Vera ProskurinaAssociate Teaching Professor

I received my Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Moscow State University. Since 2006, I have taught at Emory University, where my research and teaching focus on the intersections of literature, power, historical narrative, and canon formation.

I have published fours monographs, several scholarly editions, and numerous articles in Russian, American, British, German, and French journals and edited collections. My book, Mikhail Gershenzon: His Life and Myth (1998), was the first monograph devoted to the Jewish writer and thinker who played a formative role in Russian Modernism and led major intellectual movements of the early twentieth century.

In 2001–2002, I was awarded a Regional Fellowship at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. My second monograph, Myths of Empire: Literature and Power in the Time of Catherine II (Moscow, 2006), examined the symbolic and ideological foundations of imperial authority. This work was followed by Creating the Empress: Politics and Poetry in the Age of Catherine II (2011), published in English with support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities for open access. The book was highly recommended by Choice and adopted as required reading at numerous universities. My subsequent monograph The Imperial Script of Catherine the Great: Governing with the Literary Pen was awarded the Marc Raeff Prize for the Best Book in Russian Imperial History in 2024, and the Committee wrote:

Proskurina’s book is a pioneering and groundbreaking exploration of the interplay between literature and politics, offering a fresh perspective through the writings of Empress Catherine II herself. The author’s meticulous examination of the empress’ corpus of texts reveals how Catherine’s prolific literary activity was deeply embedded in the political context of her reign. This context encompassed various domains, including the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, the defense of its international reputation, and last but not least, the matters of foreign policy.

My most recent book Canon and Its Boundaries in Russian Literature of the Eighteenth–Early Twentieth Centuries (2025) brings together close textual analysis, intellectual history, and cultural theory to reconsider the role of literature in shaping imperial power, cultural memory, and the boundaries of the literary canon.

• RUSS 402 WR 20th Century Russian Literature in the Original
• RUSS 313R Topics in Russian Literature
• RUSS 311 Fiction and Nonfiction in Russian
• RUSS 301 Advanced Conversation and Composition
• RUSS 101-102 Elementary Russian