Thomas Hodge has devoted most of his research to the nexus of Russian literature and Russian music in the 1800s, and to the history of nineteenth-century Russian nature writing and hunting literature.
His most recent work is a book-length analysis of Turgenev as a nature writer: Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World, published in 2020 by Cornell University Press. An authorized Russian translation of the book was published in 2022 by Academic Studies Press / Bibliorossika. His next project is another book: A Companion to Turgenev's Fathers and Children, for Academic Studies Press, forthcoming in 2026-27. Over the years he has taught more than a dozen different language and literature courses, though now he focuses on elementary Russian language and nineteenth-century Russian novels and poems. He teaches these literature courses in both English and Russian. In 2000, with Professor Marianne Moore of the Biological Sciences Department, he co-founded Lake Baikal: The Soul of Siberia, a course that sent a dozen Wellesley students to the great lake nine times over the span of two decades. He writes occasional program notes for the Salzburg Festival's concerts of Russian music, as well as liner notes for Deutsche Grammophon. He also collaborates with local musicians who feature Russian repertoire.
