Kelsey Rubin-Detlev

PostDoctoral Appointments

• Foote Junior Research Fellow in Russian, The Queen’s College, Oxford, 2015 – 2017

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Kelsey Rubin-Detlev is a scholar of Enlightenment Russia and Western Europe. She is the author of The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2019), which won the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) Best First Book Award 2020 and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) Alexander Nove Prize 2019. She also co-translated and co-edited with Andrew Kahn the Selected Letters of Catherine the Great (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her second book project, provisionally entitled “The Bible in Enlightenment Russia,” has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries. In 2024-2026 she is project director on an NEH-funded grant, Encoding Empire: Exploring the Correspondence of Catherine the Great, which will further develop CatCor, a database of the empress’s letters: https://catcor.seh.ox.ac.uk/.

Research Keywords

Enlightenment, 18th-century literature and culture, epistolarity, Catherine the Great

Book

• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2019). The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great. Liverpool: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press. Publisher link
• Kahn, A., Rubin-Detlev, K. (2018). Catherine the Great: Selected Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Publisher link

Book Chapters

• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2023). “‘Notre style n’est bon que pour nous et pour les commis des postes’: Catherine II de Russie et la surveillance des correspondances”. Secrets et surveillance épistolaires dans l’Europe du dix-huitième siècle pp. 19-37. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Publisher link
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2022). “Epistolary Relationship and Intellectual Identity in Maria Antonia of Saxony’s Correspondence with Frederick the Great, 1763-1779”. Portraits and Poses: Female Intellectual Authority pp. 55-72. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Link to chapter
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2020). “Ein kaiserliches Briefnetzwerk—Katharina die Große”. Handbuch Brief pp. 871-83. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Publisher link
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2020). “A Philosopher-Empress in a Revolutionary World: Catherine the Great to the Prince de Ligne”. Dear Friend, You Must Change Your Life pp. 73-79. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Publisher link
• Rubin-Detlev, K., Kahn, A. (2019). “Catherine the Great and the Art of Epistolary Networking”. Networks of Enlightenment pp. 47-73. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Publisher link
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2015). Critical edition of “Lettres et réponses de M. Palissot et de Monsieur de Voltaire”. Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Vol. 51A) pp. 245-339. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Publisher link

Encyclopedia Article

• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2021). “Russian Epistolary Writing from the Middle Ages to the Turn of the 19th Century”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Publisher link

Journal Article

• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2024). Mme de Graffigny and the Archduchess: Indirect Correspondence between the Court and le monde. Modern Languages Open. Link to Article
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2024). L’Église orthodoxe dans les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire: à la découverte d’une histoire alternative du christianisme. Revue Voltaire. Vol. 23, pp. 173-183.
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2023). “Addressing the Public in Eighteenth-Century Russian Printed Letter Collections”. Slavonic and East European Review. Vol. 101 (3), pp. 450-85.
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2022). “Dostoevsky and Epistolary Intimacy”. Slavic and East European Journal. Vol. 66 (4), pp. 568-87.
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2021). “An Ancient in Catherinian Russia: Classical Reception, Sensibility, and Nobility in Princess Ekaterina Urusova’s Poetry of the 1770s”. Slavic Review. Vol. 80 (1), pp. 90-111.
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2016). “‘What Would Voltaire Say?’: Voltaire’s exchange value in the correspondence of Catherine the Great”. Revue Voltaire. Vol. 16, pp. 241-52. Link to article
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2012). “Voltaire and the Affair of the Bottle Conjuror: the authorship of the review of Tristram Shandy in the Gazette littéraire de l’Europe (20 March 1765)”. Revue Voltaire. Vol. 12, pp. 285-92. Link to article
• Rubin-Detlev, K. (2011). “La Correspondance de Voltaire et Catherine II: un jeu de rôle littéraire”. Revue Voltaire. Vol. 11, pp. 237-56. Link to article

• National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, 10/2024 – 09/2026
• Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship Recipient, 01/2022 – 06/2023
• British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Digital Resource Prize for CatCor: The Digital Correspondence of Catherine the Great, Spring 2023
• USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, Fall 2022
• David Walker Memorial Fellowship in Early Modern History, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Fall 2021
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship Recipient, 01/01/2021 – 12/31/2021
• American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) Best First Book Award, Spring 2020
• British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) Alexander Nove Prize in Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies 2019, Spring 2020
• Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Graduate Scholarship in the Humanities, University of Oxford, 2012 – 2015

Editorships and Editorial Boards

• Member, Editorial Board, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 01/01/2024 –
• Member, Advisory Board, Translatio (Durham University IMEMS Press), 2022 –
• Member, Advisory Board, Electronic Enlightenment, 2021 –