Asher Maria

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

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?