The second professional workshop for Slavic graduate students will be held on Friday, October 23 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in the Garden Room (Hotel E, West Range). The topic will be "Building the Curriculum Vitae." Panelists will be Wendy Perry, Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Professional Development Programs; Rachel Stauffer, Lecturer in Slavic Languages and Literatures; Paul Kingston, Professor of Sociology.
An interactive workshop on "Humor as a Serious Business: Using Anecdotes in a Language Classroom" will be given by Alla Lamp on Friday, October 9 at 1:45 in 109 Cabell. This workshop will discuss methods and techniques associated with the communicative approach to language teaching and address the problem of the development of cultural competence. Why is humor so hard to understand for non-native speakers? Do anecdotes tell us anything about the culture? How can we make this type of text effective in a language classroom? These and other questions will be examined and debated as part of the presentation. Graduate students and faculty members are welcome to attend.
Katya Jordan will be teaching a Phonetics class on Fridays this semester for graduate students in the Slavic Department. The class will meet for the first time this Friday, September 25th, for 30 minutes at 1:00 p.m. in 109 Cabell Hall. The classes will take place every other Friday until the end of the Fall 2009 semester, so there will be six of them in all (Sept. 25, Oct. 9, Oct. 23, Nov. 6, Nov. 20, Dec. 4).
The Fall 2009 Slavic Film Series gets underway this week. There will be weekly showings of Slavic films every other Wednesday at 7:00 pm in Room 322a, Clemons Library. The film series is open to all students, faculty and community members.
Come to the Russian House for tea and conversation every Tuesday evening from 7:00 to 9:00. All students, faculty and community members welcome!
Julian Connolly attended the Fourth International Vladimir Nabokov Symposium in St. Petersburg, Russia. He presented a paper entitled "Who Was Dolly Haze?" and chaired a panel at the symposium.
Dariusz Tolczyk published the book Gulag w oczach Zachodu [Gulag Under Western Eyes] (Warsaw: Proszynski, 2009). The book analyzes Western reactions to the Gulag from the Bolshevik revolution to the collapse of Soviet communism.
Dariusz Tolczyk's paper "The Katyn Massacre and the Western Myth of World War II" was published in American Contributions to the Fourteenth International Congress of Slavists, Ohrid, 2008. Vol. 2: Literature, edited by David Bethea (Slavica Publishers).
A long interview with Dariusz Tolczyk, entitled "We live not feeling the earth beneath us...," was published in Biuletyn IPN, the journal of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland. The interview opens the journal's April 2009 issue focused on history and literature of Nazi and Soviet concentration camps.
Dariusz Tolczyk gave a talk "Katyn: The Politics of Mass Murder," at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, DC.
Karen Ryan received funding from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Vice President for Research to support publication of her book Stalin in Russian Satire, 1917-1991 by the University of Wisconsin Press. She was on research leave during the Fall 2008 semester, completing the manuscript of her book, which will appear in Fall 2009.
The annual conference for the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies was held in Charlottesville. Slavic Department participants were:
Julian Connolly, roundtable participant: “Teaching Russian Literature in the Twenty-First Century"; chair: "The Culture of Decadence and Late Imperial Russia”
Katia Dianina, presenter: “The New Capital of Culture: The Moscow Museum Boom in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century”
Stanley Stepanic, presenter: “Slavic Identity: The Violent Underground of Russian Music and Politics in Contemporary Russia”
Katya Jordan, chair: “Adaptation: Borrowings and Recastings in Russian and Eastern European Literature”; presenter: “Name That Tune: Musical Subtext in Gaidai’s Ivan Vasilivich Changes Profession”
Margarita Nafpaktitis, discussant: “Adaptation: Borrowings and Recastings in Russian and Eastern European Literature”
Holly Myers, presenter: “The Kreutzer Sonatas: A Reflection of Structure, Context, and Theme”
Yuri Urbanovich, roundtable participant: “Conflict in the Caucasus (Russia-Georgia): A Deliberate Assessment”
Gennady Denisenko, presenter: “The Gender Problem of Another in Vl. Solovyov’s syzygy: Amas Veritas of the Androgynous Narrator”
Alla Lamp, presenter: “A Story of Initiation: Failed Mentors and Inner Struggle of Lise Khokhlakova”
Andy Kaufman, presenter: “Connecting Russian Literature to Real Life: Reflections from the Field”; co-chair: “The Meaning of Language: Historical and Contemporary Uses of Russian”
Blake L. Galbreath, presenter: “Hybrid Nouns: The Case for Semantic Dominance”
Kathleen Thompson, presenter: “Beards, Babki, Lyres and Lenin: An Examination of the Development of Russian Satire Through Comparison of Lomonosov and Sumarokov to Zoshchenko”
Julian Connolly gave a presentation on Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita at an Echols Scholars Fireside Chat. Professor Connolly is writing a reader's guide to the novel.
Julian Connolly published an article entitled “A World in Flux: Pervasive Instability in Dostoevsky’s The Gambler” in the journal Dostoevsky Studies (New Series 12): 67–79. The article focuses on the theme of substitution in Dostoevsky’s short novel.
Dariusz Tolczyk published two essays in Poland. The first, "Fenomen Solzenicyna," (Znak, 10, 2008) discusses Solzhenitsyn's place in twentieth-century history. The second, "Gra w ciemno," (Tygodnik Powszechny, 40, 2008) compares literary testimonies of the Gulag and the Nazi camps.
Dariusz Tolczyk published an article entitled "Znieczulony umysl: Gulag w swiadomosci Zachodu" in the journal Znak. The article focuses on Western misconceptions and denial of the Gulag in the long period of its existence.
Dariusz Tolczyk was invited to serve on the Editorial Board of a new journal Gulag Studies.
Julian Connolly delivered a paper entitled “The Middle Path: Berberova between Bunin and Nabokov” at the XIV International Congress of Slavists in Ohrid, Macedonia. The paper discussed the relationship between short stories written by Nina Berberova and stories written by Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Nabokov.
The Summer 2008 Semester at Sea program had a Russian focus. Karen Ryan served as Academic Dean for the summer program, and Julian Connolly and John Lyles served as instructors. John Lyles's courses were: "Russian Culture and Civilization" and "Russian Literature and Society: Creating a Perfect World." Julian Connolly's courses were "Masterpieces of Russian Literature" and "Fiction into Film." The program spent five days in St. Petersburg. For a slide show of the Petersburg portion, click on this link: http://www.ise.virginia.edu/A08_vid3.html For blogs on the summer experience, click on this link: http://www.publicaffairs.virginia.edu/uvatodayblog/abroad/.
Dariusz Tolczyk delivered a paper entitled "Escape from Truth: Western Responses to the Gulag" at the V International East European Conference organized at the University of Warsaw.
Dariusz Tolczyk delivered a paper entitled "Katyn: An Inconvenient Truth" at the international workshop "Communicating Murder" organized by Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung in Hamburg.