Jason Merrill
Office: B-467 Wells Hall
Phone: 517-355-8365
Email: merril25@msu.edu
Ph.D., Russian Literature, University of Kansas
Jason Merrill is a Professor of Russian at Michigan State University and has served as the Director of the Middlebury College Kathryn Wasserman School of Russian since 2010. At Michigan State he teaches Russian language, Russian literature in translation, Russian cinema, and a survey of East European literature and film. He received his Ph. D in Russian Literature from the University of Kansas in 1998, where he defended his dissertation, “Russian Symbolist Mythopoesis: The Neomythological Dramas of Fedor Sologub” He taught at Dartmouth College and Drew University before moving to Michigan State. His literary research continues to focus on the Russian Symbolist author Fedor Sologub in the context of the Symbolist movement, examining questions of influence, plagiarism, and play with intertextuality in his works. He has published articles on Sologub in the journals Russkaia literatura (St. Petersburg), Slavic and East European Journal, Scando-Slavica, Russian Literature, Slavonica, and in several collections. He has published on aspects of Russian cinema in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, and on language pedagogy in Russian Language Journal and various collections and newsletters. He has co-authored two Russian-language textbooks, Animation for Russian Conversation (Focus, 2008) and Russian Folktales: A Student Reader (2001, second edition 2016). He co-edited the collection of articles Russian Language and Culture: Studies & Methods & Approaches and Interpretations (Moscow: Leland, 2015) and has a second co-edited volume under contract with Slavica Publishers, The Art of Teaching Russian (Spring 2017)