The election for the next IVNS Vice President (who serves for two years before becoming president) is under way. We have two outstanding candidates: Matthew Roth and Adam Weiner. Secret ballots have been emailed to all members. The candidate statements are below for your reference. Deadline to vote is Dec. 11.
Matthew Roth:
Matthew Roth is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Messiah University, in Grantham, Pennsylvania, USA. He serves as reviews editor for the Nabokov Online Journal and he is the coordinator of the Nabokov Online Seminars. He has been an active member of the IVNS since 2006 and is also a member of the Chercheurs Enchantés, the French Vladimir Nabokov Society.
His scholarly work includes the first major study of the Pale Fire manuscript, an alternative Shadean theory of Pale Fire, and numerous other articles and notes. He is the author of the Pale Fire annotations that appear on the IVNS website. His current project is a reader’s guide to Pale Fire. Over the years, he has taught several courses on Nabokov, including, most recently, a Critical Theory course centered on the various critical lenses that have been applied to Lolita.
In addition to his scholarly work, he is also the author of two books of poetry, the most recent of which is Rains Rain (FutureCycle Press, 2023).
Matthew greatly enjoys assisting or collaborating with his fellow Nabokovians, and as Vice President he would look forward to working with the President to organize and promote events and opportunities for Nabokovians to gather (both in person and virtually), to share ideas, to inspire each other, and together to expand the scope and influence of Nabokov studies.
Adam Weiner:
“Weiner had turned out to be a different Weiner–and yet fate found a way.”
–Vladimir Nabokov, “The Doorbell”
Adam Weiner is professor of Russian and Comparative Literary Studies at Wellesley College. His doctoral degree in Russian literature is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied under David Bethea, Alexander Dolinin, and his advisor, Gary Rosenshield. Adam has published two books, By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia (Northwestern, 1998) and How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Economic Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2016). Each of his books has a chapter devoted to Nabokov's novels. Adam is currently writing a book on mysterious narrative structures that occur repeatedly in Nabokov’s fiction.
When Adam first began teaching at Wellesley College in 1994, there was no course on Nabokov, nor any memorial to Nabokov. Adam created two courses on Nabokov, one in English, the other in Russian, which he has been teaching for three decades. In 2006 he designed and inaugurated a memorial called “La Porte Nabokoff” in the Tower Court residence hall.
Over his years at Wellesley, Adam has organized or co-organized three big Nabokovian events on campus. The first, in 1999, was a Centennial Celebration of Nabokov. The second, in 2006, with Timothy Peltason (English Dept), was a celebration called “50 Years Later: an Evening Devoted to Vladimir Nabokov’s Wellesley Years and to His Novel Lolita. Finally, in 2022, Adam was co-organizer with Stephen Blackwell and Beth Sweeney of “Hidden Nabokov.”
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