Elise Thorsen (’06) is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation. In 2013 she has been awarded a prestigious Cultural Studies Ph.D. Research Scholarship. In her own words: “I did embarrassingly well, even, and I think I have support in my department for a dissertation that extrapolates to an abstract level about epos-building and aesthetics from interwar Soviet poetry. Now, it’s onward (and upward, excelsior!) to a dissertation.” 🙂
Elise is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh. She completed Middlebury Summer School in 2006 and a graduate program at the Center for International Studies at Moscow State University in 2008. In 2009 Elise received her M.A. degree. Her research interests include Russian and Soviet Empire, Imaginative Geography, Stalinism, Citizenship and Recognition, Utopia, Soviet Film, Soviet Science Fiction, Yugoslav Literature and Culture (update: 2013)