Professor Rebecca Reich

Research interests: 

As a scholar of twentieth-century culture, Professor Reich explores the history of journalism, dissent and samizdat; the interface of literature and the law; and literary engagements with scientific and medical knowledge, particularly psychiatry.

Recent research projects: 

Professor Reich’s current book project, The Higher Court: Soviet Journalism and Justice, 1953-1991, traces the emergence and evolution of experientially grounded ways of writing that claimed jurisdiction over morality and legality and reconfigured the relationship between journalism and the law for the post-Stalin era. The project was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2019-20.

Her first monograph, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), examines the interaction of psychiatric and literary discourses from the 1950s to the 1980s. It demonstrates that longstanding tensions between literature and psychiatry came to a head in the post-Stalin period and subsequent decades as dissenters tested cultural norms and the state suppressed dissent through punitive hospitalization. The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) awarded State of Madness its prize for Best First Book and named it a finalist for the prize for Best Book in Literary Scholarship. 

Together with Professor Simon Franklin and Professor Emma Widdis, Professor Reich is a co-editor of The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024). With contributions from thirty-four scholars, The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature offers a fresh approach to literary history, not as one integral narrative but as multiple parallel histories. In an age of shifting perspectives on Russia, and on national literatures more widely, The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature engages both with traditional literary concerns and with radical re-conceptualisations of Russian history and culture.

Professor Reich welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests or approaches that are broadly relevant to her own.

Books

The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature, edited by Simon Franklin, Rebecca Reich and Emma Widdis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and Dissent After Stalin (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

“The Courtroom Sketch: Journalism and Justice in Literaturnaia gazeta.” The Russian Review 85, no. 1 (2026): 52–68.

“The Madman”, in The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature, edited by Simon Franklin, Rebecca Reich and Emma Widdis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

(with Simon Franklin and Emma Widdis) “Introduction”, in The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature, edited by Simon Franklin, Rebecca Reich and Emma Widdis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

“Words on Trial: Morality and Legality in Frida Vigdorova’s Journalism.” Slavic Review 81, no. 2 (Fall 2022): 349–69.

“Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Russian Variations on a Psychiatric Theme”, in Psychiatry in Communist Europe, edited by Sarah Marks and Mat Savelli (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 196–215.

“Inside the Psychiatric Word: Diagnosis and Self-Definition in the Late Soviet Period.” Slavic Review 73, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 563–84.

“Madness as Balancing Act in Joseph Brodsky’s ‘Gorbunov and Gorchakov.’” The Russian Review 72, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 45–65.

Professor Reich’s book reviews have appeared in Slavic Review, the Journal of Modern History, the Modern Language Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, The Moscow Times, and other publications.