William Nickell
Session: 
Slavic Languages and Literatures

William Nickell is a cultural historian focused on the study of Russia from the 1840s to the 1940s. His award-winning book, The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910, examines the events around Tolstoy’s death, which became Russia’s first media spectacle, as a means of measuring Russian values and politics between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. His current course on “Media and Power in the Age of Putin and Trump” brings many of these same concerns to the present. Nickell is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.