Education

  • PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA (June 2018)
  • PhD in Musicology, UCLA (anticipated)
  • MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA (June 2009)
  • MA in Musicology, UCLA (May 2011)
  • BA in Russian Language and Literature, New College of Florida (June 2006)

Research

  • Theurgy in Russian Symbolism
  • Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of poetry and music
  • Folkloric sensibilities in nineteeth-century Russian opera

Dissertations

“‘A Fullness of Living Forces’: Viacheslav Ivanov’s Poetics of Theurgy”

“Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov the Antiquarian: Visions and Reconfigurations of the Slavic Past in the Opera Sadko“

Courses

As an instructor in the Department of Musicology:

  • Writing About Music (MH 12W)
  • The History of Electronic Dance Music (MH 8)
  • The Beatles (MH 68)
  • Old-Time and Bluegrass Performance Ensemble (Ethnomusicology 91z and 161z)

As a teaching assistant in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures:

  • The Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel in Translation (R 25W)
  • Introduction to Russian Civilization (R 90A)
  • Christianities East and West (S 40)
  • Beginning Russian (R 1, 2, 3)

As a teaching assistant in the Department of Musicology:

  • Music in Los Angeles (MH 61)
  • The Blues (MH 65)
  • The History of Rock and Roll (MH 5)
  • Film and Music (MH 7)
  • Contemporary Jewish and Israeli Music (MH 67)

About

Jeffrey Riggs is currently finalizing PhDs in the Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Musicology at UCLA. As a dual PhD candidate, Jeffrey’s research interests are interdisciplinarily motivated. His dissertation for the Slavic department, entitled “‘A Fullness of Living Forces’: Viacheslav Ivanov’s Poetics of Theurgy,” situates the Russian Symbolist poet Viacheslav Ivanov’s concept of theurgy within a framework of Neoplatonist philosophy and Hellenic religious practice. It demonstrates that Ivanov’s notion of symbolic art as theurgy, or “divine work,” derives from the implementation of symbola, or symbols, in theurgic rituals of late antiquity. Jeffrey’s sub-specialization in the Slavic department is in classical and Hellenic philosophy and Attic and Koine Greek. His musicology dissertation, entitled “Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov the Antiquarian: Visions and Reconfigurations of the Slavic Past in the Opera Sadko,” approaches Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical and literary representation of Russian folklore from an interdisciplinary standpoint. It investigates Rimsky-Korsakov’s fashioning of Sadko according to narrative, textual, and dramatic templates drawn from the Russian byliny (epic folk narratives). Jeffrey is also an accomplished guitarist and singer.