International science journal Nature selected Stephen Blackwell’s new book as one of the top twenty books of 2016.
The book, Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov’s Scientific Art, is the first full appraisal of novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s contributions as a scientist.
Blackwell, a professor of Russian in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, co-edited the book with entomologist Kurt Johnson. The book traces Nabokov’s contribution to lepidoptery, the study of moths and butterflies, and how that played out through his fiction.