Amherst College mourns the passing of Boris Wolfson, associate professor of Russian, on June 13, 2024.
Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a June 14 email to faculty and staff:
For the past eighteen months, Boris has been living with a devastating illness with optimism and bravery, as reflected in the BorInformBureau updates that he shared with family and friends about his unfolding health situation. I mourn a deeply caring friend and colleague, who always thought of others, even as his body was ravaged by cancer and the medical interventions aimed at saving his life.
Boris came to Amherst in 2008, after receiving his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1997, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. His time at Amherst was preceded by a four-year period as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California. In 2014, Boris also taught as a visiting associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.
Over the course of his career, Boris established himself as an expert on Stalinist theater and the history of Russian performance; he published some twenty-five articles and reviews on these subjects. In addition, in 2018, Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action, co-edited with Julie A. Buckler and Julie A. Cassiday, appeared. This volume won an award for best edited multi-author scholarly volume from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL); the citation declared it an “eloquently original volume.” Boris also completed a manuscript, “Self and Theater in Stalinist Culture.” Michael Kunichika, chair of the Russian department, writes, “Boris studied and taught the ways language can be used to tell the truth and to lie, to help us grapple with reality and the reality of loss, to slip into commonplaces, to serve as a medium to preserve the mind and the spirit under the duress of myriad onslaughts. . . . It was this capacity that he exercised time and again in his own life and scholarship and teaching, . . . as he confronted with courage and resources of spirit the illness that took him from his beloved family and devoted friends, from the department and college and field.”
Boris was a wonderful teacher. His courses included a popular seminar, Love and Death: The Big Questions of Russian Literature; a first-year seminar on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which inspired many students to become majors in the department; and a Mellon seminar that undertook advanced research on holdings in the archive of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture. This past winter, Boris summoned his strength to return to teaching. A student remarked on how the class was going, “Wolfson, amazing.”
Cathy Ciepiela, a colleague in the Russian department, recalls, “When facing an intractable challenge in the department, Boris liked to say, ‘We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.’ He had the wry wisdom of the outsider: he grew up the son of dissident parents in the Soviet Union and emigrated to the Midwest as a child, the only Russian kid in the class. His wisdom was on offer to all comers, most especially his students, straight from a warm and sensitive heart.” Austin Sarat, a faculty member in the political science and law, jurisprudence, and social thought departments, speaks for us all as he notes that “Boris was an extraordinary colleague and a truly wonderful human being. He had wide ranging interests and was eager to draw his students and colleagues from across the campus into conversation about them. And he was warm, gracious, and kind in every way. I was lucky to count him as a friend. My life will be diminished by his loss.”
My thoughts and condolences go out to Boris’s family, including his wife, Amanda, and their son, Ben. Boris was thrilled that he could attend—in person—Ben’s senior piano recital and graduation from Deerfield Academy, just a few short weeks ago. Soon thereafter, Boris entered hospice.
The funeral service will take place this coming Monday, June 17, at 10:00 a.m., in the sanctuary of the Jewish Community of Amherst (JCA), at 742 Main Street, in Amherst. Following the service, family and close friends will proceed to the JCA cemetery for the burial; thereafter, everyone is invited to the reception in the JCA social hall.
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