Ania Aizman
Assistant Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the College
Ania Aizman teaches seminars on Russian, Eurasian, East European, and Central European culture, each drawing upon and bringing together literature, film, anthropology, and history. Her current book project, “Anarchist Currents in Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Pussy Riot,” shows that an intellectual and artistic anarchist culture has existed in Russia and among Russians abroad for over 150 years. Despite suppression during the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras, writers and artists continued to imagine life beyond the state in stories, paintings, manifestos, memoirs, and performances. She argues that the arts, whether elite or popular, are key to understanding the unlikely survival of anarchist ideas in Russia. Another concurrent project is a study of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed the politics and cultures of radical anti-authoritarian groups, such as anarchists, in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
She has written for Slavic Review, The Russian Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker.
Aizman earned an AB in comparative literature from the University of Chicago, as well as an AM and a PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University. Most recently, she was an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Michigan and a Michigan Society Fellow.