Bella Grigoryan

Bella Grigoryan is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, affiliated with the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. She specializes in 18th- and 19th-century Russian literature and culture, with research interests spanning Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Russian imperial politics, and the history of print culture.

Education

• PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University, 2011
• BA in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley, 2002

Her research explores intersections of literary form, political context, and material culture, with a focus on how Russian literature engaged with broader European movements like Romanticism. She has published widely on Russian novelists such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Goncharov, analyzing their works through lenses of class, print culture, and imperial identity. Her book Noble Subjects: The Russian Novel and the Gentry (2018) examines how the Russian novel reflected and shaped aristocratic identity.

Her recent scholarship emphasizes global comparisons in Russian cultural production and the material dimensions of literary dissemination. She has received awards for both research and teaching, including the Harriman Institute grants and Yale’s Poorvu Family Award. As department chair, she oversees curricula and faculty initiatives in Slavic studies.

Key contributions include analyses of readership in 19th-century periodicals, the role of print culture in shaping public discourse, and the aesthetic-political dynamics in Russian novels. Her work bridges literary criticism with historical and socio-cultural analysis, offering fresh perspectives on canonical texts.