About the Authors

Robert A. Saunders studied Eastern European and Russian History at the University of Florida (BA, 1994) and Stony Brook University (MA, 1997). From 1998 until 2002, he worked as a management consultant in the telecommunications and Internet industries. In 2005, he received a PhD in Global Affairs from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His dissertation explored the impact of the Internet and new media on national identity among ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Kazakhstan. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Economics and Politics at the State University of New York, Farmingdale, where he teaches courses on Russian politics, Central Asia, and global history. Dr. Saunders is the author of The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody, and the Battle over Borat (2008) and The Web of Identity: Minority Nationalism and Ethnopolitics in Cyberspace (in press). He is one of the founding editors of Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media (formerly known as The Russian Cyberspace Journal).

Vlad Strukov studied in Russia (Voronezh and Moscow universities), Scotland (Edinburgh University), and Belgium (Catholic University of Leuven). He received his PhD in Postmodern Philosophy and Cultural Studies in 1998. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies and the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom). He is a founding editor of Static, an international journal supported by the Tate and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media. He also works independently as a new media and animation curator. He is currently completing a co-authored volume entitled Celebrity and Glamour in Contemporary Russian Culture (scheduled to appear in 2010). Dr. Strukov’s research on film, animation, mass media, and national identity has appeared in the Slavic and East European Journal, Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and other publications, and he is the author and editor of a number of books published in Russia.