Around the Institute

Transforming Lives with Literature featuring Andrew Kaufman

August 20, 2014

Join us for an inspiring discussion with Andrew Kaufman, award-winning teacher of Russian language, literature, and culture, and author of a new book Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times (Simon & Schuster, May 2014).  Dr. Kaufman also wrote Understanding Tolstoy and Russian for Dummies (coauthor) and is a featured expert on Oprah.com.  He is frequently invited to discuss Russian literature and culture on national and international television and radio programs, including a recent appearance on Katie Couric’s television talk show highlighting his transformational work with prisoners.  His community-based literature course at the University of Virginia, “Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership,”  features student-led discussions about Russian literature with incarcerated youth at juvenile correctional centers in Virginia.  

Dr. Andrew D. Kaufman holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Stanford University and has spent the last twenty years bringing alive the Russian classics to Americans young and old. An internationally recognized Tolstoy scholar, Dr. Kaufman has lectured at the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at the Leo Tolstoy Museum and Estate at Yasnaya Polyana.