Professor Sara Pankenier Weld
Sara Pankenier Weld is a Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
A specialist on childhood and modernism, she researches childhood across national and interdisciplinary boundaries, particularly in Slavic, Scandinavian, and American contexts and in literature, art, film, and theory. Her first book, which was recently republished in Russian translation, treats the infantile aesthetic of the Russian avant-garde, while her second book examines Russian avant-garde picturebooks. She is currently completing a book project entitled <Miniature Revelations: Childhood in Nabokov’s Writings>, which argues that the neglected and inscrutable child, who might be mistaken for a marginal figure, in fact offers a miniature revelation and key to Nabokov’s work that enables a reevaluation of his texts. Her next book project is entitled <Alice to Adaland; or Nabokov Through the Looking-Glass> and traces the multifaceted impact on Nabokov’s oeuvre of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, the first of which Nabokov (who studied at the University of Cambridge) undertook to translate into Russian during his early literary career. Her increasingly global work seeks to challenge discriminatory attitudes toward children in scholarship, society, and culture, while she also advocates for children and the humanities and foreign languages, including as a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project and the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2023 she was elected President of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL), after serving on its Board since 2019 and convening its 2023 Congress. She previously served as Executive Officer of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Working Group for the Study of Childhood in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia (ChEEER) from 2013-2019. Since 2022 she is a Convenor of the Global Childhood Media Research Focus Group at UC Santa Barbara.
Sara is accompanied by her husband, David Weld, Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in atomic physics and uses ultra cold gases to explore a wide variety of quantum dynamical phenomena.
Select publications
Monographs:
- <Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde> (Northwestern University Press, 2014).
- <An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook> (John Benjamins, 2018)
- <Bezrechie avangard: Estetika infantilizma v russkom avangarde> (Bibliorossika, 2023)
Selected Articles/Book Chapters:
- “Nabokov’s Northern Kingdoms: Pseudo-Scandinavian Traces and the Transnational Translation of the Self” <Scando-Slavica>. 59: 2. (2013)
- “The Production of the Man-Machine: The Child as Instrument of Futurity” in <Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children>, edited by Marina Balina and Serguei Oushakine (Toronto University Press, 2021)
- “The Child’s-Eye View of War in Ivan’s Childhood” in <ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky>, edited by Sergey Toymentsev (University of Edinburgh Press, 2021).
- “The Tales of Catherine the Great in Transnational Context” in <Transnational Books for Children, 1750-1900>, edited by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen, and Matthew Grenby (John Benjamins, 2023).
- “Childhood and Temporality in Svetlana Alexieviech’s ‘Chronicle of the Future'” in <Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood: Myths and Realities>, edited by Marina Balina, Larissa Rudova, and Anastasia Kotsteskaya (Routledge, 2023)
Select Awards
- Arnhold Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 2025-2027
- Public Voices Fellow of the OpEdProject and the University of California, Santa Barbara, 2024-2025
- University of California Humanities Research Institute Engaging Humanities Grant, 2023-2024
- International Research Society for Children’s Literature Book Award, 2015
Further links
Biography:
“Sara Pankenier Weld”
https://www.gss.ucsb.edu/people/sara-pankenier-weld
“International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL)”
https://www.irscl.org/board
“advocates for children”
https://www.newsweek.com/does-richest-country-world-value-children-opinion-1938049
“humanities and foreign languages”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/28/opinion-humanities-college-war-incivility/
“Global Childhood Media”
https://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/global-childhood-media/
Awards:
“The OpEd Project”
https://www.theopedproject.org/fellowships
Publications:
<Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde>
https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810167728/voiceless-vanguard/
<An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook>
https://benjamins.com/catalog/clcc.9
<Bezrechie avangard: Estetika infantilizma v russkom avangarde>
https://www.bibliorossicapress.com/product-page/вельд-сара-п-безречие-авангарда
“Nabokov’s Northern Kingdoms: Pseudo-Scandinavian Traces and the Transnational Translation of the Self”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00806765.2013.800729
<Transnational Books for Children, 1750-1900>
https://benjamins.com/catalog/clcc.15#:~:text=This%20is%20the%20first%20study,the%20context%20of%20children%27s%20culture.
<Historical and Cultural Transformations of Russian Childhood: Myths and Realities>
https://www.routledge.com/Historical-and-Cultural-Transformations-of-Russian-Childhood-Myths-and/Balina-Rudova-Kostetskaya/p/book/9781032227962
<Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children>
https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487506681
<ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky>
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-refocus-the-films-of-andrei-tarkovsky.html