Russian Studies Faculty

Elena Sokol - Professor of Russian Studies & Chair of the Cultural Area Studies Program
(330) 263-2217 / esokol@wooster.edu

B.A. Colorado (Boulder) 1965; M.A., Ph.D. California (Berkeley) 1967, 1974.

Elena Sokol, professor of Russian Studies and chair of the department, has been a member of the faculty at The College of Wooster since 1987. Her areas of expertise include Russian and Czech literature, language, and culture, with a special interest in film.  She also teaches courses in comparative literature and women's studies. A second-generation Czech American, Sokol is an authority on life in Russia and the Czech Republic today.

Sokol received her B.A. in Russian from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1965), and earned her M.A. (1967) and Ph.D. (1974) from the University of California at Berkeley in Slavic Literatures.

The author of Russian Poetry for Children, Sokol has had abundant opportunities for research in the former Soviet Union. She has also served as resident director of study abroad programs in Leningrad, Moscow, and Krasnodar; as well as in Olomouc, Czech Republic.  Her current inquiry into the writing of contemporary Czech women, which takes her frequently to Prague, has led to several published articles on the prose of Daniela Hodrova, Lenka Prochazkova, and Iva Pekarkova, and has a book as its ultimate goal.

Sokol is a member of a variety of organizations, including the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the American Association of Teachers of Russian and East European Languages, the American Council of Teachers of Russian, the International Association of Teachers of Czech, and the Modern Language Association.