Laura Little

Laura Little is a cultural historian and second language educator with expertise in Russia and Eastern Europe. Before completing her Ph.D., Little worked for a refugee resettlement program at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as a curriculum development specialist at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

At Connecticut College, Little offers courses in English and in Russian on literature, film, the art of protest, migration, US-Soviet relations, and other subjects. Many, such as Utopia/Dystopia, Cold War Cultures, and Migration and Eastern Europe, explore transnational political movements through fiction, poetry, film, and other artistic works.

Little’s research focuses on the artistic underground in the post-Stalin USSR. Her current book project traces Russophone poet Elena Shvarts’s rise to prominence in unofficial artistic circles of 1960s-70s Saint Petersburg, then known as Leningrad. Her recent scholarship includes:

“Lektsii Eleny Shvarts o sovremennoi poezii” (forthcoming, Wiener Slawistischer Almanac)

“Tradition, Transformed: Two Dedication Poems by Elena Shvarts” in Forms of the Soviet Underground, edited by Ann Komaromi, Catherine Ciepiela, and Ilja Kukuj (forthcoming, University of Toronto Press)

“Starry-Eyed: Elena Shvarts as the ‘Girl with One Hundred Forty-Eight Birthmarks’” (Slavic and East European Journal 66.3)

A self-described “language nerd,” Little has studied French, German, Latin, Czech, and is currently exploring Latvian. As Faculty Director of the Global Learning Lab, Professor Little promotes language study and globally networked teaching and learning at the College. She oversees programming organized by Walter Commons Language Fellows, such as international game nights, World Languages Day, and the Structured Independent Language Study (SILS) program, which offers students the chance to study languages not taught as part of the formal curriculum.