Diana Burgin is a biographer, translator, Slavic philologist, poet-parodist and beginning violinist. A Professor of Russian language, literature and culture at the University of Massachusetts-Boston for over 30 years, she has won several awards for her scholarship and teaching and has also been awarded a Distinguished Service Award by the national Association of Women in Slavic Studies. Her most recent project, FIVE HARD PIECES – appearing here in electronic form for the first time – is a group of translations and original readings of five long poems by the 20th-century Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, on whose work Ms. Burgin has already published a book and several articles in Russian (available through Links to Works in Russian on the Scholarly Writing menu above). Currently, she is working on a biography of Ruth Posselt (1911-2007), world-renowned American violinist.

Books: Sophia Parnok. The Life and Work of Russia’s Sappho (New York University Press, 1994); Richard Burgin. A Life in Verse (Slavica, 1989); Russian Women on the Margins of Everyday Life (in Russian, Inapress, 2004); Marina Tsvetaeva and Transgressive Eros (in Russian, Inapress, 2000).

Translations: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Vintage International, 1996), The Invisible Book by Sergei Dovlatov (Ardis, 1979), “Stairs” by Marina Tsvetaeva (Boulevard, 2005), Selection of Poems by Sophia Parnok (Russian Women Writers, volume 1, Garland Publishing Co., 1999)

Articles and Essays in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Slavic Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Journal of the Neo-Formalist Circle, Russian Literature TriQuarterly, Soviet Studies, Dictionary of Russian Women Writers, Russian Women Writers, Lesbian Histories and Cultures, Forum Homosexualitat und Literatur 29 (1997), Russian Review.

Chapters in Enemies of the People. The Destruction of Soviet Literary, Theater, and Film Arts in the 1930s (Northwestern University Press, 2002); Gender and Sexuality in Russian Civilization (Routledge, 2001); Engendering Slavic Literatures (Indiana University Press, 1996); Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture (Stanford University Press, 1993).