Elena V. Baraban

Elena V. Baraban is Professor of Russian at the University of Manitoba. Her research centers on Soviet and post-Soviet literature and culture and is informed by theory of trauma, structuralism, theory of postcolonialism, and gender studies. Baraban writes on Soviet and post-Soviet films about WWII, representations of the October Revolution in today’s Russia, detective fiction, and animation. Her publications include two edited volumes The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia’s Best-Selling Author (UTP 2021, co-edited together with Stephen M. Norris), Fighting Words and Images: Representing War across the Disciplines (co-edited together with Stephan Jaeger and Adam Muller (UTP 2012) as well as a number of articles on literature and film in academic journals, including Ab Imperio, Aspasia, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Slavic and East European Studies Journal, etc. Baraban’s current research project is Stalin-era films about WWII.

• PhD (Comparative Literature), University of British Columbia, 2003
• MA (Medieval Studies), Central European University Budapest, Hungary, 1997
• Candidate of Philological Sciences, Kandidat filologicheskikh nauk (General Linguistics), Simferopol State University Simferopol, Ukraine, 1994 
• BA First Class Honours (English Language and Literature), Simferopol State University, Simferopol, Ukraine, 1991 

Research interests

• 19th-21st-century Russian literature 
• Representations of WWII in literature and art
• Russian popular culture
• Russian cinema 
• Gender studies
• Theory of trauma
• Comparative literature

Research affiliations/groups

• Canadian Association of Slavists (CAS)
• Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies (CAUS)
• American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL)

• The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia’s Best-Selling Author. University of Toronto Press, 2021 -- a collection of articles, and translations of excerpts from Akunin’s works) co-ed. by Elena V. Baraban and Stephen M. Norris (U Toronto Press, 2021). 361 pp.
• Fighting Words and Images: Representing War across the Disciplines. University of Toronto Press, 2012. collection of articles co-ed. together with Stephan Jaeger and Adam Muller).
• “Depicting Ukraine under Nazi Occupation: Igor’ Savchenko’s Film Partisans in the Steppes of Ukraine (1943).” SEEJ (Slavic and East European Journal: Vol. 67.2 (Summer 2023). 
• “Boris Akunin’s Political Novel: Russian Musketeers on a Path to the Promised Land.” Ab Imperio. 4/2022, pp. 243-270.
• “Lenin, Trotsky, and Parvus in the Battle for Russian Unity.” Warsaw East European Review (WEER). Vol. X, 2020, pp.51-70. 
• “Filming a Stalinist War Epic in Ukraine: Ihor Savchenko's The Third Strike.” Canadian Slavonic Papers. Special Issue on Ukrainian Cinema. Guest editor Serhy Yekelchyk. Vol. LVI, Nos.1-2 (March-June 2014): pp.17-41.

• 2021 - Merit Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Manitoba