Anna Barker, Ph.D.
Since 2003, she has taught UI courses in the Department of English, Comparative Literature, University College, and the Honors Program and organized a diverse array of literary programs in collaboration with UI Libraries Special Collections, UI Stanley Museum of Art, UI Old Capitol Museum, UI Symphony, UI Opera Studies Forum, UI International Programs WorldCanvass, UI Senior College, IC UNESCO City of Literature, IC Book Festival, Music IC, FilmScene, Riverside Theatre, and Cedar Rapids Opera.
A 2011-2014 Research Fellow at the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Professor Barker has given presentations on Russian literature and translation at numerous conferences, including at Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoy Literary Estate and Museum, Tula Region, Russia. In 2021 she initiated a Russian literature lecture series, Russian Literary Journeys with Anna, at the Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art. Her lectures on Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky have been attended by hundreds of literature enthusiasts.
In collaboration with the UI Libraries Special Collections, Professor Barker curated the exhibitions “Goya’s Disasters of War and Tolstoy’s War and Peace: A Dialogue Between Art and Literature” (2019) and “From Revolutionary Outcast to a Man of God: Dostoevsky at 200” (2021). The Dostoevsky exhibition attracted over 5,000 visitors.
Professor Barker publishes essays and literary commentary on Substack – her guided readings dedicated to the exploration of world literature in a historical and cultural context can be found at:
https://annasthinkingcap.substack.com/
Her 2024-2026 Substack commentary focuses on the works of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons), Dumas (The Three Musketeers and its sequels), and Jókai Mór (The Heartless Man's Sons or A kőszívű ember fiai).
Since 2020, Professor Barker has offered 14 online tutorials guiding a global community of readers through literary classics such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, Madame Bovary, Les Misérables, War and Peace, and Brothers Karamazov. Her tutorials can be accessed at:
https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/anna-barker-classics/
Notably, her 2021 War and Peace tutorial reached thousands of readers on 5 continents, 25 countries, with participants reading the novel in 9 languages. Since 2020, her tutorials have reached close to 7,500 readers around the globe.
She writes “Anna’s Thinking Cap,” a monthly Iowa City Press-Citizen column, focusing this year on Iowa’s Napoleonic and French past.
A native speaker of Russian and Hungarian, Professor Barker completed her PhD in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at the UI in 2002. Translation, 19th-century Russian and European literature, history, and culture, women writers and artists, and opera are her main areas of interest. In commemoration of the upcoming bicentennial of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Professor Barker is preparing the publication of Twenty Tales from Tolstoy: For the Young and the Young at Heart, Ice Cube Press (2028). Her translations and literary criticism have appeared in the 91st Meridian, International Accents, and Women and Translation (University of Ottawa Press, 2011).
Professor Barker has served on the UI Stanley Museum of Art Members Council (2011-2017), Riverside Theatre Board of Directors (2016-2019), and is currently serving on the boards of Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature (since 2019), Cedar Rapids Opera (since 2021), Orchestra Iowa (since 2024), and the Stories Project (since 2024).
Links to current UI courses:
Introduction to Russian Culture
https://myui.uiowa.edu/my-ui/courses/details.page?ci=171194&id=998951
Russian Literature in Translation
https://myui.uiowa.edu/my-ui/courses/details.page?ci=171181&id=1013156
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
https://myui.uiowa.edu/my-ui/courses/details.page?ci=171191&id=1001025
Hey Barbie, I Like Your Style - AND Substance: The Archetypal Genius of a Blockbuster
https://myui.uiowa.edu/my-ui/courses/details.page?ci=148546&id=1027117
- Russian
