Thomas Newlin

Oberlin College, Russian, Faculty Member

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Articles and essays by Thomas Newlin

Tropical Moscow: Narratives of Deep Time in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Russian Literature, vol. 114-115 (June-July), 2020

Tolstoy the Peasant: A “Myth” Revisited (https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/tolstoy-the-peasant-a-myth-revisited/#.XY1skS2ZPdQ)

https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/tolstoy-the-peasant-a-myth-revisited/#.XY1skS2ZPdQ

Peasant Dreams, Peasant Nightmares: On Tolstoy and Cross‐Dressing, Russian Review, Volume 78, Issue 4 October 2019 Pages 595-618

The Thermodynamics of Desire in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter

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Decadent ecosystems in Uncle Vanya: A chorographic meditation

The Twilight of Realism, 2015

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The Return of the Russian Odysseus: Pastoral Dreams and Rude Awakenings

Russian Review, 1996

Page 1. The Return of the Russian Odysseus: Pastoral Dreams and Rude Awakenings ... 55, July 1996... more

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Rural Ruses: Illusion and Anxiety on the Russian Estate, 1775-1815

Slavic Review, 1998

... My thanks to Gitta Hammarberg, Hilde Hoogenboom, Marcus Levitt, Irina Reyfman, and Nancy Work... more

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At the Bottom of the River: Forms of Ecological Consciousness in Mid-19th-Century Russian Literature

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Writing with a Green Stick: Tolstoy's Search for Natural History (in Russian)

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" Swarm Life " and the Biology of War and Peace

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Reviews by Thomas Newlin

Review of: Jane Costlow, Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the Nineteenth-Century Forest (Cornell, 2013)

Review of: Stephen Lessing Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular Russian Literature and Culture

Review of: A.G. Cross and G.S. Smiths, eds., Literature, Lives, and Legality in Catherine's Russia

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1998

Review of: A.G. Tartakovskii, Russia memuaristika XVIII-Pervoi poloviny XIX v. Ot rukopisi k knige

The Russian Review, vol. 54, no.1 (January 1995), 137-8, 1995

Review of: Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000

Slavic Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (Fall 2004), 647-8, 2004

... dacha design from the 1840s 32 Dacha &amp;quot;in the Gothic style&amp;quot; 33 Dacha... more ... dacha design from the 1840s 32 Dacha &amp;quot;in the Gothic style&amp;quot; 33 Dacha with a minaret &amp;quot;in the Mauritanian style&amp;quot; 34 A gulian &amp;#x27;e at the Stroganov gardens 43 A modest design of the 1870s 63 A more elaborate dacha of the late imperial era 64 The dacha of Rakhmanov/1/s 67 A ...

Review of: Stephen Brain, Song of the Forest: Russian Forestry and Stalinist Environmentalism, 1905–1953 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

Canadian American Slavic Studies, vol. 49, no. 1(2015), 119-21, 2015

Books by Thomas Newlin

The Voice in the Garden: Andrei Bolotov and the Anxieties of Russian Pastoral, 1738-1833

... Newlin, Thomas. The voice in the garden: Andrei Bolotov and the anxieties of Russian pastoral... more

Papers by Thomas Newlin

The Natural World

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2022

Moving Pictures

Orwin, Donna Tussing. Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy

Tropical Moscow: Narratives of Deep Time in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Russian Literature, vol. 114-115 (June-July), 2020

Tolstoy the Peasant: A “Myth” Revisited (https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/tolstoy-the-peasant-a-myth-revisited/#.XY1skS2ZPdQ)

https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/tolstoy-the-peasant-a-myth-revisited/#.XY1skS2ZPdQ

Peasant Dreams, Peasant Nightmares: On Tolstoy and Cross‐Dressing, Russian Review, Volume 78, Issue 4 October 2019 Pages 595-618

The Thermodynamics of Desire in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter

Download

Decadent ecosystems in Uncle Vanya: A chorographic meditation

The Twilight of Realism, 2015

Download

The Return of the Russian Odysseus: Pastoral Dreams and Rude Awakenings

Russian Review, 1996

Page 1. The Return of the Russian Odysseus: Pastoral Dreams and Rude Awakenings ... 55, July 1996... more

Download

Rural Ruses: Illusion and Anxiety on the Russian Estate, 1775-1815

Slavic Review, 1998

... My thanks to Gitta Hammarberg, Hilde Hoogenboom, Marcus Levitt, Irina Reyfman, and Nancy Work... more

Download

At the Bottom of the River: Forms of Ecological Consciousness in Mid-19th-Century Russian Literature

Download

Writing with a Green Stick: Tolstoy's Search for Natural History (in Russian)

Download

" Swarm Life " and the Biology of War and Peace

Download

Review of: Jane Costlow, Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the Nineteenth-Century Forest (Cornell, 2013)

Review of: Stephen Lessing Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular Russian Literature and Culture

Review of: A.G. Cross and G.S. Smiths, eds., Literature, Lives, and Legality in Catherine's Russia

The Slavic and East European Journal, 1998

Review of: A.G. Tartakovskii, Russia memuaristika XVIII-Pervoi poloviny XIX v. Ot rukopisi k knige

The Russian Review, vol. 54, no.1 (January 1995), 137-8, 1995

Review of: Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000

Slavic Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (Fall 2004), 647-8, 2004

Review of: Stephen Brain, Song of the Forest: Russian Forestry and Stalinist Environmentalism, 1905–1953 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

Canadian American Slavic Studies, vol. 49, no. 1(2015), 119-21, 2015

The Voice in the Garden: Andrei Bolotov and the Anxieties of Russian Pastoral, 1738-1833

... Newlin, Thomas. The voice in the garden: Andrei Bolotov and the anxieties of Russian pastoral... more

The Natural World

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 22, 2022

Moving Pictures

Orwin, Donna Tussing. Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy

Tropical Moscow. Narratives of Deep Time in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Russian Literature

Abstract The article focuses on the vast topic of geology as it appears in various texts in Russi... more Abstract The article focuses on the vast topic of geology as it appears in various texts in Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as in art. Among other matters, Theory of Earth, “geognosy” and “stratigraphy” are analyzed along with a large number of literary examples and intercultural parallels. The article includes several historical illustrations.

Peasant Dreams, Peasant Nightmares: On Tolstoy and Cross‐Dressing

The Russian Review

The Thermodynamics of Desire in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter

The Russian Review, 2013

Critics have long recognized that Ivan's Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter (Zapiski okhotnika)... more Critics have long recognized that Ivan's Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter (Zapiski okhotnika) is only nominally a work about hunting, and that it is concerned, at a deeper level, with much more important issues (serfdom, narrative form, and so on). This essay argues that Turgenev's cycle of stories is indeed about okhota, but not just in the traditional sense of the word: it is centrally (though not exclusively) a book about desire. Turgenev is fascinated by desire and longing (okhota) in its many different manifestations (sexual-biological, psychic-emotional, spiritual, aesthetic), by its slow simmer and burn, its cultivation, suppression, release, dissipation. Again and again throughout the cycle his narrator-okhotnik positions himself, both literally and figuratively, “in cover” (na taige)–a vantage point whence he can study (and vicariously participate in) the romantic longing of his various targets. The essay explores implications of this paradigmatic pattern in a number of the stories (most importantly, and in the most detail, in “Yermolai and the Miller's Wife” and “Living Relic”). It argues, furthermore, that Turgenev's preoccupation in Notes of a Hunter with the nature and dynamics of desire was highly personal in its origins (it reflects his longing for Pauline Viardot), yet also universal in its implications: he drew deeply on his own experience to articulate a model of existential and affective conduct that resonated quietly but profoundly in Russian literature in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Prose (and Cons) of Vodka

Gastronomica, 2005

The Prose (and Cons) of Vodka Drawing extensively on his own first-hand experience as someone who... more The Prose (and Cons) of Vodka Drawing extensively on his own first-hand experience as someone who came of age during the prolonged “stagnation” of the Brezhnev years, and then witnessed the upheavals of perestroika and the breakup of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and the wild-West capitalism of the 1990s under Yeltsin, the writer and journalist Dmitrii Stakhov explores the changing fortunes of vodka, Russia’s “alcoholic drink No. 1,” and its enduring significance as a symbol, “cultural yardstick,” and economic unit of exchange over the last quarter of a century in this hard-drinking and hard-pressed nation. Stakhov’s essay details Russians’ long love affair with vodka, as well their sometimes dangerous dalliances with various vodka substitutes (often of unknown or highly dubious origin) and their more recent infatuation, in a new era of seemingly unlimited consumer choice, with other, more manifestly “Western” alcoholic drinks (whiskey, beer, wine). Stakhov suggests that the rece...

“Swarm Life” and the Biology of War and Peace

Slavic Review, 2012

In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of t... more In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of the work that would eventually become War And Peace. That same spring he also took up beekeeping. While in practical terms his “bee passion” proved relatively short-lived, it was an exceptionally intense engagement with a miniaturized and uniquely observable biological and social universe. In this article, Thomas Newlin explores how Tolstoi&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s dual enmeshment in “swarm life”—that is, in the biologically fraught realms of marriage and beekeeping—influenced both the unconventional form of War and Peace and its equally unconventional ideas (in particular Tolstoi&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s linked conceptions of the nature of history and of consciousness). The implications of a “swarm” model of history ultimately troubled Tolstoi, however; his doubts about the imperatives of biology do not play themselves out fully in War and Peace but instead lurk just beneath its surface.

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Thomas Newlin

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Articles and essays by Thomas Newlin

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