Yelena P. Francis

At present time, Yelena Francis lives in North Carolina, USA, but she spent most of her life in St. Petersburg, Russia, often called "Northern Venice" for its amazing beauty. In this city she graduated from the Philological Department of St. Petersburg State University (Russian Language and Literature) and got her PhD in Russian Philology. She wrote the dissertation while working for about ten years for the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinsky Dom) of Russian Academy of Sciences. There she did research work on Russian Folklore, History of Folklore Studies, and History of Russian Literature and participated in publishing and editorial works. For rather long period, both in Russia and the USA, she was involved in freelance journalism and translation work for a variety of magazines and newspapers writing on a number of subjects, like Russian History, Genealogy, History of St. Petersburg, educational problems and American culture. She is the third generation of teaching in her family, so it was inevitable that for many years she has been teaching Russian Language, Literature, Culture and Society, Film and Folklore.