Russian and East European Studies
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities
Graduate Chair of Russian and East European Studies
Dr. Platt received his B.A. from Amherst College (1989) and his Ph.D. from Stanford University (1994) and taught at Pomona College before joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 2002. He has been the recipient of grants from IREX, NCEEER, Fulbright-Hays and other programs, and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2011-12.
Dr. Platt works on representations of Russian history, Russian historiography, history and memory in Russia, Russian lyric poetry, and global post-Soviet Russian cultures. He is the author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths (Cornell UP, 2011) and History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution (Stanford, 1997; Russian edition 2006). He is the editor of Global Russian Cultures (Wisconsin UP, 2018) and the co-editor (with David Brandenberger) of Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Wisconsin UP, 2006).
Dr. Platt is the organizer of Your Language My Ear, a periodic Russian–English poetry translation symposium that takes place at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also edited and contributed translations to a number of books of Russian poetry in English translation, most recently Orbita: The Project (Arc Publications, 2018) and Hit Parade: The Orbita Group (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015).
His current projects include a study of contemporary Russian culture in Latvia, tentatively titled Border Conditions: Russian Latvians and the Shards of History, a study of history and memory in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and a study of global cultural exchange in the twentieth century.
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Selected Publications
Republication of introduction and selection of poems from Hit Parade: The Orbita Group on site Deep Baltic. July 14, 2016.
“The Post-Soviet is Over: On Reading the Ruins.” Republics of Letters. Vol. 1, No. 1 (2009).
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Kevin M. F. Platt, editor Wisconsin University Press, 2018 |
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Artur Punte, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, Semyon Khanin Kevin M. F. Platt, lead translator Arc Publications, 2018 |
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Artur Punte, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, Semyon Khanin Kevin M. F. Platt, editor and lead translator Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015 |
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Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths Kevin M. F. Platt Cornell University Press, 2011 |
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Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda Edited by Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger University of Wisconsin Press, 2005 |
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History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution Kevin M. F. Platt Stanford University Press, 1997
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Courses Taught
Fall 2021 Courses
REES 191.401 Putin's Russia
REES/COML/ENGL 649.401 Socialist and Post-Socialist Worlds
Spring 2022 Courses
REES155/655 Masterpieces of 20th Century Russian Literature
REES503 Introduction to Russian and East European Studies II
Affiliations
Member of the Penn Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Group, Member of the Graduate Groups of the Departments of History of Art, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, English, and History. Affiliated faculty in Cinema Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies. Trustee of the European University at St. Petersburg. Past president of the American Association of Teachers of Russian and East European Languages. Member of International Advisory Board, School of Advanced Studies, University of Tyumen, Russian Federation.
