Benjamin Paloff

Areas of research: comparative approaches to modern Russian, Polish, and Czech literatures; philosophy in literature; poetics; translation in theory and practice
Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

Benjamin Paloff received the Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 2007 and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since then.  He is the author of The Politics (2011), a collection of poems. Additional publications include articles on the construction of God in contemporary Russian poetry and the metaphysics of the Other in Polish and Czech Modernism, as well as translations of several books from Polish, including works by Dorota Maslowska, Marek Bienczyk, and Andrzej Sosnowski. He is the recipient of fellowships from Poland’s Book Institute (2010), the National Endowment for the Arts (2009-2010), and the Michigan Society of Fellows (2007-2010), is a poetry editor at Boston Review, and is active in Michigan’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.  Ongoing projects include a study of intermediacy in interwar literature and another on the notion of impermanence in poetic theory. Teaching interests in Comparative Literature include undergraduate courses on Art House Animation and Poetics and graduate seminars on Eastern European Poets in the West and translation theory.   

Select Publications:

• Marek Bienczyk. Transparency. Trans. Benjamin Paloff. Urbana-Champagne: Dalkey Archive Press, forthcoming.
• Krzysztof Michalski. The Eternal Flame: Essays on Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Benjamin Paloff. Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming.
• Andrzej Sosnowski. Lodgings: Selected Poems. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2011.
• Benjamin Paloff. The Politics: Poems. Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011.
• Marek Bienczyk. Tworki. Trans. Benjamin Paloff Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
• Benjamin Paloff. “A Loving Heresy: The God Function in Joseph Brodsky and Ol’ga Sedakova.” Slavic and East European Journal 51:4 (Winter 2007): 716-736.
• Benjamin Paloff. “Due Consideration: On the Real Sophistication of Tony Hoagland.” Michigan Quarterly Review 46:1 (Winter 2007): 198-211.
• Dorota Maslowska. Snow White and Russian Red. Trans. Benjamin Paloff. New York: Grove Press, 2005.

Research Areas(s)

• Philosophy in/of Literature, Holocaust Literature and the Ethics of Representation

Affiliation(s)

• Comparative Literature, CREES, Slavic Languages & Literatures

Award(s)

• Michigan Society of Fellows postdoctorate fellowship, 2007
  Two Hopwood Awards, 2000-2001