Jose Vergara

Jose Vergara serves as Associate Professor and Chair of Russian on the Myra T. Cooley Lectureship in Russian Studies at Bryn Mawr College. He holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century Russian literature and culture.

His research spans multiple interconnected fields including contemporary Russian literature, prison writing, environmental humanities, digital humanities, and Russian language pedagogy. Vergara has developed significant expertise in how Russian writers have engaged with James Joyce's work, as demonstrated in his book All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell University Press, 2021), which examines how Russian authors from the 1920s to the present have creatively responded to Joyce's fiction. His current research projects include studies of Russian prison texts, Chernobyl's international resonance, and a bilingual digital annotated edition of Sasha Sokolov's Between Dog and Wolf.

Vergara's scholarly output reveals consistent engagement with contemporary Russian cultural production, particularly works that address trauma, memory, and the relationship between literature and historical events. His publications demonstrate expertise across literary criticism, interviews with major authors, and digital humanities projects that make complex Russian texts more accessible to students and scholars.

As an educator, Vergara has taught a diverse range of courses including Russian language, prison literature, Chernobyl studies, Russian novels (both classical and experimental varieties), and contemporary Russian culture and society. Notably, he has taught courses in prisons including nearby OCI-Chester, demonstrating his commitment to expanding educational access. He is a passionate advocate for public and digital humanities initiatives that bridge academic scholarship with broader communities.