I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Russian from Yale University, where I received the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize and the Warren Memorial High Scholarship Prize, awarded to the senior at Yale majoring in the humanities who ranks highest in scholarship. In 2022, I received the Rhodes Scholarship and began an MPhil in Slavonic Studies at the University of Oxford. My MPhil thesis, entitled “‘World-protection, world-preservation, and world-repair’: Matrifocal Narratives in Contemporary Czech, Slovak, and Russian Literature,” examined the intersection of motherhood, textile arts, and maternal ethics.
My doctoral project examines the representation of pregnancy, parturition, and parenthood in post-socialist Czech, Slovak, and Russian literature with a particular focus on the Czech authors Daniela Hodrová (1946-2024) and Tereza Boučková (b. 1957), the Slovak authors Etela Farkašová (b. 1943) and Ivana Dobrakovová (b. 1982), and the Russian authors Liudmila Ulitskaia (b. 1943) and Liudmila Petrushevskaia (b. 1938).
Publications:
“An International Socialist Avant-Garde, or the Western Canon: Kundera's Early Reflections on World Literature,” in Milan Kundera Known and Unknown: Multidimensional Analysis of Selected Works, edited by Karen von Kunes, Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
“Kundera, Tolstoy, and the Lightness of Being,” in Modern Czech Literature: Writing in Times of Political Trauma, edited by Andrew M. Drozd, Vernon Press, 2025.
“Václav Havel’s Vaněk Plays,” The Literary Encyclopedia, coauthored with Professor Karen von Kunes, 2021.
Teaching:
- Czech and Slovak literature, 1816 to the present (Paper VIII) (Fall 2025)
- Translation from Modern Czech and Modern Slovak (Fall 2025)
Conference and Seminar Papers and Invited Lectures:
“Libuše Moníková: Translingual Literature as Liberation or Exploitation?,” ICCEES World Congress XI, UCL London, July 2025.
“Slovak feminist literature as world literature: Irena Brežná, Etela Farkašová, and Jana Juráňová,” Small Literatures as World Literature Conference/ Malé literatúry ako svetová literatúra, Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV (Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences), Bratislava, May 2025.
“Daniela Hodrová and Tereza Boučková: On the Edge of Chaos,” Invited Lecture at The Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs & Slavic Department, University of Toronto, March 2025.
“Simondon and Gender,” Simondon Seminar Series, University of Oxford, March 2025.
“‘The great unwritten story’: Maternity and Motherhood in Czech, Slovak, and Russian Literature of the 1990s,” Slavonic Seminar, University of Oxford, February 2024.
“The Unbroken Umbilical Cord: Motherhood, Memory, and Weaving in Etela Farkašová’s Stalo sa,” 55th Annual Convention for the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Philadelphia, November 2023.