Russell Samolsky earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2003. His research interests include South African literature, modernism, the global humanities, animal studies, and Jewish studies. He is the author of Apocalyptic Futures: Marked Bodies and the Violence of the Text in Kafka, Conrad, and Coetzee, which takes account of the complex relationship between past apocalyptic texts and future catastrophic events (Fordham UP, 2011). This book also includes a long coda on Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus. Other recent publications include "The Time is Out of Joint: Hamlet, Messianism, and the Specter of Apocalypse," English Language Notes 46:1 (Spring/Summer 2008); "Acts of Mourning: Art and the Lives of Animals in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello," J.M. Coetzee in Context and Theory (2008); and "Animal Ethics," The European Legacy 12:4 (2007). His current book project, "Killing Dogs," examines the place of the dog in the contemporary literary and theoretical discourse on the question of the animal.