Harriet Murav, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Comparative and World Literature, has been named the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies.

Murav earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1985. She joined the U of I faculty in 2002.  She is the editor of The Slavic Review, an international interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, past and present. Murav also is a Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Faculty member and is on the faculty of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at Illinois.

The professorship is funded by the estate of Bruce A. Bastian, a 1954 graduate of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Mr. Bastian, who died in 2002, stipulated in his will that no more than one-half of the net income would be used to endow one faculty position in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The remaining net income would be used to provide financial need-based undergraduate scholarships for enrolled students and for graduate student fellowships.

Specifically, the income from the estate is used to support Global and Transnational Studies within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as part of the campus initiative on the Humanities in a Globalizing World.

College and Departmental Named Chairs and Professors Endowed chairs and professorships are awarded to distinguished faculty who excel in research, teaching, and service. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has named faculty appointments that are held within departments, colleges, and other academic units, as well as appointed at the campus and university levels.