Maria Hristova

Maria (Masha) Hristova joined the Lewis & Clark community in 2017. A Bulgarian native, she received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 2015. Most broadly, Masha’s research focuses on 20th and 21st century (post) Soviet cultures. Her two main areas of interest are post-secularism in contemporary Russian-language women’s writing, and environmental themes in (post) Soviet literature, film, and art. Her most recent articles include “Asceticism and Embodiment: Female Bodies, Sexuality, and Religious Experiences in Contemporary Russian Women’s Writing” (2022) published in Canadian Slavonic Papers and “Atomic TV: nuclear weapons and national identity in contemporary Kazakhstani and Russian TV series” (2025) published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. Additionally, Masha co-edited the volume Energy/Waste: Approaches to the Environment in Contemporary Post-Soviet Cultures (2023) for which she also wrote the article “Post-Soviet Filmic Depictions of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Tests.” She is currently working on a new article exploring issues of gender and labor representation in women’s Soviet literature of the Thaw period.

Currently, Masha teaches Beginning and Intermediate Russian, as well as a wide range of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet culture seminars in English, as well as in Russian. She also collaborates with the Environmental Studies program to offer elective courses as part of their Breadth Requirements. Additionally, she is the faculty coordinator for the Critical Language Scholarship Program.