David Shepherd is professor of Russian and director of the Bakhtin Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Beyond Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in Soviet Literature (1992); editor of Bakhtin: Carnival, and Other Subjects (1993); co-editor with Ken Hirschkop of Bakhtin and Cultural Theory (1989, 1998) and co-editor with Catriona Kelly of Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution (1998) and Russian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (1998). His current research is focused on the intellectual contexts of the Bakhtin Circle.