Julie Zigoris (Draskoczy)

  • Writer and Independent Scholar, The Ruby of San Francisco

Education & Training

  • PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Slavic Languages and Literatures, 2010
  • MA, University of Pittsburgh, Slavic Languages and Literatures, 2006
  • BA, New York University, Comparative Literature and Russian and Slavic Studies, 2002

Courses Taught

History of the Soviet Union.  Jewish Community High School of the Bay
English 101A: Writing the Self.  Prison University Project, San Quentin Prison
Incarceration as Inspiration: Russian and American Prison Narratives, Stanford University
Modern European History: The Soviet Experience, Prison University Project, San Quentin prison 
Utopian Visions, Dystopian Dreams: Russian Literature and Culture from 1917-1953, Stanford University
Masterpieces of 20th c. Russian Literature, University of Pittsburgh
Early Russian Culture, University of Pittsburgh

Representative Publications

Imagining the Russian Nation: The Story of Antisemitism in Soviet Samizdat." Underground Publishing and the Public Sphere: Transnational Perspectives. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014.

Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag.  Academic Studies Press, 2014.  Released as paperback in 2018.

“The Put’ of Perekovka: Transforming lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal,” The Russian Review, January 2012.

Translation, “Chronicle of Current Events,” introductory article for MEMORIAL website, March 2011.

Review of Another Sky. Dir. Dmitrii Mamuliia. In online journal KinoKultura, Issue 30 (2010).

Editorial Assistant, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.

Research Interests

  • Stalinism 
  • 20th c. Russian Literature 
  • Film Studies (Documentary Film, Film Noir)
  • Theories of Subjectivity (Criminal Culture, Jewish Studies)
  • Material Culture (Gulag History, Art as Propaganda)

Representative Conference Presentations

Nov. 2010: Roundtable: “Cultural Mobility in the Russian Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Contexts,” ASEEES National Conference, Los Angeles, CA

Nov. 2010: Paper: “The ‘Factory of Life’: Criminal Autobiographies from Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal,” ASEEES National Conference, Los Angeles, CA

Oct. 2010: Paper: “The Put of Perekova: Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White-Sea Baltic Canal,” The Gulag in History and Memory Young Researchers Conference, Havighurst Center, Miami University in Ohio, Oxford, OH

Dec. 2009: Paper: “Charting Unmapped Territory: Tourist Guides from the Belomorkanal,” AATSEEL National Conference, Philadelphia, PA

Employment Since Graduation

Writer and Independent Scholar, The Ruby of San Francisco
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Humanities Department Chair, Jewish Community High School of the Bay

Dissertation Title and Year

A Body of Work: Building Self and Society at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal, 2010