Evelina Mendelevich was born in Kazakhstan and immigrated to the United States from Belarus in 1997. She graduated suma cum laude in English from Hunter College in 2003, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her primary academic interests are 19th-century Russian, English and French literatures, particularly psychological fiction, and women writers. She is fascinated by the relationship between writer, reader, and the text in psychological narrative, and explores the idea of writing as mode of experience. She currently teaches Freshman Composition and World Humanities at City College, NYC. She also gives private and group instruction in Russian in Midtown.
Areas of Interest
Russian, British, and French nineteenth-century novel. Psychological fiction. Women writers.
Courses Taught
Freshman Composition (Intro and Research).
World Humanities II: A survey of several major works of world literature (Dante, Voltaire, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Kafka, Ibsen, Hurston)
Introduction to Comparative Literature
Languages
Russian (native), Belarusian (near-native), French (proficient), Hebrew (fair), Latin (fair)
Presentations and Publications:
“Belarus’ Theatre Is Free (When Its Not in Belarus): a Night of Free Theater, Culture Projects Impact Festival, 2006” in Slavic and East European Performance: Drama, Theatre, Film, Winter 2007.
“The Woman Question: What Is To Be Done? and Women’s Response in Works by N. Suslova and S. Kovalevskaya.” Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, Fordham University, April 2006.
“I.S. Turgenev: a Russian Uncle of European Existentialism.” Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, Columbia University, March 2007.