Svetlana Boym (Russian: Светла́на Ю́рьевна Бо́йм) is the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University, and a media artist, playwright and novelist.[1] She is also an associate of the Graduate School of Design and Architecture at Harvard University. Much of her current work is focused on developing the new theoretical concept of the off-modern.
Boym was born in Leningrad, USSR. She studied Spanish at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad.[2] She received an M.A. from Boston University and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Boym's written work explores relationships between utopia and kitsch, between memory and modernity, and between homesickness and sickness of home.[3] Her research interests generally include 20th century Russian literature, cultural studies, comparative literature and literary studies. In addition to teaching and writing, Boym also sits on the Editorial Collective of the interdisciplinary scholarly journal Public Culture. Boym has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Cabot Award for Research in Humanities, and an award from the American Council for Learned Societies.
In the 2006, Boym's media art exhibit opened in Ljubljana Factory Rog Art Space during the City of Women Festival. At the same time she curated the exhibit "Territories of Terror: Memories and Mythologies of Gulag in Contemporary Russian-American Art" at the Boston University Art Gallery.[4]