Elena Sommers
Principal Lecturer
Elena Sommers
Principal Lecturer
Education
Ph.D., University of Rochester
Dissertation: 'The Ona of Nabokov's Hereafter'
MA, University of Notre Dame
BA, MA, Moscow State Pedagogical University (Russia)
Bio
Please help welcome my new volume-Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era (2021) This collection seeks to critique the novel from the standpoint of its teachability to undergraduate and graduate students in the twenty-first century. The time has come to ask: in the #MeToo era and beyond, how do we approach Nabokov’s inflammatory masterpiece, Lolita? How do we read a novel that describes an unpardonable crime? How do we balance analysis of Lolita’s brilliant language and aesthetic complexity with due attention to its troubling content? This student-focused volume offers practical and specific answers to these questions and includes suggestions for teaching the novel in conventional and online modalities. Link is embedded in the title: Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era (March 2021)Looking forward to a new conversation! Related note: Check out my 1st volume: Nabokov’s Women: The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomad, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Courses Taught at RIT:
Great Authors: Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
Dangerous Texts: Censored Literature
Global Literatures: “On Love & Other Stories”
Film Studies: Global Film
The Novel
The Short Story
Women’s and Gender Studies in Literature
The Future of Writing
Select Scholarship
Currently Teaching
In the News
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September 24, 2021
Professor explores teaching Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ in the #MeToo era
Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, principal lecturer in RIT’s Department of English, has taught Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel, Lolita, in her Dangerous Texts course for many years. As the #MeToo movement gained strength and global attention in 2018, however, the novel became particularly relevant.