1. Full name and personal data
Galin Tihanov; b. 12 June 1964
2. Employment
September 2011 – George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London
August 2007 – August 2011: Professor of Comparative Literature and Intellectual History and Founding Co-Director, Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, The University of Manchester
November 2003 – July 2007: Professor of Comparative Literature, Lancaster University
June 2002 – October 2003: Reader in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History, Department of European Languages and Cultures, Lancaster University
October 2000 – May 2002: Lecturer in European Studies, Department of European Languages and Cultures, Lancaster University
October 1997 – September 2000: Junior Research Fellow in Russian and German Intellectual History, Merton College, Oxford (228 applicants for a total of four JRFs in eight eligible disciplines)
January 1995 – September 1996: part-time researcher for the Randomised Clinical Trials Register, The Cochrane Centre, Oxford
October 1994 – September 1997, Overseas DPhil Scholar, Jesus College, Oxford
August 1992 – August 1995: Lecturer in Bulgarian Language and Culture at the International Summer Seminars in Bulgarian Studies organised by Sofia University and by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and at the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Seminar
June 1992 – September 1993: Assistant Professor of Bulgarian literature, Sofia University
July 1991 – June 1992: Aspirant, Department of Bulgarian Literature, Sofia University
September 1990 – June 1991: English language teacher for a private school in Sofia
September 1983 – October 1985: Compulsory military service in Bulgaria
3. Visiting Appointments
Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University (Spring Semester 2007)
Professor of Intellectual History, St. Gallen Universität (Autumn Semester 2012)
Professor of Literary Theory, University of Sao Paulo (August 2013)
Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Humanities, Peking University (April 2014)
Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Seoul National University (April 2015)
Invited Seminar Leader and Lecturer, Harvard IWL Summer School (Lisbon 2015; Copenhagen 2017; Belgrade 2020)
Invited Seminar Leader and Lecturer, BFSU Inaugural Summer School in Cultural Theory (Beijing 2016)
Invited Seminar Leader and Lecturer, EFLU Summer School in Literary Theory (Hyderabad 2017)
Recurring Invited Professor of Intellectual History, Higher School of Economics (IGITI), Moscow (2016-2021)
4. Degrees and Qualifications
1998 DPhil (‘Bakhtin and Lukács: The Theory of the Novel as Social Philosophy’), Oxford University
1998 MA (by Hebdomadal Council Resolution), Oxford University
1996 PhD (‘Genre and Consciousness of Genre in Early Bulgarian Modernism’), Sofia University
1990 MA in Slavic Studies, Sofia University
1988 BA in English & History and Theory of Culture, Sofia University
5. Languages
Native speaker of Bulgarian
Fluency in written and spoken English, German and Russian
Fair command of French and Polish and reading knowledge of Latin and Italian
6. Research Interests
Comparative Literature and Cultural History, esp. Russian, German, and Central- and East-European Culture and Thought (19th-20th c.) and German, Russian, Bulgarian and Polish literatures in their relation to intellectual and cultural history (19th-20th c.); Intellectual History; World Literature; Continental, British, and American Literary and Cultural Theory; Cosmopolitanism and its Genealogies; Exile and Migration (esp. 20th century Central- and East-European exile); Construction of European Identities; Marxism and Post-Marxism; Mikhail Bakhtin; Olga Freidenberg; The Russian Formalists; Gustav Shpet; Boris Yarkho; Osip Mandelstam; Boris Porshnev; German Post-Romanticism; German Conservatism (esp. 20th century); May ’68; Goethe; Dilthey; Simmel; Heidegger; Carl Schmitt; Oswald Spengler; Ernst Jünger; Robert Musil; Hermann Broch; Elias Canetti; Heiner Müller; Alexandre Kojève; Russian avant-garde visual culture.
7. Authored Books
Cosmopolitanism: A Very Short Introduction, forthcoming with Oxford UP in 2021
The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2019
Narrativas do Exílio: Cosmopolitismo além da Imaginação Liberal [Narratives of Exile: Cosmopolitanism beyond the Liberal Imagination], São Carlos, SP: Pedro & João Editores, 2013.
The Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their Time, Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford UP, 2000 (Polish translation, 2010; Portuguese-Brazilian and Chinese translations in preparation).
Zhanrovoto suznanie na kruga «Misul». Kum kulturnata biografiia na bulgarskiia modernizum [The Consciousness of Genre of the «Misul» Circle. Towards a Cultural Biography of Bulgarian Modernism], Sofia: Academia, 1998.
Tulkuvaniia. Tekstove vurkhu bulgarskata literatura sled Vuzrazhdaneto [Interpretations. Texts on Bulgarian Post-Revival Literature], Sofia: Sofia UP, 1994.
8. Edited Books
(co-editor and contributor), Vergleichende Weltliteraturen/Comparative World Literatures, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2019.
(co-editor and contributor), A Companion to the Works of Hermann Broch, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019
(co-editor and contributor), Die bulgarische Literatur der Moderne im europäischen Kontext: Zwischen Emanzipation und Selbststigmatisierung? Munich: Otto Sagner, 2013
(co-editor and contributor), A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011
(co-editor and contributor), Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism, London: Legenda, 2011.
(co-editor and contributor), Istoriia russkoi literaturnoi kritiki: Sovetskaia i postsovetskaia epokhi, Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2011.
(co-editor and contributor), Critical Theory in Russia and the West, London and New York: Routledge, 2010; paperback ed. 2011 (Chinese translation, 2016).
(editor and contributor) Gustav Shpet’s Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2009.
(co-editor and contributor) A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007 (paperback 2011).
(co-editor and contributor) The Bakhtin Circle: In the Master’s Absence, Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2004
(co-editor and contributor) Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory, London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 2000
9. Professional Committees and Boards
Member of the Advisory Council, Institute for Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London – since October 2018
Member of the Advisory Board, International Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of World Literature (Zhejiang University) – since January 2018
Member of the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) – since February 2016
Member of the Executive Committee, Institute for World Literature, Harvard University – since August 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board, Institute for World Literature, Harvard University (2014-2018)
Honorary Scientific Advisor, Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) – since April 2014
Honorary President, Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) – since June 2008
Member of the International Advisory Board, Center for Advanced Study, Sofia – since May 2010
Member of the International University Forum for Curriculum Reform – since 2009
President of the Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association (2005-2008)
Member of the Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association (2001-2005)
Member of the International Advisory Board, Language and Literature Programme, New Bulgarian University, Sofia (2005-2008)
Associate Member of the Research Board, Language and Literature Programme, New Bulgarian University, Sofia (1995-2002)
10. Advisory/Editorial Boards and Editorship of Scholarly Journals
Member of the International Advisory Board of Central European Cultures (Budapest) – since 2020
Member of the International Advisory Board of Foreign Literary Studies and Comparative Poetics (China) – since 2020
Member of the International Editorial Board of Studies in East European Thought (USA) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of International Journal for Comparative Cultural Studies (USA) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Ex-Position (Taipei) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Ou ya ren wen yan jiu [欧亚人文研究 Review of Euro-Asian Humanities (Beijing)] – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Liuboslovie (Shumen) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of the Yearbook of Philological Research (Plovdiv University) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Palimpsest (Nizhnyi Novgorod) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Visniki kafedri teorii kul’turi ta filosofii nauki (Kharkiv) – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board of Journal of the Rajasthan Association for Studies in English (Jaipur) – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board of International Comparative Literature (Shanghai) – since 2018
Member of the International Editorial Board of Foreign Literature Studies (Wuhan) – since 2018
Member of the International Editorial Board of Bakhtinskii Vestnik (Saransk) – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board of Russian Studies in Philosophy (USA) – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board of Foreign Language and Literature Research (Wuhan) – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature (Hong Kong) – since 2017
Member of the International Advisory Board of Comparative Literature and Culture (USA) – since 2017
Member of the International Advisory Board of Comparative Literature East and West (Chengdu) – since 2017
Member of the International Editorial Board of Studia Litterarum (Moscow) – since 2016
Member of the International Editorial Board of Voprosy literatury (Moscow) – since 2016
Member of the International Editorial Board of The Journal of English Language & Literature (Seoul) – since 2015
Member of the International Advisory Board of Psikhologicheskie issledovaniia (Moscow) – since 2015
Member of the International Advisory Board of Bijiao Wenxue & Shijie Wenxue [比较文学与世界文学 Comparative Literature and World Literature (Beijing)] – since 2014
Member of the International Advisory Board of Filosofskie nauki (St. Petersburg) – since 2014
Member of the International Advisory Board of Evropa (Tyumen) – since 2014
Member of the International Advisory Board of Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch (Austria) – since 2013
Member of the International Advisory Board of Literaturna misul (Bulgaria) – since 2012
Member of the International Advisory Board of Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso (Brazil) – since 2012
Member of the International Editorial Board of Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies (UK) – since 2010
Member of the International Advisory Board of Arcadia: International Journal of Literary Culture/Internationale Zeitschrift für literarische Kultur (Germany) – since 2009
Member of the Editorial Board of Slavonica (UK) – since 2008
Member of the International Editorial Board of Comparative Critical Studies (UK) – since 2004
Member of the International Advisory Board of Primerjalna Knijizevnost (Slovenia) – since 1998
Co-editor, with Maurice Slawinski, of the BCLA journal New Comparison (2001-2003)
Member of the International Advisory Board of Vestnik Tiumenskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta (2012-2014)
Member of the Editorial Board of Literaturata, Sofia (1998-2005)
Founding Member of the Editorial Board of Strelets, a student journal for literature and criticism, Sofia (1992)
11. Advisory Boards of Publishing Houses and Editorship of Book Series
Member of the International Advisory Board of Studies in World Literature, Metzler Verlag (Stuttgart) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board of Collected Essays on Foreign Languages and Literatures (Chengdu) – since 2019
Member of the International Advisory Board, Comparative Literature Series, Cambridge Scholars Publishing – since 2018
Member of the International Advisory Board, Formalisms Monograph Series, Sdvig Press, Switzerland – since 2015
Invited Series Editor, Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History, Academic Studies Press, USA – since 2013
Member of the International Advisory Board, New Comparative Criticism Series, Peter Lang, Germany and Switzerland – since 2012
Member of the International Advisory Board, The Real Twentieth Century Series, Academic Studies Press, USA – since 2011
Member of the International Advisory Board, Language and Literature Series, Mercado de Letras Publishing House, Brazil – since 2010
Member of the International Advisory Board, Brill Balkan Studies Series, Brill, The Netherlands – since 2009
Member of the International Advisory Board, Durham Modern Languages Series, Manchester UP, United Kingdom (2009-2018)
Member of Manchester UP Editorial Committee (2009-2011)