About Polina Popova

My name is Polina and I am a Ph.D. student at the history department of the University of Illinois at Chicago working under the guidance of Jonathan Daly. I am originally from Moscow, Russia, where I got my M.A. in philosophy and religious studies from Lomonosov Moscow State University. I moved to Chicago with my family in 2007, and after that, I decided to pursue a career as a scholar of Soviet history. For that, I earned an M.A. in history from DePaul University in 2015. That same year, I started a Ph.D. program at UIC. My field of interest includes modern Russian and Soviet history, modern Eastern European history, history of women under Communist regimes, children's history, and children's literature. I am also passionate about teaching a wide range of students with different cultural and educational backgrounds: I teach Russian and Soviet history at Columbia College Chicago and will begin teaching an adult education ESL class at Oakton Community College in the Fall of 2022. I am currently working on a dissertation about the history of Soviet children's literature in the 1930s. Specifically, I am interested in the biographies of the Party leaders, Red Army commanders, and other "Great people of the past" written for children and young adults. Since April of 2022, I have also written about Ukrainian and Russian children's books for the Cotsen Children's Library blog.