Mikhail Epstein is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Emory University, where he has been teaching since 1991. Born in Moscow, he immigrated to the United States in 1990 and served as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies from 1990 to 1991. From 2012 to 2015, he held the position of Professor of Russian and Cultural Theory and Founding Director of the Centre for Humanities Innovation at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He also holds Faculty Emeritus status in Emory's Department of Comparative Literature. Epstein's research interests include cultural and literary theory, the history of Russian literature and philosophy with a focus on Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and 19th-20th century poetry, Western and Russian postmodernism, semiotics, linguistics, contemporary intellectual trends, and new interdisciplinary methods and practical applications in the humanities.

Epstein has authored 42 books in English and Russian as well as more than 800 articles and essays, with his works translated into 26 languages. Notable publications include Ideas Against Ideocracy: Non-Marxist Thought of the Late Soviet Period (1953–1991) (2022), The Phoenix of Philosophy: Russian Thought of the Late Soviet Period, 1953-1991 (2019), A Philosophy of the Possible: Modalities in Thought and Culture (2019), The Irony of the Ideal: Paradoxes of Russian Literature (2017), Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture (2016), The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto (2012), Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American Models of Creative Communication (1999), and After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (1995). He has received major awards such as the Andrei Bely Prize (1991), Social Innovations Award (1995), Lettre International/Weimar International Essay Contest (1999), Liberty Prize (2000), and the MLA Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Epstein created pioneering digital projects including inteLnet (1995), Kniga Knig (1998), and co-edited Filosofia: An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought (2017 online). His scholarship has shaped cultural theory and Russian studies, highlighted by dedicated academic conferences.

Professional Email: russmne@emory.edu