Sara Pankenier Weld

Sara has taught at UC Santa Barbara since 2012. Her teaching encompasses Russian and East European literature, culture and theory; comparative literature; and children's literature and childhood studies. She advises the new Childhood and Youth Studies Minor at UC Santa Barbara and  is Chair of the Childhood and Youth Studies Advisory Board at UCSB. She is a faculty co-convenor of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Childhood and Youth Studies Research Focus Group.

Sara's former Ph.D. advisees include Dr. Tegan Raleigh (Oregon State University), Dr. Katie Lateef-Jan (Branson School), and Dr. Arpi Movsesian (Notre Dame University).

She has hosted multiple  international scholars, including Zheng Ren (Tsinghua University, China) with funding from China Scholarship Council in 2023-2024 and Marina Bernardo Flórez (University of Barcelona) with funding from Fulbright in 2023.

C LIT W 40 Young Humans: Introduction to Childhood Studies

C LIT 100 Introduction to Comparative Literature: Literary Odysseys

C LIT 128A Children's Literature

C LIT 188 Literature and Exile

C LIT 189 First-Person Narrative: Childhood and Autobiography

C LIT 182/200 Critical Childhood Studies

C LIT 200 Russian Formalism, Semiotics, and Bakhtin

C LIT 210 Proseminar in Comparative Literature

RUSS 124 Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry

SLAV 33 Russian Culture: Understanding Russia

SLAV 35 Short Fiction by Major Russian, East European & Eurasian Writers

SLAV 117A Major Russian Writers: Pushkin

SLAV 117G Major Russian Writers: Dostoevsky

SLAV 117J Major Russian Writers: Bulgakov

SLAV 117I Major Russian Writers: Nabokov

INT 34LE Literature and Experience (co-taught with Sowon Park)

INT 84CO Channel Islands Literature: The Lone Woman of San Nicolas (Island of the Blue Dolphins)

INT 84ZE Crime and Punishment

INT 94QQ Russian Animated Film

INT 185FT Reframing the Folktale