Sarah B. Mohler

AcadEmic Qualifications

• Princeton University, Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature, 2006

Dissertation: The Prosaics of the Mind’s Eye: Reader Visualization, Perspectival Engagement, and the Visual Ethics of Tolstoy’s War and Peace

• Northwestern University, B.A. in Russian Language and Literature, 1994, with honors, Phi Beta Kappa

      Honors Thesis: “Point of View in Anna Karenina”

Presentations and Publications

I have published articles and presented papers at national conferences.

• Publication: “Facial Imagery, Reader Visualization, and the Visual Ethics of War and Peace” in Russian Literature and Cognitive Science, forthcoming Lexington Books, 2024
• Publication: “‘A Happy Kind of Sorrow’: The New Fabulist and Speculative Fiction of Rin Kelly” in The Green Hills Literary Lantern, GHLL XXXV (2024)
• Publication: afterword for Rin Kelly’s short story collection, Into the Laughing Gas World, Atmosphere Press, 2023
• Presentation: “Tools for Navigating Difficult Conversations Related to Literary Diversity,” Truman APDC presentation, November 2021
• Presentation: Chad Mohler and Sarah Mohler, “Undergraduates Teaching Philosophy to Elementary Students Using Children’s Literature: Some Practical Lessons,” American Association of Philosophy Teachers, June 9, 2021
• Presentation: Member of Panel for Truman APDC Workshop, “No More Death By Meeting,” April 21, 2021
• Presentation: “Space, Place, Empathetic Connection, and Transgressive Access in Contemporary Children’s Picture Books,” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference, Bellevue, WA, June 18-20, 2020. [Accepted but not presented due to Covid-19]
• Presentation: “An Endowed Chair for Visiting Scholars: Truman’s Clayton B. Ofstad Model,” Association of Departments of English, 2019 Summer Seminar Plenary, Milwaukee, June 2019.
• Presentation: “Russian Literary Imagination’s Influence on South Asian Literature: A Close Analysis of Tolstoy’s Influence on Seth and Mueenuddin,” South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Jan. 2019
• Article: “To Enchant and Instruct: The Use of Counter-stereotypical Exemplars in Michel Ocelot’s Azur & Asmar,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4, Winter 2017, 438-458.
• Presentation: “Cognitive Approaches to Russian Literature II: Reading Memory, Transformation,” roundtable, Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Chicago, IL, Nov. 2017
• Presentation: “Imagining the Future by Imagining the Past: American Girl Books, Cognitive Play, and the Empowering of Young Girls,” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference, Tampa, FL, June 2017
• Presentation: “To Enchant and Instruct: The Use of Counter-stereotypical Exemplars in Michel Ocelot’s Azur & Asmar,” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference, Columbus Ohio, June 2016
• Presentation: “Faded Beauty: Aging, Social Stigma, Self-Perception, and Internalized Narratives of the Self in Tolstoy’s Heroines,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, Nov. 2015
• Presentation: “The Disruption and Restructuring of Social Schema in the Classroom Using Bollywood Film to Create Counter-stereotypical Exemplars,” South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Jan. 2014
• Panel Co-Chair: “Pedagogy of South Asian and Diasporic Literature and Film Utilizing Schema Theory,” South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Jan. 20014
• Article: “War and Peace Visualized: From Page to Stage and Screen,” published in Ulbandus, Vol. 15, 2013, 109-132.
• Presentation: “Ageism, Racism, and British Tourism in Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and Deborah Moggach’s These Foolish Things,” South Asian Literary Association Annual Conference, Boston, Jan. 2013
• Presentation: “I ‘Luv’ Films About Films: Meta-narratives in Contemporary Bollywood Cinema,” Midwest Modern Languages Association Conference, Nov. 2011
• Presentation: “Mother and Music… and Poetry: The Memoirs and Childhood Verses of Ariadna Efron and Their Relation to Marina’s Tsvetaeva’s Oeuvre,” Women’s and Gender Studies Conference, Truman State University, October 2010
• Presentation: “Bakhtin, Goethe, Tolstoy, and the Visualization of the Chronotope,” American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages National Conference, December 2007
• Lecture: “War and Peace and the Prosaics of the Mind’s Eye,” guest lecturer, Princeton University, December 2006
• Presentation: “Starting Off [Almost] From Scratch: The Truman Faculty Interview Project on Writing and the Development of a New University-Wide Writing Assessment Tool,” Consortium for Assessment and Planning Support Conference, May 2003
• Presentation: “Effects of Participation in Qualitative Assessment on the Reflective Practice of Teaching Professors,” AAHE, June 2001
• Presentation: “Reader Imaging Techniques in Tolstoy’s War and Peace” at the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages National Conference, December 2001      
• Presentation: “Visual Ethics and Reader Imaging in Tolstoy’s War and Peace,” at the Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, March 2000
• Presentation: “Literature as a Metaphor for Self-Creation in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin,” at the Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, March 1998

ProfeSsional Affiliations

Children’s Literature Association (ChLA)

Society of Children’s Writers and Book Illustrators (SCBWI)

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), 2014 – present

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (AATSEEL), 1999 –present

South Asian Literary Society (SALA)

Modern Languages Association (MLA)

Phi Beta Kappa (PBK)