Mary Zirin
About
Mary Zirin was an American scholar of Russian literature and an advocate for Slavic women's studies, who is remembered for her translations of Russian manuscripts and compilations of bibliographies of Slavic women. Her works, Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (1994) and Women and Gender in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia: A Comprehensive Bibliography (2007) have become standard references in the field. In the 1980s, she founded the Women East-West newsletter, which became the press organ of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies in 1989. Zirin established a scholarship fund for the Slavic Reference Service of the University of Illinois and with her husband endowed a chair in pulmonary biology in Colorado at National Jewish Health. The Mary Zirin Prize, created in her honor in 1999, is an annual award given by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies to promote independent scholarship.
