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Looking Backwards, Moving Forwards: The First Decade of Bloggers Karamazov

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by Katherine Bowers

The North American Dostoevsky Society stands with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See our statement here.

As you may or may not know, Bloggers Karamazov is a blog that, like Dostoevsky’s novels, relies on polyphony – the idea that many equal voices create the shape of the whole. At least, this has been the guiding idea behind it. But, behind the scenes, helping that polyphonic impulse along has been an editor (and, for the past year, an assistant editor). For the past decade, I have had the great privilege and honor to be the blog’s editor. I took over from Brian Armstrong, who originated the blog, in 2015.

This job has been an exciting one! Over the past 10 years, I have engaged with so many colleagues and their work. We have published so many posts about new books, pedagogy, conferences, museum exhibits, translations, and adaptations of Dostoevsky’s works: this is the 213th, to be exact! When I started, I did not envision the richness that the blog would become. It really is a wonderful resource, and one I keep going back to again and again.

Over the past ten years, as a field, we have celebrated anniversaries (Dostoevsky’s bicentenary, the sesquicentenary of Crime and Punishment), we have grappled with political change and global pandemic, we have worked to reconsider and reenvision the field in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and we have reflected on our teaching, both considering ways of making classroom engagement more meaningful and ways of connecting our changing world to our discussion of Dostoevsky’s works in the classroom. One of the best parts of this job is showcasing research, both the research of my colleagues through book interviews and features and the research of our students. A forum where students can publish on Dostoevsky and be read by both Dostoevsky scholars and Dostoevsky readers on a global scale is rare, and I am proud to say that that is something we have built here.

However, I have been feeling that the time has come to pass on the baton. Ten years is a long time! Last year I invited Chloe Papadopoulos to join the blog as an Assistant Editor. Chloe has already been working on the blog for a while in her capacity of member of the North American Dostoevsky Society Readers Advisory Board. She has interviewed authors for our book interviews series, co-edited the Global Dostoevskys series, and launched our new student series Reading Dostoevsky Today (our call is still open!). Chloe and I have been working together on the blog for the past year, and the time has come. Two months ago, she became the editor and I stepped down. I know she will do a wonderful job and the future of the blog is bright.

It’s taken me some time to figure out what I wanted to say in this space for my last post in an editorial capacity. I’m full of gratitude to everyone who has supported the blog as a reader or an author. Everyone who has submitted their students’ work. Everyone who has suggested a post. Or volunteered to write one when I’ve asked. Thank you. This work would not have been possible without you. By way of thanking everyone, and to have a look at what all we have accomplished over the past decade, I have roughly organized all of the posts published from 2015-2025. Have a browse! Until I looked at everything in one list like this, I hadn’t really realized the scope of what we have published.

One of the most exciting things about the blog is the way it reflects the way we read and think about Dostoevsky in the context of current events. Many more posts than the below do this work, but this is a sample of some of the way the blog has served as a place of discussion of topics from the Covid-19 pandemic to Prince, from terrorism to Trump’s America, from social media to the decolonization of our field. These wide-ranging and thoughtful posts have been cited again and again in articles, and some of them have gone on to become articles.

Reflections on Dostoevsky today

In this vein, the blog has also served as a space to discuss how we teach Dostoevsky in our current moment. These two article clusters, based on conference roundtables organized by Daniel Brooks (2019) and Chloë Kitzinger (2023), focus on teaching Dostoevsky in today’s world and some of the complicated entanglements that this inevitably brings up.

Problems of Teaching Dostoevsky Now series (2023)

Teaching Dostoevsky in the 21st Century series (2019)

One of the best things about this blog is the way it highlights student work. I want to highlight the posts by students and students’ class projects that have appeared on the blog. Special thanks to Greta Matzner-Gore, Anna Berman, and Kate Holland for being regular contributors in this area! Out of this blog work has grown our Society essay contests, and now our student research panels. It’s so wonderful that students contribute to the blog!

Reading Dostoevsky Today student series (2024-)

Student projects

In addition to a space for dialogue and writing around the practices of teaching and reading Dostoevsky, the blog has come to reflect the vibrancy of our field. Since 2015, we have published so many book interviews, reviews and reports on conferences, exhibits, and other events, and posts related to major events, like the 2021 bicentenary.

Thanks to all those who published book interviews or reports. Especially important, and unsung, are those who have volunteered their time to interview authors, especially Carol Apollonio, Brian Armstrong, Fiona Bell, Kate Holland, Katya Jordan, Robin Feuer Miller, Chloe Papadopoulos, and Vadim Shneyder.

Book interviews and features

Thanks to those who have shared their original research and readings with the blog. These reflections on Dostoevsky’s life and work, often part of a larger project, have enriched our blog and added important historical, biographical, and cultural context to the overall discussions.

Reflections on Dostoevsky’s biography, works, and cultural context

Thanks to those, also, who wrote up their experiences at events, including Carol Apollonio, Fiona Bell, Connor Doak, Tomi Haxhi, Matilda Hicklin, Kate Holland, Vladimir Ivantsov, Katya Jordan, Michael Marsh-Soloway, Greta Matzner-Gore, Naohito Saisu, Vadim Shkolnikov, Bilal Siddiqi, and Peter Winsky.

Reflections and reports on Dostoevsky events, exhibits, conferences, etc.

The blog, since its inception, has been a home for public-facing events that the Society members have collaborated on, from our first event, #TheDoubleEvent (2015) to the 2021 bicentenary. Here are the collections of blog posts around those events.

#TheDoubleEvent (2015)

Crime and Punishment at 150 (2016)

Bicentenary events and posts (2021)

The blog has also become a space where we can remember colleagues who have left us, most prominently in the past several years, we remember Deborah A. Martinsen and Robert Louis Jackson. These formidable scholars had a significant impact on the shape of Dostoevsky studies in North America today and on our Society. Their work and our memories of them live on.

Memorials

In addition to serving as a space that reflects our field, fosters discussion, and showcases our work, Bloggers Karamazov has served as a catalyst for new research. Through engagement with our audience, we have had authors write specifically for the blog, about their readings of Dostoevsky. The first series which solicited submissions with an original call was Global Dostoevskys (2021-23), co-edited by guest editors Melanie V. Jones, Christina Karakepeli, and Chloe Papadopoulos. This rich body of work showcases the global vibrancy of reading Dostoevsky, his reception in diverse cultural contexts, and that Dostoevsky is not just a Russian writer, but one whose ideas have had multiple resonances, far afield from what he himself might have imagined.

Global Dostoevskys series (2021-23)

The blog has also taken me places I never anticipated, like graphic design. Here are my top 3 creations of the past 10 years, held together with PhotoShop and a dream:

And so, to conclude this, my last post as editor of Bloggers Karamazov, I can say it has been an intellectual adventure and a privilege to steward all of this into being over the past 200+ posts and 10 years. I know that Chloe will do a wonderful job and keep the spirit of polyphony going strong into the next decade. And I hope that Bloggers Karamazov continues its discussions well into the future. Thank you all for reading.

And I am certain this will not be my last appearance on the blog!

Dr Katherine Bowers is Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic (2022) and has co-edited several volumes on topics related to literature and culture, among them Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity (2021) and A Dostoevskii Companion: Texts and Contexts (2018). Since 2015, she has served as Communications Chair and Editor of Bloggers Karamazov for the North American Dostoevsky Society. Since 2019, she has served as Vice President of the Society, a role she continues.

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