Scholar Profile

Leah Feldman is an interdisciplinary researcher exploring the poetic and political entanglements of global literature and culture, with a focus on critical approaches from translation theory, semiotics, Marxist aesthetics, and anti-colonial theory as they traverse the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her research employs transregional and trans theoretical perspectives to unpack the complex interactions of literary and political discourses within the contexts of empire, modernity, and anti-colonialism.

Research Fields and Academic Contributions

Feldman's landmark work Thresholds of Eurasia: Orientalism and Revolutionary Aesthetics in the Caucasus (Cornell University Press, 2018), awarded the Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award, exposes how the idea of revolutionary Eurasia shaped the interplay between Orientalist and anti-colonial discourses in Russian and Azerbaijani poetry and prose. By tracing translational and intertextual encounters across Russia, the Caucasus, and Western Europe, the book offers an alternative vision of empire, modernity, and anti-colonialism from the vantage point of cosmopolitan centers in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.

Current Work and Intellectual Trajectory

She is currently engaged in two major projects: an examination of the rise of the new right in post-Soviet Eurasia, and a book tentatively titled Feeling Collapse, which focuses on Soviet cinema, art, and performance from Central Asia and the Caucasus during the disintegration of the Soviet Empire. Through cultural texts, this work interprets the collective experiences of epochal transformation. Her scholarship appears in leading journals such as Slavic Review, Boundary 2, Ab Imperio, and Global South, and she serves on the editorial team of Boundary 2, actively fostering cross-cultural academic dialogue and innovation.

Methodological Approach and Intellectual Vision

Feldman's research is characterized by a consistent focus on marginalized discourses, integrating literary analysis with political philosophy and postcolonial theory to uncover the cultural-political logics obscured by dominant narratives in Eurasia's historical fabric. Through translation studies and close textual reading, she continuously expands the geographical and theoretical frontiers of comparative literature, providing illuminating frameworks for understanding cultural production in multi-ethnic, multi-civilizational contact zones.