Tom Roberts is Assistant Professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Smith College. His research examines Russian literature and Eastern Orthodoxy, and he is currently completing his first book, which explores the aesthetics of transcendence in nineteenth-century Russian literary realism. Roberts also researches Soviet and post-Soviet cinema and has published several articles in this field, focusing on the work of directors Kira Muratova, Alexei German, and Alexei Fedorchenko.