Russian and East European Studies
Graduate Student in Comparative Literature
B.A. cum laude, Pomona College. 2022. Majors: Anthropology and Russian & East European Studies
Ash Maria (he/they) is a second-year Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. As a comparativist, Ash is primarily interested in research at the intersection of Baltic, Lusophone, and Slavic studies. Central to his research is looking at the development of otherness and colonial aspiration in Eastern Europe and Russia in the early 20th century. He studies this process by examining literature written by migrants in Brazil, where Eastern Europeans and Russians arrived en masse around the same time when their post-imperial nation states came into being. In Brazil, these authors directly discussed issues of Blackness, Indigeneity, and coloniality–thus giving a novel insight into the how Eastern Europeans and Russians viewed themselves within global racial and colonial hierarchies.
They are also a literary translator from Lithuanian, Portuguese, and Russian and are currently open for commissions. As a current William Fontaine Fellow at Penn, Ash welcomes all prospective student inquiries.
Languages
French, German, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian
Only reading: Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian
Conference Participation & Lectures
2025 - "Building the Colônia or Building Socialism?: Latin American Perspectives on Soviet Studies." Invited lecture at the University of Cambridge, Trinity College
2025 - "Frans Krajcberg: the Holocaust, Ecocide, and Indigenous Genocide." Yale University Eurasian Ecologies: Graduate Workshop
2025 - "How I'll Study My 12th Language (and Why Duolingo Isn't It)." Finalist presentation for Penn Grad Talks
2024 - "Valery Pereleshin: Asserting Queer Time in Three Brazilian Sonnets." Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies annual convention
2024 - “U.S. Slavic Graduate training today: new directions, new challenges, and how to apply.” Invited lecture at the University of São Paulo
2024 - “Nova Lituania and the Possibility of Ironic Colonialism.” Yale European and Eurasian Studies Graduate Student Conference
2024 - “Reading Brazilian Concrete Poetry in an Eastern European Futurist Tempo.” Crossing the Slavic Atlantic: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Ibero-Slavic Encounters, University of Exeter
2023 - “Antanas Škėma as Creative Martyr and the Neurasthenia of Survival(s).” Princeton Slavic Graduate Conference 2023: The Art of Self-Obsession?
Grants and Fellowships
2024 - National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentorship (Lithuanian mentee)
2024 - Vanderbilt University Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Brazil
2023-2024 - University of Pennsylvania Gregorian Humanities Graduate Fellow
2023 - University of Pennsylvania Fontaine Fellowship
Research Interests
Eastern European and Russian diasporas in the Global South; émigré writing; twentieth- and twenty-first-century Eastern European and Russian literature and culture; Brazilian literature and culture; international avant-garde movements; literary translation; visual poetry
Selected Publications
Literary Translations
"stigmas on the body of air…" – translated poem from Russian by Ekaterina Derysheva for American Academy of Poets Poem-a-Day project (September, 2024)
Five Poems – translated poems from Russian by Ekaterina Derysheva for Asymptote (summer 2024)
Leave Me Only a Song — translated poem from Lithuanian by Paulis Širvys for the University of Pennsylvania's DoubleSpeak Magazine (2022-2023 issue)
Sight for Trees — translated poems from Russian by Anton Ochirov for exhibition in Podroom Gallery, KCB, Belgrade and Depo Gallery in Istanbul. Hosted by SKLAD Cultural Space, Abkhazia (fall 2022)
Courses Taught
Spring 2025 - TA for Dialogues in Critical Theory between East and West (Instructor: Siarhei Biareishyk)
Fall 2024 - TA for REES 0280-401/CIMS 2501-401 - Andrei Tarkovsky: Cinema, Spirit and the Art of the Long Take (Instructor: Kevin M. F. Platt)
