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Mieka Erley
Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies; Director, Russian and Eurasian Studies Program
Department/Office Information
Russian and Eurasian Studies- M 4:00pm - 5:00pm (309A Lawrence Hall)
- W 1:30pm - 3:30pm (309A Lawrence Hall)
Mieka Erley received her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a minor in Film Studies. She studies the cultural history, literature, and cinema of the late Imperial and Soviet periods in relation to science, materiality, and the environment. Her interests are trans-regional and trans-medial, and her work seeks to engage Slavic Studies with conversations across traditional geographic and disciplinary boundaries.
Her first book, On Russian Soil: Myth and Materiality (Ithaca, NY: NIUP/CUP, 2021) follows the shifting significance of soil as a natural body, a national resource, and a site of cultural mythmaking over a century of modernization in Russia and Central Asia. On Russian Soil was shortlisted for the 2021 AATSEEL Best First Book Award. In addition to her primary training in Slavic languages and literatures, she has secondary training in Tajik (Persian) and studied with Azim Baizoyev through ACTR and Tajik National University.
She is currently working on her second book, Prehistories of the Posthuman, which reevaluates Russian cosmism in light of contemporary post-humanist theory. Her articles can be found in Slavic Review, the Russian journal Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (NLO), the French literary journal Europe, and the edited volumes Eurasian Environments and Petersburg/Petersburg. She is a member of the international working group Russian Ecospheres and serves on the editorial board of the series "East European and Eurasian Ecologies: Past, Present, and Future" at Academic Studies Press.