Nabokov on the Heights: New Studies from Boston College
Edited by Maxim D. Shrayer
Nabokov on the Heights:
New studies from Boston College
Edited by Maxim D. Shrayer
Copyright ©2025 by Maxim D. Shrayer,
319 pp.
Academic Studies Press, 2025
Immigrant Worlds & Texts Series
ISBN 9798887197296 (hardback)
ISBN 9798897830060 (paperback)
ISBN 9798887197319 (Epub)
Order from the publisher
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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.
Praise for Nabokov on the Heights
"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, author of Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures