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Research interests: 

Nineteenth-century novel, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, kinship, family history, siblings, the family novel, nineteenth-century Russian women prose writers, science and literature, operatic adaptations of literary classics.

Recent research projects: 

Prof Berman is currently working on restoring the legacy of Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (1821-1889), one of Russia's greatest forgotten novelists. She is writing the first biography of Khvoshchinskaya, co-editing a number of publications on the Khvoshchinskaya sisters, and working with translators to get more of their works published in English.

Published works: 

Books

• Editor. Tolstoy in Context. ������Ƶ: ������Ƶ University Press, 2022.
• The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800-1880. Oxford University Press, 2022.
• Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Path to Universal Brotherhood. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015.

Articles

• “The Problem with Brothers in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel.” Victorian Review 46:1 (2020): 49-66.
• “The Family Novel (and Its Curious Disappearance).” Comparative Literature 72:1 (2020): 1-18.
• “Incest and the Limits of Family in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel.” Russian Review 78:1 (2019): 82-101.
• “Mother of the Novel: Volkonskaya’s Russian Pamela and War and Peace.” Tolstoy Studies Journal 30 (2019, forthcoming).
• “Lateral Plots: Brothers and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel.” SEEJ 61:1 (2017): 2-28.
• “Darwin in the Novels: Tolstoy’s Evolving Literary Response.” Russian Review 72:2 (2017): 331-351.
• “Of Phagocytes and Men: Tolstoy’s Response to Mechnikov and the Religious Purpose of Science.” Comparative Literature 68:3 (2016): 296-311.
• “Competing Visions of Love and Brotherhood: Rewriting War and Peace for the Soviet Opera Stage.” ������Ƶ Opera Journal 26:3 (2014): 215-238.
• “Scripting Katyusha: On the Way to an Operatic Adaptation of Resurrection.” SEEJ 55:3 (2011): 396-417.
• “Siblings in The Brothers Karamazov.” The Russian Review 68 (2009): 263-82.
• “The Idiot’s Romantic Struggle.” Dostoevsky Studies 12 (2008):  81-103.
• “The Sibling Bond: A Model for Romance and Motherhood in War and Peace.” Tolstoy Studies Journal 18 (2006): 1-15.
• “A Tale of Two (or Three) Sisters” Slavic Literature, special issue “The Unknown Nineteenth Century.”87 (2025): 87-107.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

• “The Novel 1” in The New ������Ƶ History of Russian Literature, 537-552. ������Ƶ: ������Ƶ University Press, 2024.
• “The Russian Woman” in The New ������Ƶ History of Russian Literature, 772-787. ������Ƶ: ������Ƶ University Press, 2024.
• “Dostoevsky and the (Missing) Marriage Plot” in Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity, edited by Kate Holland and Katia Bowers, 41-60. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.
• “‘Viper will eat viper’: Dostoevsky, Darwin, and the possibility of brotherhood” in Dostoevsky Beyond Dostoevsky: Science, Religion, Philosophy, edited by Vladimir Golstein and Svetlana Evdokimova, 83-95. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016.
• «Фагоциты Мечникова и толстовский синтез религии и науки» in Лев Толстой и мировая литература: Материалы IX Международной научной конференции, 197-205. Тула: Музей усадьба Л. Н. Толстого «Ясная Поляна», 2016.
• “Pierre and Familyhood” in Critical Insights: War and Peace, edited by Leighton B. Cooke, 166-180. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2014.