Professor Emeritus Milton Ehre

Russian Literature

Date of birth: April 15, 1933. Married, two children.

B. A. in English, The City College of New York, 1955.
M. A. and Ph. D. in Russian, Columbia University, 1966, 1970.

Cum laude, City College of New York, 1955.
National Defense Foreign Language Fellow, Columbia University, 1964-65, 1965-66, 1966-67.
President's Fellow, Columbia University, 1964-65, 1965- 66.
Ph. D. dissertation, The Fiction of Ivan Goncharov, cited for Distinction, Columbia University, 1970.

• American Council of Learned Societies, 1970-71.
• The Philosophical Society, summer 1971.
• National Endowment for the Humanities, summer 1971.
• Guggenheim, 1975-76.
• Fulbright-Hays, IREX (as visiting member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, in Moscow), 1984, 1990.
• IREX Collaborative Grant with Mikhail Aivazian of the Russian Academy of Sciences, "The Russian Heritage: Unifying Archives."

New York City Board of Education, Teacher of English, 1956- 63.
University of Chicago, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the College
Assistant Professor, 1967-72.
Associate Professor, 1972-81.
Professor, 1981-2000

Books

• Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).
• The Theater of Nikolay Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), edited with introduction and annotations by Milton Ehre,translated by Milton Ehre with Fruma Gottschalk.
• Isaac Babel (Boston: Twayne, 1986). CD-ROM version (New York: Macmillan, 1997).
• Chekhov for the Stage, translated and with an introduction by Milton Ehre (Northwestern University Press, 1992).

Articles

• "Ivan Goncharov on Art, Literature, and the Novel," Slavic Review, vol. 29, no. 2, (June 1970). Reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism (Detroit, Gale, 1981-82).
• "The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov," American Philosophical Society Year Book, 1971.
• "Goncharov's Early Prose Fiction," Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 50, no. 20 (July 1972).
• "Zamjatin's Aesthetics," Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 19, no. 3 (Fall 1975).
• "A Classic of Russian Realism: Form and Meaning in The Golovlyovs," Studies in the Novel (Spring 1977).
• "Laughing through the Apocalypse: The Comic Structure of Gogol's Government Inspector," Russian Review, vol. 39, no. 2 (April 1980).
• "The Symbolic Structure of Chekhov's 'Gusev'," Ulbandus Review, vol 2, no. 1 (Fall 1979).
• "Gogol's Gamblers: Idea and Form," Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 1981).
• "Babel's Red Cavalry: Epic and Pathos, Culture and History," Slavic Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (June 1981).
• "Goncharov," in European Writers: The Romantic Century, ed. Jacques Barzun & George Stade (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985).
• "Goncharov," "Garshin," "Turgenev," "Bunin," in Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
• "Goncharov," in Encyclopedia of Russian Literature, ed. Harry Weber (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic Press, 1987).
• "Iurii Olesha's Envy: Utopia and Dystopia," Slavic Review (Fall, 1991).
• "Fedor Sologub's The Petty Demon: Erotica, Time and Decadence," in The Silver Age (London: MacMillan, 1992).
• "Meaning in Oblomov," in Ivan A. Goncarov: Leben, Werk und Wirkung. ed. Peter Thiergen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994).
• "Ivan Goncharov's A Usual Story and The Precipice"," "Alexander Ostrovsky's Forest," "Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov," in Guide to Russian Literature, ed. Neil Cornwell & Nicole Christian (London: Fitzroy, 1997).
• "Oblomov" and "War and Peace," in Encyclopedia of the Novel (London: Fitzroy, forthcoming1999) .

Review Articles

• "On August 1914, " Chicago Review, vol. 24, no. 3 (1972). Reprinted in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials, ed. John B. Dunlop et al. (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1973), and Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 2 (Detroit: Gale, 1974).
• "M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays," ed. Michael Holquist, in Poetics Today , vol. 5, no. 1 (1984).
• The Diary of Valery Bryusov (1893-1905). Edited and translated Joan Delaney Grossman. Modern Philology, vol. 79, no. 3 (February 1982). Reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (Detroit: Gale, 1983-84).
• Reviews in Slavic Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Russian Review, The New Leader, Midway, Counterpoint, Comparative Literature., Slavonika. I regularly review books on Russia and other subjects for The Washington Times.

Frequent participation at meetings of Modern Language Association, American Association of Teachers of the Slavic Languages and Literatures (ATSEEL), American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), IV World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies at Harrogate, England. Public lectures by invitation at University of Indiana, UCLA, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Davis University of Texas, University of Chicago, Kentucky University, University of North Carolina, University of Vermont, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Grinnell College, University of Kansas, Saint Xavier University of Chicago, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago, Court Theater of Chicago, Soviet and Russian Academies of Science, University of Chicago-Human Being and Citizen Lecture Series, Basic Program and MLA Program of University of Chicago,churches, synagogues, clubs, etc. I regularly lecture at the annual University of Chicago Open House in the Humanities to which the public is invited. Lectures at the Russian State University for the

Humanities in Moscow, 1993 & 1994.

Keynote Speaker at Public Conference, "The Changing Face of Eastern Europe," on occasion of the inauguration of Saint Xavier University, April 30 1992. Topic: "Russian Literature and the Revolution of1991"

Keynote Speaker at Slavic Forum, University of Chicago. Topic: "Chekhov and Freedom," Spring 1999

EditorIal Board of Slavic and East European Journal (formerly), referee of articles for Slavic and East European Journal , Slavic Review, Russian Review, and various university presses. Current: Guest Member of "Special Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Organization of the Legacy of Manuscripts of Russian Literature" as part of a "National Program for the Creation of an Academic History of Russian Literature of the Twentieth Century." .

At various times: Humanities Division Student-Faculty Advisory Committee, College Council, Committee on the Organization of the Humanities Division, Senior Adviser of the Humanities Division of the College, Governing Committee of the College, Humanitas Development Group, Curriculum Committees of the College, and the College Humanities Division, Master of Arts Program in Japan, Courses and Lectures for MLA Program, Committee to read materials for Harper Fellows, Acting Chairman of Human Being and Citizen (core course)

• Tour Leader (lectures and seminars)
  • To Soviet Union, Alumni Association of University of Chicago, 1985.
  • To Stratford Theater Festival, University of Chicago Theater Study Tours,1986,1987.

Milton Ehre received his bachelors degree at the City College of New York and a Ph. D. at Columbia University. He has taught at the University of Chicago since 1967, where he is now Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the College. He was a member of the editorial board of the Slavic and East European Journal. The American Council of Learned Societies, the Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation have awarded him grants and fellowships. In 1984 and again in 1990, as recipient of a Fulbright-Hays­IREX grant, he was attached to the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R. in Moscow as part of an exchange program.

Professor Ehre's major field of study is Russian literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Among his publications are articles on Nikolay Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mikhail Bakhtin and Fyodor Sologub. He is the author of Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (1973) and editor and translator of the The Theater of Nikolay Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings (1980 and Chekhov for the Stage (Northwestern University Press,1992).

His translations of Gogol's and Chekhov's plays have been widely performed, including productions ofThe Government Inspector at the Goodman Theater, the Theatre Center of Los Angeles, the University of Vermont and the University of California at Berkeley; Uncle Vanya at the Court Theater of Chicago, Marriage on the BBC, and The Sea Gull at the Huge Theater in Chicago.