An inno­v­a­tive, award-win­ning teacher of Russ­ian lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture, Kauf­man holds a Ph.D. in Slav­ic Lan­guages and Lit­er­a­tures from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and cur­rent­ly lec­tures at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. He’s the author of Under­stand­ing Tol­stoy and co-author of Russ­ian for Dum­mies. In addi­tion to his Russ­ian exper­tise, Kauf­man cre­at­ed and teach­es a renowned com­mu­ni­ty-based lit­er­a­ture course, ​“Books Behind Bars,” in which stu­dents lead dis­cus­sions about Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture with incar­cer­at­ed youth at juve­nile cor­rec­tion­al and treat­ment cen­ters in Virginia.