Research


Research Statement

I write about material culture,  rhetorical ethics, and gender. In general theoretical terms, I am interested in the relationship between the rhetorical, the ideological, and the material and how it changes over time. More specifically, I study cultural rhetorics related to women, war, and violence. 



Peer-Reviewed Articles

Kotzeva, E. “’Though Shalt Not Kill,’ or Affect and Ethics in a Spectacle of Distant Suffering: 2020 Nagorno Karabakh War Documentaries. Eastern European Screen Studies,  vol. 16, no. 2, 2025, pp. 1-19 
doi.org/10.1080/2040350X.2024.2446050

Kotzeva, E. “Face-Shaping Power of the Postfeminist Gaze, or Digital Rhetorical Lateral Surveillance in Armenia.” Cluster Conversation: Talking Back Through Rhetorical Surveillance Studies: Intersectional Feminist and Queer Approaches. Peitho. vol. 27, no. 1, Fall 2024.
doi: 10.37514/PEI-J.2024.27.1.09

Kotzeva, E., and B. Anders. “Engineering a Dialogue With Klara, or Ethical Invention With Generative AI in the Writing Classroom”. Journal of Academic Writing, vol. 13, no. 2, Dec. 2023, pp. 73-80, doi:10.18552/joaw.v13i2.989.

Kotzeva E., N. Bzdigian, S. Gevorgyan, and L. Khachatryan. “Rhetorical Resilience and Righteous Discontent in Eurasia: Female Students Leading the Way.” Cluster Conversation: Addressing the Barriers between Us and that Future: Feminist Activist Coalition Building in Writing Studies. Peitho. vol. 26, no. 1. Fall 2023. 

Kotzeva, E. "Counter-Mapping for Resistance and Cultivation of Counter-Memory: The Social Life of Some Nagorno Karabakh Maps." Material Culture Review, vol. 94, no. 2, 2023, Special Issue: Social Lives of Maps, doi.org/10.7202/1102339ar.

Kotzeva, E. “Traveling Back with Time: On the Rhetorical Significance of Dureé.” Intraspection: a Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Style, vol. 5, 2022.

Book Chapters

Kotzeva, E. "Queering Bulgarian Pop-Folk: Hybridity, Gaga Feminism, and Defamiliarization in Chalga." The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans, edited by C.   Baker, 1st ed., Routledge, 2024. doi: 10.4324/9781003328162 

Kotzeva, E. “#WeWillWin When We Become Good Citizens, or Hegemonic Masculinity in Armenian War  Rhetoric.”  Masculinities in the South Caucasus: Forms, Hierarchies and Challenges, edited by D. Gabunia et al. Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2024. 

Kotzeva, E. "Down the Rabbit Hole." Our Body of Work: Embodied Teaching and Administration in Writing Studies, edited by Anna Sciari and Melissa Nicolas, University of Colorado Press, 2022. doi:org/10.7330/9781646422340.c005.1

Other Publications

Kotzeva, E., G. Kazanjian, and L. Khachatryan. “From Sacred to Sacrilegious: Armenian Human-Water Relations.” In Media Res, special issue: Media Seascape and the Criminal Imaginary, Nov. 2021.


Literary Translations

Poetry by poets of the Bulgarian circle New Social Poetry. Apofenie. Volume 7: Justice. June 2019.

Excerpt from Invisibleby NataliyaDeleva. Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. Fall 2018 Issue. The University of Iowa.

Concerto for Sentence by Emiliya Dvoryanova. Urbana-Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press, 2016. (Bulgarian to English)

“From Concerto for Sentence by Emiliya Dvoryanova, translated by Elitza Kotzeva.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 33 (1): 46-51. Dalkey Archive Press, 2013.

Born under a Lucky Star by Ilona Lacková. Centre de Recherches Tsiganes, Université “René Descartes”, Paris, France. Sofia: Litavra Publishing, 2000. (Czech to Bulgarian)

Work in Progress

“Stuck Between Traditional, Soviet, and post-Soviet Rhetoric: Armenian Left-behind Rural Women Negotiating Gender Roles.”  Work in progress.

Presentations and Older Scholarship