Eric Kim

Advisors: Gabriella Safran and Monika Greenleaf

Horses are more than charismatic: omnipresent and timeless, powerful and empowering, this adaptive species has left large imprint on human arts and histories. Constituting a mutually intelligible medium across cultures—even if different groups of peoples develop different words and traditions—a horse is always a horse. Curiously, sociocultural convergences have followed: from advancements in agriculture to innovations in war, from the space of national myth to the practice of burial rites, global resonances abound when it comes to horse matter. Although we modern readers might associate horses with a different time, tying them to nostalgia, we observe the evolution of horse literature and a consequent dialogue with the depiction of this species in our time. Horses in the everyday might seem dated to us, but such a nostalgic sensibility might not have seemed so far off to these writers as well, witnessing the rise of rail transport and steam power. By closely reading four narratives, for the most part about horses who talk (Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh’s The Mare, Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wanderer, Anton Chekhov’s “Misery,” Leo Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer”) I offer a limited but mobile constellation of analyses that not only bring light to unfamiliar texts but also trouble our understandings of familiar ones. Through this dissertation based on seemingly fantastic narratives utilizing daily subjects, I confront the issues of what might relate Russians and Jews beyond their geography, how we as contemporary readers can approach this genre of texts, and, of course, why all the horses.

Eric is excited to begin his new role as Associate Teacher of English at The Nueva School in San Mateo.