The Pure Violence of Revolutionism

Gary Saul Morson is the Lawrence P. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities, and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. The author or editor of 20 books on Russian writers, the nature of time, the role of quotations in culture and other topics, Dr. Morson won best book awards from the American Comparative Literature Association and the American Association of Professors of Slavic and East European Languages. His publications include Prosaics and Other Provocations: Empathy, Open Time, and the Novel; Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time; and The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel. For many years his course on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was the largest course at Northwestern University and the largest on Russian literature in North America. Prior to his time at Northwestern, Dr. Morson was Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. Morson holds a B.A. in Russian and Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Yale University. He also spent a year at Oxford University on a Henry Fellowship, where he befriended fellow student Bill Clinton.