Denis CrnkovićFaculty

Born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in a family of Croatian and German origin, Dr. Crnković attended Franklin and Marshall College and the Russian School of Norwich University. He received an A.B. in Russian Language and Literature from F&M in 1974. After working for two years as a free-lance translator, he studied Slavic literatures at Yale University, where he received the PhD in 1985 after defending his dissertation on the "Rhythmical and Syntactical Structures in the Life of Aleksandr Nevskij." He completed post-doctoral work at Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) State University in Saint Petersburg, Russia. After serving as lector and instructor of Croatian and Russian at Yale and teaching for a year at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut) he came to Gustavus in 1984, where taught Russian, Russian Literature and Culture and general literature courses for 35 years. In addition to having offered numerous courses in Russian language and literature, Prof. Crnković conducted seminars on Central European Literature, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Modern and Contemporary Russian Culture. As part of Gustavus' emphasis on international education Professor Crnković traveled and taught regularly in Central and Eastern Europe. He also served as Director of Curriculum II / Three Crowns, the College's intensive integrated general education program. He is currently Research Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature.

With an expertise in medieval Slavic literatures, Dr. Crnković maintains an active research agenda. His article, "Isocolic Structures and Graphemetic Features in the Croatian Church Slavic Regula Sancti Benedicti,"  appeared in Studi Slavistici, his article on changing word spacing practices in the early printed Croatian books was published in Slovo (Zagreb), and his recently completed book, Ki lipo umije Čtiti: Rhythm and Structure in the Croatian Glagolitic Church Books, is scheduled for publication in 2025. Most recently his article on the confluence of meaning and oral presentation in the Croatian Glagolitic Life of St Wenceslaus has appeared in the Croatian Church Slavic Insitutue's annual, Slovo (2021). He is currently working on an in-depth study on the oral presentation aspects of the medieval Russian Life of Aleksandr Nevsky, as well as a study of the Glagolitic Methodian sermon in the Codex Clozianus. In the summer of 2009, Dr. Crnković participated in the NEH seminar "The Re-formation of the Book 1450-1650" in Antwerp and Oxford. In the summer of 2012 Dr. Crnković attended the University of Zagreb Summer Croaticum under the auspices of the U.S. Title VIII critical language program and completed extensive research at the Church Slavic Institute in Zagreb, Croatia. While on sabbatical leave in the fall of 2015 Dr Crnković conducted continuing research in Zagreb, Vienna and Prague aided by a generous Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. Professor Crnković has also recently published articles on twentieth century Russian literature and on the existential themes in the Croatian writer, Antun Šoljan's, prose fiction, and the Russian contexts of Edith Sodergran's early poetry. Most recently he served as the expert lecturer for St Olaf College's alumni tour of Croatia and Bosnia and has served as a Smithsonian Journeys Expert on learning tours in Central and Eastern Europe (2019). 

Besides his scholarly and pedagogical interests, Prof. Crnković is an amateur musician who has sung with the Lancaster (Penna.), Musica Sacra, the Yale Russian Chorus, the Te Deum Gregorian Choir, and  the Schola Gregoriana Ss Petri & Pauli dedicata. He is also an accomplished artisan in typography and printing on the letterpress, and has taught classes on hand typesetting and letterpress printing at The Cellar Press in New Ulm, Minnesota.

• CrnkovicCVMarch2022.pdf

Courses Taught