Department ofGermanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

/
/
Linda J. Ivanits

Linda J. Ivanits

Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature
19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and culture; Dostoevsky; folklore; literature and folklore under Nicholas I (1825-55)

408 Burrowes Building

Education:

Ph.D.University of Wisconsin, 1973
Linda J. Ivanits Headshot

Biography:

Dr. Ivanits received her PhD in Russian literature from the University of Wisconsin in June 1973. Her dissertation treated the grotesque in the Symbolist writer F. K. Sologub’s novel The Petty Demon. In August 1973 Dr. Ivanits joined the Department of Slavic Languages at Penn State where she taught a variety of courses on Russian language, literature and folklore. Her research interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and Russian folklore. Her publications include articles on the writers F.K. Sologub, F.M. Dostoevsky, and the problem of folklore in literature as well as the books Russian Folk Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1987) and Dostoevsky and the Russian People (Cambridge University Press, 2008). She is presently working on a book-length study of the use of folklore in literary works to probe national identity, tentatively titled  Folklore, Literature, and Russian National Identity in the Reign of Nicholas I. Dr. Ivanits has also served as Associate Editor for Literature and Folklore of The Slavic and East European Journal and as Series Editor for Folklores and Folk Cultures of Eastern Europe published by M.E.Sharpe.