Natasha Kolchevska

Professor Emerita of Russian

Photo: Natasha Kolchevska
Email:  nakol@unm.edu

Research Area/s:

Russian

Biography:

Professor Kolchevska’s research interests lie in the areas of 20th century Russian literature and culture. She has published widely on women’s literature, women’s memoirs, literature from the Gulag, and post-WWI forms of alternative fiction. Most recently, she co-edited (with Angela Brintlinger) Beyond Little Vera: Women's Bodies, Women's Welfare in Post-Socialist Russian, Central and Eastern Europe, which appeared in 2008 as Vol. 7 in the Ohio Slavic Papers, published by Ohio State University Press. Other recent publications include Angels in the Home and at Work: Russian Women in the Khrushchev Years, in Women’s Studies Quarterly, (2005), and The Art of Memory: Cultural Reverence as Political Critique in Eugenia Ginzburg's Writing of the Gulag, in The Russian Memoir: History and Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2003). She also has an article forthcoming in a volume on violence in Russian culture, as well as several articles on contemporary Russian culture that will appear next year in The Encyclopedia of Russian Culture (Routledge, 2007). Dr. Kolchevska has also published a two-volume translation (with Mary Zirin) and scholarly edition of S. Kovalevskaia’s Nihilist Girl (Modern Language Association Texts and Translations Series, 2001).

Educational History:

Ph.D., in Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of California, Berkeley.

M.A., in Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of California, Berkeley.

B.A., in Russian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research Interests:

Professor Kolchevska’s research interests lie in the areas of 20th-century Russian literature and culture. She has published widely on women’s literature, women’s memoirs, literature from the Gulag, and post-WWI forms of alternative fiction. Most recently, she co-edited (with Angela Brintlinger) Beyond Little Vera: Women's Bodies, Women's Welfare in Post-Socialist Russian, Central and Eastern Europe, which appeared in 2008 as Vol. 7 in the Ohio Slavic Papers, published by Ohio State University Press.

Other recent publications include Angels in the Home and at Work: Russian Women in the Khrushchev Years, in Women’s Studies Quarterly, (2005), and The Art of Memory: Cultural Reverence as Political Critique in Eugenia Ginzburg's Writing of the Gulag, in The Russian Memoir: History and Literature (Northwestern University Press 2003).

She also has an article forthcoming in a volume on violence in Russian culture, as well as several articles on contemporary Russian culture that will appear next year in the Encyclopedia of Russian Culture (Routledge, 2007). Professor Kolchevska has also published a two-volume translation (with Mary Zirin) and scholarly edition of S. Kovalevskaia's Nihilist Girl (Modern Language Association Texts and Translations Series 2001).

In addition to participating in scholarly conferences, she has given public talks year in recent years on The Laboratory of Dreams: Rodchenko and the Futurists at the UNM Art Museum, and Turn of the Century Russian Writers Respond to Social Change at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.

Before she became Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures in Fall 2005, she was Director of UNM's Feminist Research Institute (FRI), as well as of the Russian Studies program at UNM. Currently, she is the President of American Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS). Both the FRI & AWSS promote research in Women, Gender & Sexuality. As President of AWSS, she has organized conferences on topics such as Women and the Marketplace and Women, Health and the Body.

Selected Publications:

Books

  • Beyond Little Vera:
    Women's Bodies, Women's Welfare in Post-Socialist Russian, Central & Eastern Europe
    .
    7. In Ohio Slavic Papers. ed. Natasha Kolchevska and Angela Brintlinger.
    (Ohio State University Press 2008).

Articles & Book Chapters

  • Angels in the Home and at Work: Russian Women in the Khrushchev Years.
    In Women’s Studies Quarterly. (2005).
  • The Art of Memory:
    Cultural Reverence as Political Critique in Eugenia Ginzburg's Writing of the Gulag
    .
    In The Russian Memoir: History and Literature. (Northwestern University Press 2003).

Translations

  • Nihilist Girl by S. Kovalevskaia.
    Trans. by Natasha Kolchevska and Mary Zirin.
    (Modern Language Association Texts and Translations Series 2001).