The two teachers who influenced her most were very different people: Vladimir Nabokov, a novelist and professor of European literature, and Robert E. Cushman, a political scientist and constitutional scholar. According to Ruth, Nabokov changed the way she read and wrote: “He used words to paint pictures. Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the reader.” Ruth remembers Nabokov as a great showman and a spellbinding teacher, and recounted how his wife, Véra, would sit in the back of the
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