Seeming to embody the property of metamorphosis inherent to the butterfly, writer and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov engaged in the process of perpetual self-invention and adaptation. He began his literary career as a Russian writer in exile in Berlin and Paris, publishing under the nom de plume “V. Sirin,” which referenced the fantastical bird from Russian folklore. Following his emigration to the United States, he managed to reinvent himself as the Russian-American author “Vladimir Nabokov,” earning international notoriety for his English-language novel Lolita. With the success of Stanley Kubrick’s film on the novel, he was able to retire from his position as a professor of literature at Cornell and to settle in the Swiss resort town of Montreux. This course will pay particular attention to the various border crossings—national, linguistic, cultural, environmental, and generic—that Nabokov enacted, allowing him to transcend the status of Russian émigré writer or even Russian-American author and to make a significant contribution to world literature. We will not only read his major English-language novels, but we will also consider his Russian novels and his poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. Those of you who know Russian are encouraged to read his Russian texts in the original alongside the English translations in which he had a hand. However, no knowledge of Russian or previous coursework in Russian literature is expected. You will be able to work on a final project of your own design that dovetails with your own interests. Among the many interdisciplinary fields that our discussions of Nabokov’s works will touch upon are translation studies, media studies, and the environmental humanities.