Main > People > Researchers > Toymentsev Sergey

Toymentsev Sergey

I received my M. A. (Hons) in Russian and English Languages and Literature from Kazan State University, Russia. Before entering the doctoral program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University in 2003, I spent a year at Washington State University, Department of American Studies, as a Fulbright Fellow. I also had short-term research stays at Free University in Berlin, JFK Institute in North American and Canadian Studies, in 2000, and at Central European University, Budapest, in 2001. I’ve been teaching at Rutgers University since fall 2005. I have designed and taught four courses: Introduction to World Literature, World Mythology, Introduction to Mythology (advanced), and Introduction to Mythology (online). My doctoral defense is scheduled for May 16, 2014. My dissertation is titled "Deleuze and Russian Film: Transcendental Exercise of the Faculties on (post-) Totalitarian Screen." My other book-project tentatively titled "Mnemonic Hybrids in a Hybrid Regime" focuses on the memory politics in contemporary Russia in the context of the hybrid regime paradigm that explains paradoxes of post-Soviet memory in legal system, public opinion, memorial politics, television, film industry and literature. I have published articles and reviews on film (in Scope, Canadian Slavonic Studies, Film Criticism, French Studies, Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema and Kinokultura), memory studies (in Comparative Literature Studies and Ab Imperio) and literature and philosophy (in Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry, The AnaChronisT and Pynchon Studies).
SERGEY A. TOYMENTSEV
Current address: 5480 Wisconsin Ave, Apt 1201, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
E-mail: setoymen@rci.rutgers.edu ; Tel.: (215) 316-6974
EDUCATION
1994- 2000 M. A. (Hons) in Russian and English Languages and
Literature, Department of World Literature, Kazan State University,
Russia
2000 – 2002 Graduate Studies in World Literature Program at Kazan State
University
2002 – 2003 Fulbright Research Stay at Washington State University,
Department of American Studies
Fall 2003 - Ph. D. Program in Comparative Literature,
Present Rutgers University
Dissertation Title: Deleuze and Russian Film: Transcendental Exercise of the
Faculties on (Post-) Totalitarian Screen (defended in May 16,
2014); Dir. Prof. Andrew Parker
HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS
- Short-term travel grant ($100) from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages to attend the AATSEEL Conference, Boston, MA, January 3-6, 2013
- The Rutgers Summer Graduate Student Travel Grant ($600) to attend “Deleuze Camp,” June 17-27, 2012, New Orleans
- 1st Graduate Essay Prize ($200) for the paper presented at NESEEES Conference, June 2011 (essay’s title: “Legal but Criminal: the Failure of the “Russian Nuremberg” and the Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory”)
- The Summer School Fellowship, Rutgers University ($2000) to attend UCHRI Summer Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory “Psychoanalysis, Politics, the Event” (Instructors: Alain Badiou, Joan Copjec, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic), August 16-27, 2004
- Graduate Student Fellowship, Rutgers University, 2003 - 2007
- Fulbright Research Fellowship, Washington State University, Pullman; University of
Washington, Seattle, 2002 – 2003
- Regional Scholar Exchange Program Grant administered by IREX,
Aug 2001 – Dec 2001 (declined)
- Summer School “Gender and Linguistics” held at Central European
University, Budapest, in July 1-14, 2001
- Research Fellowship, Free University in Berlin, JFK Institute in North American and Canadian Studies, October/November 2000 (1500 DM)
- Medal granted by the Ministry of Education for the best academic student's essay held among higher institutions of Russian Federation (essay’s title: ‘Poetics of Black Humor in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels’), January 2000
TEACHING
Fall 2005- Teaching Assistant/PTL in Comparative Literature Program:
Intro to Mythology; Intro World Mythology; Intro to World
Literature; Intro to Myth (online)
PRESENTATIONS
• “Revolutionary Sublime, Romantic Ennui and the Crisis of the Soviet Action-Image,” Princeton Conjunction International Conference on Sots-Romanticism: “Romantic Subversions of Soviet Enlightenment: Questioning Socialism’s Reason,” Princeton University, May 2014.
• “Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory in Contemporary Russia,” Historical Justice and Memory: Questions of Rights and Accountability in Contemporary Society, Columbia University, December 2013.
• “Stanislaw Lem's Solaris in Russian, American and Japanese Film Adaptations,” Washington, DC, PCA/ACA 2013
• “Mnemonic Hybrids in a Hybrid Regime: Reckoning with the Soviet Past in Putin’s Russia,” Columbia University, SOYUZ 2013, March 2013.
• “Retro-Future in Post-Soviet Dystopia,” Boston, MA, AATSEEL, January 2013.
• “Retro-Future in Post-Soviet Dystopia,” Durham, NC, SAMLA, November 2012.
• “Deleuze’s Metaphysics of Cinematic Experience within/beyond National Traditions,” 5th International Deleuze Studies Conference, New Orleans, June 2012.
• “Tarkovsky in Hollywood, or Time Regained in Stephen Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002),” Philadelphia, PA, MAPACA, November 2012.
• “Roberto Esposito’s Biopolitical Impersonal and Its Discontents,” Buffalo, NY, Modernist Studies Association, October 2012.
• “Beyond the Trial: Acting out and Working through the Soviet Trauma,” New Brunswick, NJ, NEMLA, April 2011.
• “Legal but Criminal: the Failure of the “Russian Nuremberg” and the Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory,” Northeast Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (NESEEES) Conference, New York City, NY, March 2011.
• “Legal but Criminal: Russian Anti-Nuremberg and Post-Soviet Amnesia,” Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia (GOSECA) of the University of Pittsburgh Conference, February 2011.
• “‘Landscape as a Witness of Death’: Sokurov and the Unthinkable,” Film and Philosophy Conference, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, November 2010.
• “Deleuze’s Time-Image and the Death Drive,” RMMLA, October 2010.
• “Tarkovsky’s Oneiric Realism,” International Society of the Study of Dreams Convention, Asheville, NC, June 2010.
• “Deleuze’s Time-Image and the Death Drive,” Cornell Theory Reading Group, April 2010.
• “Tarkovsky's Hybrid Chronotopes of Home and Exile,” Conference on Hybridity at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, April 2010.
• “Tarkovsky’s Zone: Hybridity, Immanence, and Belief in This World,” New Orleans, LA, ACLA April 2010.
• “Tarkovsky's Bodies: Rest, Motion and Levitation,” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, March 2010.
• “‘Un peuple qui manque’: Exemplary Singularities and the Obstacle of Democracy in Deleuze’s Project of Fabulation,” Salt Lake City, UT, RMMLA 2009.
• “Performative Topology of the Neutral in Blanchot’s récits,” Jersey City, NJ, Romance Studies Colloquium 2009.
• “Practices of the Impersonal: Making a Life in Deleuze and Blanchot”, Cambridge, MA, ACLA 2009.
• “Minor Literature/Major Criticism: Cold War Paranoid Trip in Pynchon Studies”, PNASA 2002.
• “The Organic Aesthetics of the Postmodern: Thomas Pychon’s V. in the light of Complexity Theory,” 11th International Conference in American Studies, European Humanities University, Minsk, 2001.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTCLES
• “Legal but Criminal: the Failure of the “Russian Nuremberg” and the Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory,” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 48: 3, 2011: 296-319.
• “'It could have all turned out differently': Ideological Censorship of the Marriage Plot in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park” The AnaChronisT: Journal of English and American Studies, Fall 2011: 18-34.
• “Active/Reactive Body in Deleuze and Foucault,” Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry, Vol. 5:11, 2010: 44-56. Ed. Daniel Smith.
REVIEW ESSAYS
• “Review Essay: Kino judaica: l'image des Juifs dans le cinéma de Russie et d'Union Soviétique des années 1910 aux années 1960, by Valérie Pozner, Ab Imperio (commissioned, in preparation)
• “Review Essay: Deleuze and Art by Anne Sauvagnargues; La littéralité et autres essais sur l'art, by François Zourabichvili.” Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, 2/2014 (forthcoming)
• “Russia’s Historical Memory: Strict-Security or Hybrid?” Ab Imperio, 2/2013: 336-45.
• “Review Essay: Deleuze and Cinema: The Film Concepts by Felicity Colman, Deleuze and World Cinemas by David Martin-Jones, New Takes in Film-Philosophy by Greg Tuck and Havi Carel,” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies 4/2013: 35-43.
BOOK REVIEWS
• “Review: Andreï Tarkovski : spatialité et habitation by Pierre Devidts,” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema (forthcoming)
• “Review: Deleuze and Film: A Feminist Introduction by Teresa Rizzo,” Film Criticism (forthcoming)
• “Review: Slovo v mire Andreya Tarkovskogo: Poėtika inoskazania by Mikhail Perepelkin,” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema, Vol. 7: 3, 2013: 343-4.
• “Review: Deleuze et le cinéma : L'armature philosophique des livres sur le cinema by Jean-Michel Pamart,” French Studies, Vol. 68: 1, 2014: 127-8.
• “Review: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema by Thomas Redwood,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 56: 509-11.
• “Review: New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images by Robert Sinnerbrink,” Film Criticism, 37.1 (Fall 2012): 76-9.
• “Review: Andrei Tarkovsky. Zvuchashii mir fil’ma by Natalia Kononenko,” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema, Vol. 6: 3, 2012: 384-6.
• “Review: Kinogermenevtika Tarkovskogo by Dmitrii Salynsky,” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema, Vol. 5: 3, 2011: 413 – 14.
• “Full-Length Portrait of Pynchon in Post-Soviet Frame,” Review of Thomas Pynchon and His America: Enigmas, Parallels, Cultural Contexts by Alexei Lalo, Pynchon Notes, 46–49 (2000–2001): 264–66.
FILM REVIEWS
• “Film Review: Maria Saakyan’s Entropy (2012),” KinoKultura, January 2014
• “Film Review: Andrei Zaitsev’s The Layabouts (2011),” KinoKultura, October 2012
• “Film Review: Grigory Konstantinopolsky’s Pussycat (2009),” KinoKultura, January 2011
NON-PEER REVIEWED ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
• “The Organic Aesthetics of the Postmodern: Thomas Pychon’s V in the light of Complexity Theory,” American Studies Yearbook 2001. Ed. by Uri Stulov. Minsk: EHU Press 2001 (ISSN: 985-6329-51-5): 454-460.
• Органическая эстетика постмодерна. Опыт рассмотрения романа Т. Пинчона «V.» в контексте теории сложных систем (complexity theory)// Русская и сопоставительная филология: взгляд молодых - Казань, 2001. - с. 98-104
TRANSLATION (from English to Russian)
• Josephine Hendin, “Buntari: sadomazokhizm kak literaturny stil’” [“Angries: S-M as a Literary Style”] in Deviance in Social, Literary and Cultural Contexts: a Multidisciplinary Study, Ed. by A. Lalo and N. Shitov, European Humanities University, Minsk, 188-208, ISBN: 9856745012
LANGUAGES
Russian – native
English – near native
French – intermediate (fluent reading, basic speaking)
German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Latin – basic reading
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Popular Culture Association 2013
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages 2013
South Atlantic Modern Languages Association 2012
Modernist Studies Association 2012
Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association 2012
North Eastern Modern Languages Association 2011
Northeast Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Association 2011
International Society of the Study of Dreams 2010
Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association 2009-2010
American Comparative Literature Association 2009-present
REFERENCES
Dr. Andrew Parker
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Rutgers University
Office: RAB, Room 203D, DC, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Phone: (732) 932-8223
Email: acparker@rci.rutgers.edu
Dr. Michael Levine
Graduate Director, Comparative Literature, Professor
Rutgers University
Office: 172 College Avenue, room 301, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Phone: (732) 932-7606
mglevine@rci.rutgers.edu
Dr. Janet A. Walker
Professor Comparative Literature
Rutgers University
Office: Scott Hall, Room 238, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Phone: 732-932-7606
Email: jwalk@rci.rutgers.edu