Epp Annus is associate professor in the Institute of Humanities at Tallinn University; she also teaches regularly at Ohio State University, in the USA. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Tartu. Her recent books in English include Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands (Routledge, 2018) and Coloniality, Nationality, Modernity: A Postcolonial View on Baltic Cultures under Soviet Rule, ed. by Epp Annus (Routledge, 2018). She is also an author or co-author of three monographs and several collective volumes in Estonian. Her recent research concentrates on Soviet and post-Soviet Baltic cultures in relation to wider sociopolitical and cultural currents of the Soviet era. Her present project is positioned at the intersection of affect studies, geopoetics, ecocriticism and political philosophy; it analyses Soviet-era cultural texts in parallel with post-Soviet life writing; this work involves an autoethnographic element. In addition to her work as a scholar, she has also published a novel Sina, Matilda (‘You, Matilda’), some poetry, and several children’s books.
Main publications
Monographs
Sotskolonialism Eesti NSV-s: võim, kultuur, argielu. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2019, 424 pp. [‘Soviet Colonialism in the Estonian SSR: Power, Culture, Everyday Life’.]
Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 304 pp.
Kuidas kirjutada aega. Tallinn: Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus, 2002, 364 pp. [‘How to Tell Time’.]
Books and special editions of journals (in English)
Epp Annus (ed), Coloniality, Nationality, Modernity: A Postcolonial View on Baltic Cultures under Soviet Rule. London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 148 pp.
Epp Annus (ed), A Postcolonial View on Baltic Cultures of the Soviet era. – Journal of Baltic Studies, nr 47, 2016.
Articles (in English, Finnish, German and Russian)
Rethinking Soviet Selfhood in the Era of the Anthropocene: From the Foucauldian Paradigm to the Naturecultural Theory of the Subject. – Slavic Review, vol 82, no 2, 2023, pp 401–422.
Comparative spatial intimacies and the affective geography of home: imaginaries and sense-regimes in the Soviet-era Baltics. – Space and Culture, 2023, e-first.
A post-Soviet eco-digital nation? Metonymic processes of nation-building and Estonia’s high-tech dreams in the 2010s. – East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, vol 36, no 2, 2022, pp 399−422.
Глубокие корни 2010-х годов: деколониальная преемственность и традиция эстонского песенного фестиваля. – Новое литературное обозрение, vol 166, no 6, 2020, pp 225−238.
The Colonizer’s day off: Colonial subjectivities in the Soviet-era Baltics. – Monika Albrecht (ed), Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Neocolonial Present. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp 240−254.
From the Birth of Nations to the European Union: Colonial and Decolonial Developments in the Baltic Region. – Dittmar Schorkowitz, John R. Chávez, Ingo W. Schröder (ed), Shifting Forms of Continental Colonialism: Unfinished Struggles and Tensions. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp 463−490.
Postcolonial Cosmology or Postcolonial Critique? – Methis. Studia humaniora Estonica, nr 21-22, 2018, pp 186−192.
Traumatic body, word, and otherness: Refugees and deportations in the 1940s Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. – Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia, nr 6, 2017, pp 23−33.
Epp Annus, Marijan Bobinac, Dirk Goettsche, Iulia-Karin Patrut, Europäischer Binnenkolonialismus in interdisziplinärer Perspektive. – Dirk Göttsche, Axel Dunker, Gabriele Dürbeck (ed), Handbuch Postkolonialismus und Literatur. Metzler, 2017, pp 87-96.
Introduction: Thinking and Discussing the Everyday Experience. – Carsten Friberg, Raine Vasques (ed), Experiencing the Everyday. NSU Press, 2017, pp 7−21.
Between Arts and Politics: A Postcolonial View on Baltic Cultures of the Soviet era. – Journal of Baltic Studies, vol 47, no 1, 2016, pp 1-13.
The Ghost of Essentialism and the Trap of Binarism: Six Theses on the Soviet Empire. – Nationalities Papers, vol 43, no 4, 2015, pp 595-614.
Footsteps and Gazes: Mati Unt’s Mustamäe. – Igor Pilshchikov (ed), Urban Semiotics: The City as a Cultural-Historical Phenomenon. Tallinn: Tallinna Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2015, pp 65-87.
Layers of Colonial Rule in the Baltics: Nation-Building, the Soviet rule and the Affectivity of a Nation. – Dirk Goettsche, Axel Dunker (ed), (Post-)Colonialism Across Europe. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2014, pp 359-384.
Love and the Image in Nancy and Lacan. – Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi, vol 22, no 1-2, 2013, pp 167-182.
Epp Annus, Piret Peiker, Liina Lukas, Colonial Regimes in the Baltic States. – Interlitteraria, vol 18, no 2, 2013, pp 545-554.
The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics. – Journal of Baltic Studies, vol 43, no 1, 2012, pp 21-45.
The Conditions of Soviet Colonialism. – Interlitteraria, vol 16, no 2, 2011, pp 441-450.
Movements of Thought in the Twentieth Century. Summary. – Epp Annus (ed), 20. sajandi mõttevoolud. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2009, pp 933-947.
Epp Annus, Luule Epner, Jüri Talvet, Shifting Ideologies in Estonia´s Literary Histories, Textbooks, and Anthologies. – Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer (ed), History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. Vol. III: The Making and Remaking of Literary Institutions. John Benjamins Press, 2007, pp 355-358.
Epp Annus, Robert Hughes, Reversals of the postmodern and the late Soviet simulacrum in the Baltic Countries – with exemplifications from Estonian literature. – Marcel Cornis-Pope, John Neubauer (ed), History of the Literary Cultures of East Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Press, 2004, pp 54-65.
Virolainen proosa 1990-luvun kirjallisuudessa. – Liisa Saariluoma, Tarja Pakarinen, Piret Kruuspere (ed), Viron kirjallisuus vuosituhannen vaihteessa, postmodernia ja modernia. Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2003, pp 65-84.
Mythical and Modern in the Imagination of National Narrative. – Jeff Bernard, Gloria Withalm (ed), Mythen, Riten, Simulakra. Semiotische Perspektiven / Myths, Rites, Simulacra. Semiotic Viewpoints. Wien: OeGS, 2002.
Modernistinen pakolaisahdistus ja “Hingede öö”. – Kerberos, no 4, 2001, pp 10-11.
National mythology: past and present. – Interlitteraria, vol 5, 2000, pp 115-130.
Epp Annus, Liina Lukas, Der Literaturkanon und die nationale Identität: die Rolle der estnischen Literatur bei der Schaffung des estnischen nationalen Mythos. – Y. Varpio, M. Zadencka (ed), Literatur und nationale Identität. Tampere: Tampere Yliopisto, 1999, pp 91–107.