Jillian Porter is Visiting Associate Professor in Russian & Slavic Studies and Comparative Literature and faculty adviser to the Environmental Humanities Minor in Environmental Studies. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College.
Porter’s research explores Russian and Soviet literature and cinema in relation to French and American contexts and from the theoretical perspectives of economic criticism; everyday life studies; environmental humanities; and LGBT studies. Her first book, Economies of Feeling: Russian Literature under Nicholas I (Northwestern UP, 2017), offers new explanations for the fantastical plots of mad ambition that set the modern Russian prose tradition in motion. The book shows how foundational works of Russophone literature drew meaning from French clinical diagnoses of “ambitious monomania” and from the various forms of paper currency circulating under Nicholas I (1825-55). Economies of Feeling has been released in Russian translation as Ekonomika chuvstv: Russkaia literatura epokhi Nikolaia I (Academic Studies Press, 2021). Porter is currently working on a new book entitled The Art of the Queue: From the Revolution to Putin. This manuscript explores standing in line as a paradigmatic experience of Soviet everyday life and a generator of aesthetic forms. Together with Maya Vinokour, Porter has edited a collection of essays called Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste in Russia and the Soviet Union (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2023), which highlights new approaches to energy humanities within Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Prior to arriving at NYU, Porter taught at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research has been funded by a George F. Kennan Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study (Fall 2021); a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (2015-2016); and a Visiting Fellowship at Arizona State University’s Institute for Humanities Research (Spring 2015).