Julie W. de Sherbinin
Email:  jwdesher@colby.edu
Phone: 207-859-4442
Office: Lovejoy 444
Directory Page

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.

Elena Monastireva-Ansdell
Email: eimonast@colby.edu
Phone: 207-859-4451
Office: Lovejoy 454
Directory Page

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 contemporary Russian cinema and literature, national mythology, ethnic and gender studies. 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.

Anna Fateeva
Email: afateeva@colby.edu
Phone: 207-859-4452
Office: Lovejoy 452

Language Assistant
Anna (Ania) Fateeva, who hails from St. Petersburg, Russia, is the Russian Language Assistant for the 2012-2013 academic year. Ania is a graduate of the Classical Gymnazium in St. Petersburg where Colby houses its Colby-in-St. Petersburg program. Like most Gimanzium graduates Ania is fond of languages, art, different cultures and the humanities; her favorite hobby is skiing and snowboarding. This spring Ania graduated from St. Petersburg State University with a degree from the Faculty of Journalism. At Colby she teaches two conversation classes and takes courses in art and psychology. She looks forward to co-editing the Tusovka Newsletter with a crew of Russian majors.

Affiliated Faculty

Paul Josephson
Email: prjoseph@colby.edu
Phone: 207-859-5326
Office: Miller Library 246
History Department Page

Paul Josephson, Colby’s Russian and Soviet history professor, is a specialist in the history of twentieth century science and technology.  He has written 11 books and a large number of articles and chapters on science and technology in Russia and the former Soviet Union; on science cities; nuclear power; recreational machines; Arctic conquest; and other subjects.  The study of large scale technological systems and their potential extensive human and environmental costs have led Josephson into environmental history.  With students at Colby, he studies Soviet and Russian history, Science, Race and Gender, Luddism, and Environmental History.  His research takes him to Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Norway, Jamaica, and elsewhere.

Natalie Zelensky
Email: eimonast@colby.edu
Phone: 207-859-5684
Office: Bixler 166
Music Department Page

Associate Professor of Music
Natalie Zelensky graduated with honors from Northwestern University with a Ph.D. in Music Studies. Fusing ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and critical studies, Natalie’s research focuses on Russian music, diasporas, nostalgia, American popular music and culture, and Cold War politics.  She has published articles and presented conference papers on Russian popular and sacred music in New York City, Russian-American summer camps, underground sacred music in the Soviet Union, and racial representation, gender, and marketing in the Classic Blues.  Her work on Russian sacred music in New York is published in The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities (Oxford 2012) and in conference proceedings (Russkii Put’ 2011).  She co-authored the instructor’s manual for Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development (Prentice-Hall 2008, 2012) and helped translate and write the footnotes for W.W. Norton’s 2011 edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.  Currently, she is working on a monograph that looks at the intersection of politics and performance in the aesthetic, commercial, and diasporic space of Russian music as it emerged in New York’s nightclubs, ethnic concerts, radio waves, and sheet music. Natalie teaches courses in ethnomusicology, American popular music, and offers a specialized course on Eastern European music that combines a sociocultural study of music with its performance.