Volha Isakava holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Alberta (Canada). She teaches Russian language and culture, and is a Russian program advisor at Central Washington University. Her specialty is Russian cinema and popular culture. Her current research project is on genre cinema, specifically horror film, sci-fi and romcom genres, and the Hollywood influence in contemporary …

Adam Lowenstein is Professor of English and Film/Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also directs the Horror Studies Working Group and serves as the faculty fellow for the University Honors College’s scholar community in horror studies. He is the author of Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media (Columbia University Press, 2015) and Shocking …

Jeffrey Sconce is Professor in the Screen Cultures program and a Guggenheim Fellow for 2020-2021 at the Northwestern University. His first book, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (2000), examines the historical relation between electronic media and the occult. His 2019 book, The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity (2019), considers the historical role of electronic media in the …

Denis Saltykov is a PhD candidate in Film and Media with concentration in Slavic at the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests are sociological theories of cinema, film genre studies, and politics of contemporary popular culture. His publications have appeared in Studies in the Fantastic, KinoKultura, New Literary Observer, Sociology of Power, Iskusstvo Kino, and Russian popular websites such …

Vladimir Padunov Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Director, Russian Film Symposium University of Pittsburgh Padunov received his B.A. from Brooklyn College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Cornell University. He has taught at the University of Iowa and Hunter College, as well as in Germany and Russia. Together with Nancy Condee, he directed the …

Nancy Condee (Director, REEES/Title VI; Slavic & Film). Publications include Cinemasaurus (with Alexander and Elena Prokhorov; Academic Studies Press); The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (with Birgit Beumers; Taurus); The Imperial Trace: Recent Russian Cinema (Oxford); Antimonies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (with Terry Smith and Okwui Enwezor; Duke); Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style (with Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko; Northwestern); Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late 20c. Russia (BFI/Indiana). …

Sonia Lupher is a Visiting Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed her PhD. She holds a Master’s degree in Film Studies from Columbia University and a BA in Film Studies from Willamette University. Her research focuses on the post-2000s wave of women’s horror cinema, and particularly how the horror genre functions as …

Zhanna Budenkova is a PhD student in Film Studies and Slavic at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her MA from Ruhr-Universität in Germany. Her research interests cover early Soviet cinema and science fiction films in the USSR. She is also working on the topic of body politics in Russian protest art. Her professional background includes journalism and involvement with documentary …

Olga Klimova, Ph.D., is a Lecturer and a Director of the Russian Program in The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches Russian language, literature, and culture courses.  Her articles, encyclopedia entries, and film reviews have appeared in The Soviet and Post–Soviet Review, Kinokultura, SEEJ, and other academic publications.  Her academic interests include visual and popular culture …

Maxime Bey-Rozet is an instructor in the department of French and Italian and the Film Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies in 2020. His dissertation, Irredeemable: Céline, Extreme Cinemas, and the Opacity of Trauma identifies and evaluates the legacy of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline in 21st century so-called ‘extreme cinemas.’ His research has …