Russian Faculty

Assistant Professor of Russian

Elena Monastireva-Ansdell has a B.A. in English from Piatigorsk State Institute of Foreign Languages, an M.A. in Russian from University of Iowa, and a Ph. D. from Indiana University in Slavic Languages and Literatures. She has taught previously at Oberlin College and Bowdoin College. Her special interests include Russian-language pedagogy and issues of national myth building, gender and ethnicity in contemporary Russian culture. She teaches Russian language as well as courses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russian literature, cinema and culture. She has written on both Thaw and contemporary Russian cinema. 

Professor of Russian

Julie W. de Sherbinin received degrees in Russian from Amherst College (B.A.), Yale University (M.A.), and Cornell University (Ph.D.).  She teaches Russian language and literature, as well as English language courses on Chekhov and the anglophone short story, and human rights in world literature.  She has written on Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Blok and female madness in Russian letters.  She is the co-founder of the North American Chekhov Society. Her book Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture (Northwestern UP) came out in 1997; she is co-editor with Michael C. Finke of Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon (Slavica, 2007), a volume of proceedings that issues from a National Endowment for the Humanities symposium on Chekhov held at Colby College.

Language Assistant