Do Russian cultural figures bear responsibility for Russia's war against Ukraine? Is Russian culture inherently imperial? In this talk, Leon Kogan will analyze how Andrey Orlov, one of the most popular contemporary Russian poets, addresses these questions in the poem, “I’ve read to the middle the list of ships” (2022). Kogan will use political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s ideas on culture, guilt, and responsibility to examine the intersection of ethics, culture, and politics in Orlov’s poem.

Leon Kogan is a literary historian. He is a Lecturer at the Department of Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies at Boston College. Kogan earned a master’s degree in Russian Literature from Boston College and a Ph.D. in Slavic Studies from Brown University. His research interests include Russian literature of the 20th century, the intersection of literary and visual arts, and Russian cultural history. Kogan has been awarded a research grant from Brown University (2012) and a fellowship from the Boston Athenaeum (2017-2018). He has published academic articles and translations in the United States and Russia.

Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the Department of Russian, with the generous support of a loyal Bowdoin family.
For more information, contact skauffma@bowdoin.edu.