From the Editors

We are pleased to present the inaugural issue of Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought—the annual, online, peer-reviewed journal of the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought.

Since its founding in 2022, the NU RPLRT Research Initiative has flourished. It has attracted approximately 160 scholars from around the world, ranging from doctoral students to the most eminent figures in our fields. They and their work are profiled on our comprehensive website.¹

Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought builds on the success of our online research forum, Northwestern University Forum in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought,² as well as on our conference series.

In April 2023 we held our inaugural conference on Northwestern's campus in Evanston, Illinois: What's New about the New Atheism? The Enduring Relevance of Russian Philosophy. A year later our second annual conference honored an esteemed Northwestern professor: Celebrating Gary Saul Morson: Humanistic Traditions in Russian Thought and Literature. In addition, we have co-sponsored conferences at Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil (November 2022), Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) in Lisbon (March 2023), the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland (June 2024), and the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida (November 2024). Our third annual conference, Evil in Russian Thought and Literature, co-sponsored by Trinity College, University of Cambridge, will be held at St. John's College, University of Cambridge, July 31–August 2, 2025.

One of the main purposes of our conference series is to generate innovative scholarship for publication on our research forum and in our journal. The journal's inaugural issue features several articles that were presented as papers at our first annual conference: those by Amy Singleton Adams, Jillian Pignataro, Julia Berest, Daniela Steila, and Daniel Adam Lightsey. The journal's second volume (2025) will feature articles from the conference we co-sponsored with the Hamilton Center: Religion, Human Dignity, and Human Rights: New Paradigms for Russia and the West. The third issue of the journal will, we hope, feature articles from our summer 2025 conference at Cambridge.

Normally a preface "From the Editors" includes a few words about the articles which follow. Instead, we refer the reader to the "Afterword" at the end of this issue, written by Caryl Emerson, a distinguished member of our Advisory Board who has been integral to the NU RPLRT Research Initiative from the very beginning.

As this inaugural issue demonstrates, Northwestern University Studies in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought showcases outstanding scholarship in each of these three titular areas and, especially, at the intersections among them. We invite submissions for research articles and book reviews for publication in the 2025 issue. Please contact Susan McReynolds and Randall Poole.

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