12 Facts About Barbara Heldt

Barbara Heldt was a member of the editorial board of the series Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature.

Barbara Heldt is best known for her researches on Russian literature by women, the introduction of gender analysis and feminist perspectives into Slavic studies, and for her translation of Karolina Pavlova's novel A Double Life.

Barbara Sue Heldt was born on 2 February 1940 at the Sydenham hospital in New York City.

Barbara Heldt's mother, Margery Sloss, was a New Yorker, while her father Dr John H Heldt, was from Berlin, Germany.

Barbara Heldt attended the Woodmere Academy, then took her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, where she was a Durant scholar.

Barbara Heldt has been married to Gerald Stanton Smith since 1982.

In 1961, between her graduation and starting the master's programme at Columbia, Barbara Heldt worked for the US Information Agency in the USSR.

Barbara Heldt became Professor Emerita at the University of British Columbia in 1996.

Barbara Heldt translated Karolina Pavlova's novel A Double Life in 1978.

Barbara Heldt's translation brought new audiences to Pavlova's work, while the feminist perspective she brought into Pavlova's life and times attracted further study by feminist researchers.

Barbara Heldt argued that Western feminist critiques of European literature attempted to raise the feminine from conventional attitudes of inferiority, while in Russia, the feminine was held to an impossible perfect standard that terrified men who could not match it in masculine action and suppressed women who couldn't live up to it.

Barbara Heldt's analysis revealed that Tolstoy was perhaps the only Russian author who achieved a sort of feminist comprehension of women.