This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Jill Martiniuk received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Virginia. During her Short-Term Fellowship at the New York Public Library, she conducted research for her latest project on the adaptation and appropriation of Slavic folklore in contemporary young adult and popular literature in the West.

What research are you working on?

I'm currently working on a conference paper about how Russian folklore and folk culture have been commodified in the West. I'm really interested to see where objects of folk culture pop up in Western pop culture, including in retail spaces. How did Urban Outfitters come to sell matryoshka doll measuring cups? How did Baba Yaga end up as a character in the 2019 film Hellboy or as an advice columnist in Taisia Kitaiskaia’s Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles?  Why has a rash of young adult fantasy books set their stories in lands that resemble tsarist Russia? I want to explore how these objects, stories, and figures have come into Western pop culture and what they say about how Westerners understand Russian folk culture.

When did you first get the idea for your research project?

In the summer of 2016, I taught a course on scary stories for the University of Virginia’s Summer Enrichment Program, which is a summer program for high school students. I knew I wanted to include a lesson on how urban legends and folktales can serve as warnings of danger or a way to enforce social norms. As I was researching, I came across Naomi Novik’s novel Uprooted, which uses a lot of Polish folk motifs. I loved the book and passed it along to friends in the field. I soon began to notice all of these other books that seemed to be influenced by Slavic folklore (thanks to targeting marketing on platforms like GoodReads), and I wanted to know why there was this sudden interest in it.

What brought you to the Library?

The New York Public Library has a great collection of Slavic folktales translated into English for children. I applied for the short-term fellowship because looking at which folktales get translated into English for a young audience would be a good starting place for understanding how these characters and symbols appear in the West. I was particularly interested in how some of the more popular folk characters (Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, for example) are described to this younger audience and if that plays a role in how they later appear in the works by these Western authors.

What research tools could you not live without?

My first research tools are still a notebook and a pen. Writing my ideas or research questions out by hand helps me think more about what it is I want to find and the connections I hope to find. I also love my iPad and Apple Pencil for downloading articles and highlighting. It’s so much easier than having piles of research papers all over my desk. The pandemic has also given me a renewed appreciation for WorldCat and library request services. To be able to request something from halfway around the world when you're locked in your house and have it appear in your email box in just a few days is pretty fantastic.

What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?

I have a bunch of tabs open related to interviews these Western authors have done with popular publications where the article’s authors ask about the Russian connections in their works. Some of these Young Adult novels have received a ton of press beyond what you’d expect for a YA book. One of my tabs is an article in The Atlantic with Leigh Bardugo about her reasoning for shying away from the typical fantasy setting of Medieval England or Medieval Europe and being drawn to tsarist Russia instead. Another tab is a review of Catherynne M. Valente’s Deathless that appeared on AV Club, where the reviewer calls Baba Yaga an old, overused character. I felt insulted on her behalf.

What's the most unexpected item you encountered in your research?

About a month before I came to NYPL, the Netflix show Shadow and Bone aired. This show is based on Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha series. There was some backlash on social media about cultural appropriation and writers using other cultures to make their work more interesting/exotic and then profit off of that culture while not necessarily understanding it (for example, Grisha in Russian is the diminutive of Grigori/Gregory, so it seems a little silly to Russian speakers that there are a bunch of magic-wielding people called The Greg fighting evil forces). While at NYPL, I found sources about the noviny, which are Soviet-era songs that are stylized to sound like traditional folk songs (byliny). The officials used the traditional format to promote Soviet ideals since many people would be familiar with the structure of the byliny. Although the noviny was short-lived, it made me think about how cultures can be appropriated and commodified even within the same country's borders.

What's your guilty pleasure distraction?

These books! Even when I’m critical of aspects of some of these works, I still enjoy reading them and seeing how others see aspects of Russian culture. I think when you study something like Russian literature, people assume you’re reading the heavy hitters like The Brothers Karamazov or Dr. Zhivago all the time but spending time in a new world and with new characters is such a pleasure for me. I’ll read anything if it distracts me for a little while.