People

Tatsiana Shchurko

Tatsiana Shchurko

Assistant Professor of Instruction & Undergraduate Studies Director
Office: CMC202
Email

Biography

I am a queer feminist researcher and activist from Belarus, committed to transnational and intersectional feminist theory and practice. Inspired by bell hooks’ idea of pedagogy as a practice of freedom, I see teaching as a way to explore complex social issues and empower students to engage critically across disciplines. My teaching emphasizes collaborative learning and creates a respectful, affirming environment. I draw on my transnational and interdisciplinary background to encourage deep reflection and meaningful dialogue. 

My research is grounded in anti-colonial feminist theory, examining the complexities of imperialism within and between Europe, Eurasia, and the United States. In 2023, I received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship to support my book project. This work investigates the critical histories of transnational feminism, focusing on connections between U.S. Black women’s activism and Eurasian knowledge production. Digital project: .   

One of the things I value most in teaching is creating spaces where feminist research becomes collaborative, experimental, and materially grounded. I’m excited to share this created by students in my Feminist Research Methods course, developed through a collaboration with the . This beautiful collective project invites us to think with plants - not simply as botanical specimens, but as beings embedded in social, political, cultural, and ecological histories. Through feminist inquiry, archival exploration, and creative experimentation, students traced the many lives of plants and transformed their research into this thoughtful and inspiring artifact. I’m deeply grateful to my students and collaborators for making this project possible, and proud to share a glimpse of what interdisciplinary feminist pedagogy can make possible in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. .

Recent Publications 

2025    “we were two ends of one taut rope: Thinking Along with Audre Lorde on Her Way to the Soviet Union and Back in 1976.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, special issue “Indigenous Feminisms across the World,” 24(1): 37-62. .    

2025    “How Can Eurasian Borderlands Reshape Transnational Feminism? A Critical Examination of Missing Geographies and Overlooked Genealogies.” WSQ, 53(1&2), 2025: 31-52. .    

2024    “Haunting Encounters: Reimagining Hermina Dumont Huiswoud's Trip to the Soviet Union, 1930-1933.” In Red Migrations: Transnational Mobility and Leftists Culture After 1917, edited by Bradley Gorski and Philip Gleissner, 398-428. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. .     

2023    “From Belarus to Black Lives Matter: Rethinking Protests in Belarus through a Transnational Feminist Perspective.” Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, special issue “Gender (Studies) in Exile,” 8(4): 25–41. .  

2021    “Postcoloniality in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia” (co-authored with Jennifer Suchland). In The Routledge International Handbook to Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, edited by Katalin FĂĄbiĂĄn, Janet Elise Johnson, and Mara Lazda, 71–9. New York: Routledge. .   

2021    “Postsocialist Poetics: Interview with Krёlex zentr” (co-authored with Lesia Pagulich). In Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice, edited by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova, and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, 138–54. London and New York: Routledge. . 

2020    “(Re)thinking Postsocialism: Interview with Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora” (co-authored with Lesia Pagulich). Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies, special issue “Breaking with Transition: Decolonial and Postcolonial Perspectives in Eastern Europe,” 3: 91–111. . Reprinted in: Postsocialist Politics and the Ends of Revolution, edited by Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora. Routledge, 2023.   

Digital publications 

2025  “Reclaiming the Relics of Internationalism: From Bangalore Square to the Decolonial Pluriverse of Solidarities.” Berliner Gazette, June 13. .  

2023    “Geographies of Solidarity: Protests in Belarus through a Transnational Feminist Perspective (roundtable).” Feminist Translocalities. .   

2022    “‘More and more of us need to become internationalist’: The War in Ukraine, Entangled Imperialisms, and Transnational Feminist Solidarity.” LeftEast, May 2, 2022.