About

Christina Novakov-Ritchey is a scholar and artist whose work deals with epistemic violence, colonial modernity, global postsocialism, decoloniality, and legacies of imperialism in the Balkans.

Research Interests

Currently a PhD Candidate in UCLA’s Culture and Performance program, Novakov-Ritchey’s dissertation explores the dialectics of tradition and contemporaneity in the Yugoslav region, paying particular attention to the articulation of the modern subject in Yugoslavia during the dynastic, monarchist, and socialist periods. Chronically disloyal to academic disciplines, Novakov-Ritchey moves in the interstices of cultural studies, history, performance studies, and art history. Her scholarly work has been supported by the U.S. Department of State Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Title VIII), UCLA’s Center for European and Russian Studies, UCLA’s International Institute, UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Folklore and Mythology, among others.

Education

Novakov-Ritchey earned a B.A. with High Honors in Comparative Literature at UC Davis and a M.A. in Culture and Performance at UCLA, where her thesis examined bajanje, an incantation-based healing practice found throughout the Balkans, as an aesthetic negotiation with sickness.