Biography
Irina’s research interests are interdisciplinary, positioned primarily at the intersection of 19th- and early 20th-century visual culture and literature. Her current book project titled Institutionalizing Revolution: The Official Mural Art Campaign of the Third Republic focuses on public murals commissioned by the French Third Republic for Parisian arrondissement town halls between 1873 and 1914. She approaches these little-studied monumental paintings as a nexus of art, literature, and the civic culture of the Belle Epoque. The aim of her book is to explore how the public art program of the Third Republic at once represents and constructs a democratic citizenry and the notion of francité within the symbolic space of the mairie. Her research interests also include the intersection of gender and nationalism, visual poetry, ekphrasis, and the 19th-century novel.
Irina’s research has been supported by the Phi Beta Kappa, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. She has presented her work in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.
Irina is committed to pedagogy and mentoring. Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked as a TAPIF Teaching Assistant in Blois, France. At Princeton, she taught a range of French courses and together with Effie Rentzou created a new interdisciplinary course, France on Display, under the auspices of the Collaborative Teaching Initiative. Irina also served as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Princeton's Center for Teaching and Learning. Outside of Princeton, Irina enjoyed working in the role of Course Assistant and Instructor for the Yale Summer Session program in France and as a Visiting Instructor at Bryn Mawr College. She looks forward to continuing her work and meeting students and colleagues at the UW.
Courses:
Introductory French and Italian sequence (100-level)
Intermediate French sequence (200-level)
Advanced French sequence (300-level):
• FREN 301: France on Display : Shaping the Nation under the Third Republic, 1870-1940
• FREN 303: Francophone Graphic Novels