Nabokov on the Heights: New Studies from Boston College

by Maxim D. Shrayer (Editor)

Overview

Since 1997, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer has been offering seminars on Vladimir Nabokov, the great Russian American immigrant writer, at Boston College. This volume features essays by undergraduate and graduate students, which originated in the Nabokov seminar, as well as scholarship by Boston College faculty who work on Nabokov. The essays cover a broad thematic and intellectual terrain and showcase cutting-edge Nabokov scholarship and criticism. The topics include but are not limited to: translingualism, sexuality, Cold War politics, food studies, Nabokov and the visual arts, religion and metaphysics, urban studies, immigration studies, and modernist poetics. The collection will be of great interest to students and scholars, as well as to the broad audience of Nabokovians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798887197319
Publisher:	Academic Studies Press
Publication date:	05/27/2025
Series:	Immigrant Worlds & Texts
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author and Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College, where he has been teaching since 1996 and co-founded the Jewish studies program. Shrayer is the author and editor of over thirty books of nonfiction, biography, fiction, poetry, and translations, most recently the memoir Immigrant Baggage and the collection of poetry Conductor from Zion Square. Shrayer has published four books about Vladimir Nabokov and regularly teaches Nabokov seminars at Boston College. His works have been translated into thirteen languages. For more information, visit www.shrayer.com
Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author and Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College, where he has been teaching since 1996 and co-founded the Jewish studies program. Shrayer is the author and editor of over thirty books of nonfiction, biography, fiction, poetry, and translations, most recently the memoir Immigrant Baggage and the collection of poetry Conductor from Zion Square. Shrayer has published four books about Vladimir Nabokov and regularly teaches Nabokov seminars at Boston College. His works have been translated into thirteen languages. For more information, visit www.shrayer.com

Table of Contents

Editor’s Introduction: Nabokov on the Heights (and in Boston)

Maxim D. Shrayer

Nabokov in Boston: A Photo Essay

Matthew Lyberg

Angst and Asymptote: The Success Motif in Nabokov’s Fiction

Eric Weiskott

Unlimited Time: Visual Art and Temporality in Vladimir Nabokov’s “La Veneziana” and “The Visit to the Museum”

Megumi DeMond

Marriage and Its Discontents: Infidelity and Unhappiness in Vladimir Nabokov's Life and Art

Ciara Spencer

Joyce’s L. Bloom to Nabokov’s Cincinnatus C.: The Influence of Joyce’s Ulysses on Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading

Nina Khaghany

“That Skip-Space Piece”: Positioning the Knight in Nabokov’s Poetics

Nick Adler

Sharing Other Worlds: Companionship and Coauthorship in The Gift and Glory

Fiona Steacy 

Other (Dis)enchanted Motels: Nabokov’s Chronicles of Suburban America

Jared Hackworth

Questions of Style and Technique: Death and Immortality in the Work of Vladimir Nabokov

Katie Pelkey

Nabokov, the Poetics of Religious Conversion, and the Post-Shoah Reckoning

Maxim D. Shrayer

“She stands before me as a living child”: Aestheticism, Sentimentality, and Desire in Lolita

Kevin Ohi

Vladimir Nabokov and the Fruits of Fiction

Brendan McCourt

Negotiating Nabokov within America’s Political and Social Context

Samuel Peterson

Acknowledgments

Index of Names and Places

Contributors

Editorial Reviews

This compelling collection offers fresh insights into Vladimir Nabokov’s life and artistic legacy.The editor’s essay draws on fascinating new archival information to illuminate Nabokov’s ties to Boston and environs, while the other wide-ranging essays showcase his brilliance as a literary innovator and cultural icon. Essential reading for scholars and admirers of Nabokov alike.”

— Vladimir E. Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus, Yale University, and author of To Break Russia’s Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

“Nabokov on the Heights is a tribute both to Nabokov’s ability to engage a new generation of readers and to Maxim D. Shrayer’s skill in guiding them as they seek to convert their enthusiasm into meaningful scholarship. This volume celebrates Nabokov in Boston, encompassing his life in that city and readings of his work produced by former students and current colleagues of Shrayer at Boston College. The readings, thankfully, do not produce a unified interpretation of the writer, but they bear witness to a shared sense of scholarly community. There are already several books on teaching Nabokov, but this book is different, since it reflects and extends what has already happened in the classroom. A successful class is only the start of a continuing relationship with its teacher and its texts. By retrograde analysis, one can read Nabokov on the Heights to discover what can happen when one teaches Nabokov well.”

— Eric Naiman, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Nabokov, Perversely.

“In celebration of the role that the colleges and universities of Massachusetts played in the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov, the scholars of Boston College have located and filled in gaps in Nabokov studies, stimulating further thought and discussion.”

— Leona Toker, Professor Emerita, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the author of Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures

From the Publisher