Benjamin Arenstein is a PhD student in modern Hebrew language and literature. His research examines Soviet Jewish émigré writing and the development of literary networks between Israel/Palestine and the Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in translation theory, ecocriticism, and the relationship between multilingualism and canon formation. At the University of Chicago, Benjamin is a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow in Russian and coordinates the Jewish Studies Workshop. In 2018, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Uzbekistan. Benjamin holds bachelor’s degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Jewish literature and from Columbia University in history.