Russian and East European Studies
Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies
Undergraduate Chair
Ph.D., Stanford University, Slavic Languages and Literatures
M.A., Stanford University, Japanese
B.A., Williams College, Linguistics
D. Brian Kim is a specialist in Russian literature of the long nineteenth century, translation studies, and literary and cultural relationships between Russia, Western Europe, and East Asia.
Dr. Kim's research broadly asks how Russians viewed and engaged in communication across languages and cultures throughout history, both within the Russian Empire and beyond its borders, and what factors motivated writers, translators, and lexicographers as they pursued their work in transnational contexts. His current book project examines the cultures, practices, and ideologies of multilingualism in imperial Russia, focusing on the emergence of an aspirational mindset concerning the study and knowledge of foreign languages that undergirded the literary activities of a range of authors at the turn of the twentieth century ranging from Tolstoy to Teffi. He is also co-editor of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russian Symbolist Criticism, an anthology of translated essays forthcoming with Amherst College Press.
At Penn, Dr. Kim regularly offers courses on nineteenth-century Russian literary and cultural history, including seminars on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, as well as occasional seminars on such topics as Russian identity and its permutations in historical context, and the history and sociology of reading in imperial Russia.
You can read more about his undergraduate course, “Russia and the West,” in the spring/summer 2023 issue of Omnia.
Students: click here to make an appointment for office hours and/or advising.
Office Location
Office Hours
Selected Publications
“Multilingualism and Metapoetics in the 'Holy Craft' of Karolina Pavlova.” Slavic Literatures, vol. 159, 2026, pp. 57-78.
“Konstantin Bal’mont, Japan, and the Poetics of Impressionability.” Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 65, no. 4, 2021, pp. 741-760.
“Locating Russia Between East and West.” Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 65, no. 4, 2021, pp. 714-720.
“Foreign Interests: Nineteenth-Century Lexicography in Russia and Japan.” The Whole World in a Book: Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Sarah Ogilvie and Gabriella Safran, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 17-33.
“Seduction, Subterfuge, Subversion: Ivan Krylov’s Rewriting of Molière.” French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Attitudes and Identity, edited by Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent, Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp. 139-155.
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Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russian Symbolist Criticism: A Reader Edited by Lindsay Ceballos, D. Brian Kim, and Chloë Kitzinger Amherst College Press, forthcoming 2026 |
Courses Taught
Fall 2025:
REES 0411: First-Year Seminar: Masterpieces of Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature
Affiliations
Graduate Group, Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
Faculty Advisory Board, Wolf Humanities Center
