Polina Dimova

Dr. Dimova's scholarly work focuses on twentieth-century Russian, German, and British literature, music, and visual art, and her research has been supported by ACLS, NEH, and Mellon grants. Her first book At the Crossroads of the Senses (Penn State UP, 2024) examines how Modernist multimedia experiments stemmed from a fascination with synaesthesia, the figurative or neurological mixing of the senses—for instance, in the perception of sound as color. Dimova has published on the Symbolist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet literary interpretations of the myth and music of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, on Sergei Prokofiev’s early ballets and songs, on Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss’s adaptations of the Salome legend, and on electricity in Russian culture. As a fellow at the 2018 NEH Cold War Cultures summer institute, she also began work on the project Cold War Fantasies in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Bulgaria. Her teaching and research interests include modernism across the arts, sensory studies, literature and science, fairy tales and science fiction, lyric poetry, and translation. Before joining DU in 2019, she taught a wide range of Russian and comparative literature courses on these topics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oberlin College, and Vanderbilt University. A proficient violinist and a composer, Dr. Dimova hails from Bulgaria.