PhD Candidate, Slavic Languages and Literatures
About
Sam is a PhD student in Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Michigan with interdisciplinary training and interests. They hold an M.A. in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, where they previously earned a B.A. in History and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and were a host and producer of the podcast The Slavic Connexion. Their MA thesis, "Croatian, Dalmatian, Queer: New Post-Yugoslav Film and Literature," examined two emergent trends in post-Yugoslav culture: a growing body of queer film and literature, and antitouristic depictions of the Dalmatian coast. Sam continues to build on this work by tracking a growing literary and cinematic corpus with ambivalent attachments to the Adriatic Coast. Their other research focuses include contemporary narratives of queerness, class, and migration in Eastern Europe; alternative cultural, political, and urbanist projects; socialist heritage; and the evolution of post-Yugoslav literature as a multilingual, regional literature in the 15 or so years since the Great Recession.
Beyond the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Sam is pursuing certificates in Museum Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and Graduate Teaching (CRLT). In 2023, they participated in the Rackham Program for Public Scholarship's Institute for Social Change. In 2025, they will be a Graduate Fellow at the Sweetland Center for Writing. Their literary translations can be found in TROIKA, Asymptote, Zenithism (1921–1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology, Turkoslavia, and Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. In 2022, they were chosen to participate in the first BCMS-language workshop at the British Centre for Literary Translation's Summer School; for their promise as an emerging translator, they were awarded Words Without Borders' first Momentum Grant for Early Career Translators in 2023.
Research/Teaching Interests
Comparative Yugoslav, East European, Mediterranean, and North American film and literature; Marxist aesthetics and geography; cultural studies; cognitive mapping (Sandoval/Jameson); world/global literature; comparative postsocialisms; literary translation; queer and feminist theories; DEI and labor in universities/museums/libraries; critical pedagogy
