The intersection of literature, state power, and national identity; cognitive mapping and cultural history; pre-revolutionary Russian civil society; the political essays, letters, and memoir of Alexander Herzen (1812-1870).

• The Search for a New Russian Identity
• A Herzen Reader (Northwestern, 2012; Russian edition, 2007)
• Russia's Dangerous Texts (Yale, 2004)
• Russian Village Prose (Princeton, 1992; Russian edition, 2004)
• Fifty published scholarly articles, and one hundred scholarly presentations in the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Germany.

• Founding editor TOLSTOY STUDIES JOURNAL; guest editor RUSSIAN STUDIES IN HISTORY and SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL; editorial board, SEEJ.

Russian literature and culture in a historical and political context; contemporary Russia's IR, economy, domestic politics, and social structure

• Russia Now
• Secret Nation
• Dangerous Texts
• Politics of Identity
• Russian Civilization

• Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor
• Fulbright-Hays
• Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (3)
• International Research and Exchanges Board (3)
• NEH; ACLS; SSRC
• New York State Council for the Humanities
• Columbia University Seminars Publications Grant
• CHOICE magazine named RUSSIA'S DANGEROUS TEXTS as one of the "best of the best" academic books for 2005.