
Librarian for the Davis Center Collection
Svetlana oversees the Davis Center Collection at Fung Library, stewarding and enabling access to the library's books, periodicals, and archival and visual materials. She also supports scholarship and pedagogy at the Davis Center by answering reference questions, providing one-on-one research consultations, and through library orientations and instruction sessions. Svetlana is passionate about using exhibitions, tours, web exhibits, and digitization to give the Harvard community front-row access to the library's unique historical collections.
Before joining the Davis Center in 2014, Svetlana taught Russian literature and language at Harvard and Macalester College. Her courses covered such topics as Soviet-era satire, science fiction, and fate/fatalism in the Russian narrative tradition.
Education
“The Laughter of Gods and Devils: Edith Wharton and the Coen Brothers on Deception, Disappointment, and Cosmic Irony.” In Comedy in Comparative Literature: Dante, Hoffmann, Nietzsche, Wharton, Borges, and Cabrera Infante (Edwin Mellen Press, 2010).
Anna Rakityanskaya & Svetlana Rukhelman. Curating the Library Exhibit “Russian Revolution: Actors and Witnesses” at Harvard University: A Collaborative Experience, Slavic & East European Information Resources (2018).