Our faculty continue to inspire through their teaching, scholarship, service, and community engagement. We are pleased to highlight accomplishments and updates shared by colleagues across a wide range of professional activities, including courses taught, publications, presentations, community engagement efforts, works in progress, and other noteworthy achievements. Please join us in celebrating the many ways our faculty contribute to their disciplines, students, and our Slavic community.
Sasha Senderovich, Associate Professor
Sasha Senderovich published a book chapter, co-written with Alex Moshkin, "First as Comedy, Then as Nationalism: The Immigrant Post-Soviet Novel between America and Israel," in The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Novel (2025). His new collaborative translation from Yiddish and Russian with Harriet Murav, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union was published by Stanford University Press in February 2026.
Senderovich has given talks on this new book at the University College London, UCLA, Pomona College, the University of Chicago, and, as a keynote address at the Wisconsin Slavic Conference at the University of Wisconsin Madison, in addition to community presentations at Third Place Books in Seattle, Jewish Book Week and the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, U.K., and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in Portland, OR.
In addition to teaching his usual classes, he launched two new courses this academic year: "Modern Yiddish Literature: The Worlds of East European Jews" and "Global Literature: Contemporary Novels Around the World”.
Gordana P. Crnković, Professor & Chair
Gordana P. Crnković published the article "View from the Eiffel Tower, a Film Adaptation of a zagreb woman: Art and the Power to Push Back" in the last issue of Balkanistica (vol. 39, 2026). She was on sabbatical leave in Fall and Winter quarters and is grateful to Professor José Alaniz for serving as Interim Chair in her absence.
leana Marin, Part-Time Lecturer
Ileana Marin contributed the introduction to Lost Things, Found Things: A Bilingual Anthology of Romanian Prose (Oscar Print, 2026), co‑coordinated with British translator James Brown. Earlier this month, she presented her paper “Materializing Memory: Artists’ Books as Multisensorial Encounters with Slavery and Revolution” at the Society for Textual Scholarship Conference in New York. She was recently nominated for the Honors Excellence in Teaching Award for her fall course, "Artists’ Books: Reading with the Mind and Body.”
Marin is currently preparing materials for her new class, “The Black Sea Crossroads: Nations, Narratives, and European Integration.” As Vice President of the American Romanian Cultural Society, she is part of the curatorial team for the 13th Romanian Film Festival, taking place November 13–15 at SIFF Uptown Cinema under this year’s theme, “Beyond Borders."
Piotr Florczyk, Associate Professor
Over this past year Piotr Florczyk focused on teaching, recruiting students, serving on committees, publishing (his books), editing (other people's books), cultural diplomacy, giving talks/readings (in the US, Great Britain, Poland, India, South Korea), and living his best life.
