Current Graduate Students

Petia Alexieva is an ABD in Slavic Linguistics currently working on her dissertation on Reflexive Pronouns in Russian and Bulgarian. While working on her Ph.D. Petia has enjoyed the opportunity of teaching Russian and Bulgarian at the University of Chicago and summer intensive Russian at Middlebury College, VT. Her other Slavic languages of interest are Polish, Serbian and Macedonian. alexieva@uchicago.edu

After teaching English for two years in Sokolov, the Czech Republic, Kathryn Duda joined the team of stellar graduate students at the University of Chicago and is currently a doctoral candidate in the literature track. Her current work focuses on literature of the Thaw and ideas of communities. In addition to Russian, she works on figures of Czech dissidence. She has a great love for Russian and Czech literature, in general, but is also interested in theories of the polis, versification and medieval art. She takes ancient Greek for fun. She tends to get excited when talking about Plato, Aristotle or mathematical traditions of the Greeks. She has never been known to turn down an invitation to a pub. zipk81@uchicago.edu

Christian Hilchey is in his fourth year in the Slavic linguistics program.  Before joining the University he worked as a translator in the Czech Republic where he has spent a number of years working, researching, and traveling.  He works primarily on Czech, but also works on Slovene, BCS, and Russian.  He is interested in verbal aspect, definiteness, and Cognitive linguistics.  He has side interests in translation theory, corpus linguistics, and Computational linguistics. hilchey@uchicago.edu

Katherine Hill-Reischl is a Ph.D student in the Slavic Interdisciplinary Studies track, currently working on her dissertation “Objective Authorship: Photography and Writing in Russia, 1905-1975.” Her major field is Russian literature, with a focus on the image in modern prose. At the University of Chicago, she has lectured courses including First Year Russian through Pushkin, Russian Literature from Modernism to Postmodernism, and co-taught Soviet Literature: Above and Below Ground. Her research interests include Soviet and Russian photography and art, ideological imaging, media aesthetics, modernist prose, and Russian iconography. During the 2010-11 academic year she will be conducting dissertation research in Moscow and St. Petersburg on a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award. hillk@uchicago.edu

Erik Houle is a fifth year Ph.D student in Slavic Linguistics. Prior to moving to Chicago he taught Russian, French, German and ESL at the high school level for five years. His languages of focus are Russian, Polish and Ukrainian, though he has also studied Bulgarian. He is interested primarily in language contact, language and globalization, and discourse analysis. erhoule@uchicago.edu

Zachary Murphy King began his Ph.D in Russian Literature in 2011. Before coming to Chicago he worked as a translator and taught English language and literature in Kiev, Ukraine for two years after completing his undergraduate work. He received his B.A. with honors in English Literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2009. Zack’s research interests include translation theory, Pushkin, early 20th-century Russian prose and poetry, and Modernism. He counts among his languages English, Russian, Polish, Spanish and German.

Stephanie Mielcarek is a second-year student on the interdisciplinary studies track, focusing on Polish literature, architecture and urban studies. Her research interests include the portrayal and creation of real and imaginary places in literature, especially in relation to such issues as shifting borders and political situations, atypical gender roles, and religious traditions. Stephanie received a B.A. in Art History from the University of Chicago in 2007. Before returning to the University in 2010, she worked as an ESL teacher in China.

Antje Postema works primarily on Yugoslav and ex-Yugoslav literature, as well as on Russian literature. Her theoretical interests relate to: trauma, cultural memory, the nation and its narrative, the symbolic and imaginative geography of Eastern Europe, and travel literature. apostema@uchicago.edu

Daniel Pratt (ABD) is on a Whiting Write-Up Fellowship and started his PhD in Czech Literature in 2005. He received his A.B. in Comparative Literature from Princeton in 2003 and his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 2007. His dissertation is entitled "Aesthetic Identity: Creation of Self in Rilke, Gombrowicz, and Hrabal". His research interests include Czech, Russian, Polish, German Languages and Literatures, History of Ideas, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, Cinema, and Central Europe. He is currently developing papers defining Central Europe culturally through German as a lingua franca, examining Jaroslav Seifert's relationship to Lidice as the national poet, and "Revolutionary" poetry in Central and Eastern Europe. Classes that he has taught include First and Second Year Czech language, First Year Russian, Eastern European Literary Theory, The Central European Novel, and Anna Karenina. His website is http://home.uchicago.edu/~dpratt/. dpratt@uchicago.edu

Anna Szawara is a PhD student in Slavic Literatures. Her major field is Polish literature, with a focus on feminist literary theory. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Loyola University Chicago and her M.A. in Polish Literature from the University of Chicago. She is currently working on Jerzy Pilch and his novels.