Dr. Nicholas Kupensky is an Assistant Professor of Russian at the United States Air Force Academy, where he teaches courses in Russian language and literature at all levels, Humanities, and Foreign Area Studies. He previously was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Humanities and Russian at Bucknell University (2013-2015, 2017) and the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Russian at Bowdoin College (2017-2019).

Dr. Kupensky’s research investigates the aesthetics and politics of manufactured landscapes in Russia, Ukraine, and the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. He is currently completing a monograph, The Soviet Industrial Sublime: The Awe and Fear of DneproGES, 1927-1945, which analyzes the artistic, cinematic, journalistic, and literary representations of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the largest dam in the world when it was built in 1932 in Zaporizhia, Ukraine. His research on the Soviet industrial revolution has appeared in Muzeinyi visnyk (2018), Ukraïna Moderna (2019), and Harvard Ukrainian Studies (2020). He also is completing articles on representations of the Five-Year Plan in the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Bezymensky and in the cinema of the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov.

Dr. Kupensky is particularly committed to amplifying the voices of underrepresented groups in Russia’s sphere of influence, in particular ethnic minorities, economic migrants, and victims of political oppression. His work on the Carpatho-Rusyns, a stateless Slavic minority in Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine, has appeared in The New Rusyn Times (2011), Slovo (2016), and Nationalities Papers (2019). A strong advocate for the Digital and Public Humanities, he launched the digital platform The Emil Kubek Project (2015-present), an initiative that tells the stories of Slavic migrants to Pennsylvania’s Coal Region through the prism of the poetry and prose of the Carpatho-Rusyn writer Emil Kubek. His “West End Walking Tour” of the Slavic neighborhoods of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, has drawn hundreds of guests, been covered in local, national, and international news media, and been featured on NPR’s podcast Grapple (2016). He also is currently working on an article about the Carpatho-Rusyn writer Andrii Karabelesh’s prose and poetry about his experiences in Nazi concentration camps and Communist Czechoslovakia. He has been the vice president of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center (2013-present), where he organizes the annual C-RRC Summer Seminars (2020-present).

Recently, Dr. Kupensky has begun to research the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. His book chapter “The Outpost of Ukraine: The Role of Dnipro in the War in Donbas” (forthcoming 2021, coauthored with Olena Andriushchenko) analyzes the changing public narratives about Dnipro, a city that played a decisive role in defending Ukraine. He is completing articles on representations of the city of Zaporizhia, the Battle for the Donetsk Airport (coauthored with C1C Joseph Catlett), and the Battle for Mariupol (coauthored with C2C Daniil Tourashev). He also is a regular reviewer of new titles in Ukrainian Studies for H-Ukraine.

Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. (2017)

M.Phil., Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. (2011)

B.A., Comparative Humanities (honors), Russian, and English, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn. (2007)

Assistant Professor of Russian, Department of Foreign Languages, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo. (2019-present)

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Russian Department, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine (2017-2019)

Visiting Assistant Professor, Comparative Humanities & Russian Studies, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn. (2013-2015, 2017)

Teaching Assistant, Slavic Languages and Literatures & History of Art, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. (2010-2012, 2016)

Lector, The Russian-American Academic Center for American Studies, The Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia (2007-2008, 2010)

Dr. Kupensky’s research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2014), Action Research at Bucknell (2015), the Coal Region Field Station (2015), Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (2016), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2017-2019), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (2020, 2021). At USAFA, he has received a Quarterly award (2020) and the Outstanding Academy Educator award (2021) in recognition of his teaching and service.

Modernism

Soviet Cultural Studies

Ukrainian and Carpatho-Rusyn Studies

Nationalism and Transnationalism

Literature and Migration

Digital and Public Humanities