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- Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature
- SSEES
- UCL SLASH
Maria Rubins was born in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), and
studied at St. Petersburg State University in Russia and at Brown University in
the United States, as well as at Charles University in Prague. After earning
her doctoral degree, she lived in Boston, New York, Houston, and Washington,
and taught Russian literature, culture and language at various American
universities. In 2004, she moved to Europe and joined UCL's School of Slavonic
and East European Studies.
Professor Rubins is Editor of the BRILL book series “Studies in Slavic
literature and Poetics” and the FRINGE series of UCL Press, and an editorial
board member of Slavonic and East European Review (U.K.), The New Review (USA),
Filologicheskie nauki (Russia), and Arabic and World Literature: Comparative
and Multidisciplinary Perspectives (UK/UAE). She is an honorary
Associate Member of the Centre d’Etudes sur la Russie, le Caucase et l’Europe
Centrale of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) and of
Institut d’Etudes Slaves (Paris). She is also a member of several international learned societies,
including Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES),
Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), and Modern Language Association
(MLA).
She has been the recipient of grants and residential fellowships from
the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University (Japan), Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), the American Council of Learned Societies,
the Kennan Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in
Washington), the British Academy, Future of Russia/Rothschild Foundation, and
other institutions.
In addition to academic research and teaching she also works as a literary
translator from English and French into Russian, and has edited and translated
novels, short stories, and memoirs of Elizabeth Gaskell, Judith Gautier, Irène
Némirovsky, Arnaud Delalande, Vasily Yanovsky, Helen Izwolsky, and
others.
Professor Rubins has been nominated for the UCL Student Choice awards in
the categories “Outstanding Teaching” and “Outstanding Support for
Teaching.”


Courses Taught
SEEE2009 Narratives of Exile (BA)
SERS2024 The Petersburg ‘Text’ in Russian Literature and Culture: From Romanticism to Modernism (BA)
SEESGE86 Literatures of Rupture: Modernism in Russia and Eastern Europe (MA)
SEESGR26 Nabokov and Russian Emigre Literature (MA)
Professor Rubins has supervised and examined a broad range of PhD dissertations on Russian, Eastern European and French literatures and cultures.
1998 | Doctor of Philosophy | Brown University | |
1993 | Master of Arts | University of Georgia | |
1989 | Bachelor of Arts | Leningrad State University |