ABOUT THE AUTHORS

About the Authors: translation

Robert A.Saundersstudied Eastern European and Russian History at the University of Florida (BA, 1994) and Stony Brook University (MA, 1997). From 1998 until 2002, he worked as a management consultant in the telecommunications and Internet industries. In 2005, he received a PhD in Global Affairs from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His dissertation explored the impact of the Internet and new media on national identity among ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Kazakhstan. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Economics and Politics at the State University of New York, Farmingdale, where he teaches courses on Russian politics, Central Asia, and global history. Dr. Saunders is the author ofThe Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle over Borat(2008) andThe Web of Identity: MinorityNationalism and Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace(in press). He is one of the founding editors ofDigital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian andCentral European New Media(formerly known asThe Russian CyberspaceJournal).

Vlad Strukovstudied in Russia (Voronezh and Moscow universities), Scotland (Edinburgh University), and Belgium (Catholic University of Leuven). He received his PhD in Postmodern Philosophy and Cultural Studies in 1998. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies and the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom). He is a founding editor ofStatic, an international journal supported by the Tate and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, andDigital Icons: Studies inRussian, Eurasian and Central European New Media. He also works independently as a new media and animation curator. He is currently completing a co-authored volume entitledCelebrity and Glamour inContemporary Russian Culture(scheduled to appear in 2010). Dr. Strukov’s research on film, animation, mass media, and national identity has appeared in theSlavic and East European Journal, Animation: AnInterdisciplinary Journal, and other publications, and he is the author and editor of a number of books published in Russia.