Maria Chernysheva is an art historian focusing on nineteenth-century visual culture, particularly on Russian and French art. In her research, she explores how art reflects historical consciousness and treats women as historical figures, and examines the connections between Russian orientalist painting and Russian colonialism in Central Asia, among other topics. She taught at the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences / Smolny College (St. Petersburg State University). She is the author of books on Édouard Manet (2002), Feminization of History in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2024) and a textbook on Mimesis in Visual Arts (2014). She has published in the journals “Die Welt der Slaven”, “Slavic Literatures”, “New Literary Review”, “Ab Imperio”, “Art History”, and others.