Eliot Borenstein

Eliot Borenstein is a Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies and Director of the Morse Academic Plan at New York University. Educated at Oberlin College (B.A., 1988) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (M.A., 1989, Ph.D., 1993), Mr. Borenstein was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia (1993-95) before taking an appointment at NYU in 1995.

His early publications dealt largely with issues of sexuality and masculinity in Slavic literature. Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929 (Duke UP, 2000), which was an outgrowth of his dissertation, won the 2001 award for best book in literature or cultural scholarship from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. This had been preceded by a slew of articles in noted journals and editions such as “Slavophilia: The Incitement to Russian Sexual Discourse,” Slavic and East European Journal, 40, No. 1 (1996), and “Masculinity and Nationalism in Contemporary Russian ‘Men’s Magazines,’” in Eros and Pornography in Russian Culture, ed. M. Levitt and A. Toporkov (Moscow: Ladomir, 1999).

Mr. Borenstein’s current research on popular culture is a natural outgrowth of his earlier studies, and his publications are often a melding of the two. Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Cornell UP, 2008), which won the award for best book in women’s studies or gender studies from the Association of Women in Slavic Studies, and “Iteration through Innovation: Russian Popular Culture Today,” which he edited with Mark Lipovetsy and Elena Baraban and published in Slavic and East European Journal (48, No. 1 [2004]), are but two examples. During his Guggenheim Fellowship term, he will be completing his monograph entitled Catastrophe of the Week: Apocalyptic Entertainment in Post-Soviet Russia.

Among his many honors are a Mellon Fellowship (1988-90), IREX grants (1997, 2000), NYU’s Goddard Fellowship (1999) and Golden Dozen Teaching Awards (1999, 2005), a Fulbright Fellowship (1999) for study in Moscow, and a SSRC Eurasia Fellowship (2002).