Mary Zirin Prize

AWSS Mary Zirin Prize 2017

The Association for Women in Slavic Studies is pleased to announce Olga Bukhina as the 2017 recipient of the Mary Zirin Prize for independent scholarship.

Quoting from the nomination letter, "Olga Bukhina's work as a groundbreaking scholar, literary translator, and top specialist in her field mirrors [Mary] Zirin's example and hits the extremely high bar that Zirin has set for independent scholarship. Both scholars are path-breaking leaders in their fields, as well as deeply generous individuals whose humility, good will, and humor are as notable as their remarkable scholarly contributions."

Quoting further: "Bukhina's impact on the field of contemporary Russian children's literature has been extraordinary. Since the early 1990s she has been instrumental in bringing such renowned authors as C.S. Lewis, Carl Sandburg, Enid Blyton, Louise Fitzhugh and Jacqueline Kelly into Russian translation. Last year she published a complete translation of Ben Hellman's 588-page magnum opus, Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (1574-2010), thus making this groundbreaking work available in Russian. In the past decade her work has turned more regularly to original scholarship, such as her recent book on literary orphans, Gadkii utenok, Garry Potter i drugie: Putevoditel' po detskim knigam o sirotakh (CompasGid, 2016); nearly two dozen articles in Russian and English; and a special issue of Russian Studies in Literature devoted to Russian children's and YA literature (2016), for which she served as guest editor." The Zirin committee commends Bukhina for both advancing scholarship in the field of children's literature and promoting through her translations cross-cultural awareness among young readers.

Beyond this important work, Bukhina serves as the executive director of the International Association for Humanities, an organization founded with the help of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the American Council for Learned Societies, to assist young scholars in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in participating in the international scholarly community.

Please join us in congratulating Olga Bukhina, an outstanding independent scholar and this year's recipient of the Mary Zirin Prize.

For a list of past recipients click here.