Mila received her Ph.D. from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her primary area of specialization is Russian literature (Russian drama, in particular), with a minor in Polish language and literature. Dr. Shevchenko’s dissertation (Melodramatic Scenarios and Modes of Marginality: The Poetics of Anton Chekhov’s Early Drama and of Fin-de-Siècle Russian Popular Drama) explores the poetics of Chekhov’s early drama and some of the popular, but now little known dramatists writing concurrently with Chekhov: L. Antropov, Ipp. Shpazhinskii, P. Boborykin, and Al. Sumbatov-Iuzhin. The study focuses on the ways melodrama serves as a vehicle for the discussion of marginality and examines how the melodramatic mode facilitates the expression of ideological vacuum, existential crises, dysfunctionality, and psychological trauma. A special emphasis is placed on the playwrights’ diverse repertoire of spatial stratagems and devices. Mila is currently working on a book project based on her doctoral thesis. Her study examines how spatial forms are embedded in the imagery, characterology, conflicts, and rhetoric of the melodramatic mode.

Before joining DU, Mila has taught Russian language, literature and culture at The University of Michigan and Bowling Green State University (Ohio). This academic year, she is teaching courses in intermediate and advanced Russian, Russian Revolution: History and Literature, Masterpieces of Russian Drama (in Russian), Lives in Transit: Contemporary East European Film, Drama, and Short Fiction, and 19^th-century Russian Novel.