Biography:

Dr. Olena Zotova earned her PhD in Slavic Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL) in 2014. She owes her early linguistic and pedagogical training to the Taras Shevchenko University of Luhansk, Ukraine, where she spent her formative years. Between 2001 and the present time, Dr. Zotova has taught all levels of Russian (occasionally beginner Ukrainian, beginner Polish, and ESL) in various US colleges and as a private tutor. In the mid-2000s, she translated extensive materials from the Kazan’ National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan for Dr. Michael Johnson’s dissertation on the 1800s compulsory Russification of the Tatar, Chuvash, and Mari peoples of the Volga region. Zotova is a certified ACTFL OPI tester in Russian and the Head of the Penn State Chapter of the National Honor Slavic Society “Dobro Slovo.” Her current academic interests include modern Ukrainian culture, literature, and film; global and post-colonial studies; Russian Empire and post-Soviet irredentism, and Miranda Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice.

Recent publications:

Books

•  After Pushkin: The Lessons of the Bucha Massacre (in progress)
• Wingless Desire in Modernist Russia: Envy and Authorship in the 1920s (Lanham: Lexington Publishers, 2021) – short list for AATSEEL Best Book in Literary Studies* *The author apologizes for having mislabeled the Ukrainian artist Kazymyr Malevych and poet Vasylisk Hnedov as “Russian,” in line with the colonial misconception predominant before 24 February 2022.

Book chapter

• “From Parodies to Parades: How the Post-Soviet TV Promoted Ur-Nostalgia.” In Tetyana Dzyadevych, ed. Nostalgia and Anxiety in the Visual and Performing Arts: Russia, Eastern, and Central Europe (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2025). 211-244.

Book reviews

• Olena Palko and Manuel Férez Gil, eds. Ukraine’s Many Faces. Land, People, and Culture Revisited. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2025).
• Lyuba Yakimchuk. Apricots of Donbas (Scio: Lost Horse Press, 2021). Slavic and Eastern European Journal (Boulder: AATSEEL, 2025). 69:3, 463-65.

Poetry and Translation

• “Ranok bez ran [Dawn Over Ukraine].” In Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, ed. Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope and Peace (Los Angeles: River Paw Press, 2022). 125-26.