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication (with E. Berry, 1999); From Knowledge to Creativity: How the Humanities Can Change the World (in Russian),  2016, Poetry and Superpoetry: On the Variety of Creative Worlds (in Russian), 2016; The Irony of the Ideal: The Paradoxes of Russian Literature (in Russian), 2015; Religion after Atheism: New Possibilities for Theology (in Russian, 2013). 

In 1992-1994 Mikhail Epstein received a grant from the National Council for Soviet and East European Research to work on the history of Russian thought of the late Soviet period. He has authored inteLnet and a number of other interdisciplinary web sites in the humanities.

Mikhail Epstein has won national and international prizes, including the Andrei Bely prize (St. Petersburg, 1991); The Social Innovations Award 1995 from the Institute for Social Inventions (London) for his electronic Bank of New Ideas; the International Essay Contest set up by Lettre International and Weimar - Cultural City of Europe 1999; and the Liberty Prize, awarded for his outstanding contribution in the development of Russian-American cultural connections (New York, 2000).