Ernest (“Erik”) Zitser is the Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies, library liaison to the International Comparative Studies (ICS) Program, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University.  He is an active member of a number of professional organizations, including the East Coast Consortium of Slavic Library Collections (ECC); the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (ASEEES); and the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association (ECRSA).  

Background
Dr. Zitser received his Ph.D. in Russian History from Columbia University. Prior to coming to Duke, he worked consecutively as a post-doctoral Fellow, Center Associate, and Librarian of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He has been a fellow at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the National Humanities Center (NHC).

Publications
Dr. Zitser is the author of The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004; Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2008), and has published in both historical and library journals on a wide variety of topics, including Slavic information literacy, American and Soviet photo-propaganda, and Russian nationalism in post-Soviet cinema. He has also contributed blog posts to  Humanities@DukeLibraries and Duke Digital Collections.