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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Review: Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Alla A. Smyslova, Alexandra Portice
Review: Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Alla A. Smyslova, Alexandra Portice
Russian Language Journal
Anindita Banerjee’s critical reader provides excellent insight into the development of science fiction literature and cinema in Russia from the early nineteenth century all the way to the mid-2000s. The book features four sections, each of them comprising four articles by different authors, and an introduction from the editor. The latter provides a brief but brilliant overview of Russian nauchnaia fantastika, or “scientific fantasy,” positioning it within the context of literary, social, and scientific life in the USSR, as well as outlining the existing scholarship on the topic. From the very beginning, when the genre first emerged at the turn …
Review: Limits To Interpretation: The Meanings Of Anna Karenina; Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Serenity Stanton Orengo, Alla A. Smyslova
Review: Limits To Interpretation: The Meanings Of Anna Karenina; Russian Science Fiction Literature And Cinema: A Critical Reader, Serenity Stanton Orengo, Alla A. Smyslova
Russian Language Journal
Limits to Interpretation is a staple of Tolstoy scholarship. Newly reprinted in paperback, it is worth revisiting, even for those already familiar with this work. Alexandrov’s aim in the book, outlined on the first page, is to “propose a text-specific reading methodology, one that is tailored as much as possible to a particular work, and that is thus designed to minimize the circularity of interpretation, or the process of mediation, inherent in any act of reading” (3). Alexandrov seeks to demonstrate how a work of literature can prompt a fixed range of contradictory and divergent interpretations simultaneously. He wants to …
Review: Poetry Reader For Russian Learners; Siblings In Tolstoy And Dostoevsky: The Path To Universal Brotherhood, Richard Robin, Naya Lekht
Review: Poetry Reader For Russian Learners; Siblings In Tolstoy And Dostoevsky: The Path To Universal Brotherhood, Richard Robin, Naya Lekht
Russian Language Journal
Overall, the book does a thorough job of documentation. In proficiency terms, it reads more like a fancy “Advanced High” text than “Superior.” The authors do not speculate about the potentially more controversial conclusions pertaining to some of the postulates underlying the program until toward the end of the volume. After all, it is unlikely that a school with only two years of Russian aiming for an “Intermediate Low” speaking proficiency will create a two-year curriculum with the intent to prepare participants for a fourth year at “Advanced.” Most of the interesting speculations come in Al-Batal and Glakas’s view of …
Review: Siblings In Tolstoy And Dostoevsky: The Path To Universal Brotherhood, Naya Lekht, William Nickell
Review: Siblings In Tolstoy And Dostoevsky: The Path To Universal Brotherhood, Naya Lekht, William Nickell
Russian Language Journal
This is a fine book that makes a strong contribution to the study of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, while also demonstrating a framework that could be usefully applied to other literature of the period. It convincingly shows that sibling relations in the works of these two authors have been woefully underexamined, and it demonstrates that time and again, key scenes and ideas in their novels are structured around sisters and brothers. Reading from this perspective repeatedly brings new clarity not only to the scenes in question, but also to entire novels, and indeed, to the oeuvres to which they belong. The …
Review: “The Other” In Translation: A Case For Comparative Translation Studies, Sibelan Forrester
Review: “The Other” In Translation: A Case For Comparative Translation Studies, Sibelan Forrester
Russian Language Journal
Alexander Burak’s book “The Other” in Translation does two things: it draws attention to the field of Comparative Translation Discourse Analysis, with reference to numerous concrete examples, and it offers thought provoking and informative discussion of a number of translation situations drawn from the interactions of Russian and Anglophone literature and culture. The book will be especially interesting to students and teachers of Russian at all levels, but it also has a great deal to offer readers from other languages and literatures, especially those with a background in translation studies.
Review: The Meek One: A Fantastic Story: An Annotated Russian Reader, Cynthia L. Martin
Review: The Meek One: A Fantastic Story: An Annotated Russian Reader, Cynthia L. Martin
Russian Language Journal
Both of these readers are excellent additions to available annotated readers for students of Russian that would be most appropriate after students have completed two full years of Russian.
From Meaning To Form: An Alternative Model Of Functional Syntax, Arto Mustajoki
From Meaning To Form: An Alternative Model Of Functional Syntax, Arto Mustajoki
Russian Language Journal
The purpose of this article is to introduce a model for a meaning-based functional syntax. A full description of the model may be found in our recent monograph (Mustajoki 2006b). Work on the model has been carried out in the Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literature at the University of Helsinki over the last fifteen years. Given that the above-mentioned book and various shorter publications (Mustajoki 1997, 1999, 2003a, 2003b, 2004) have appeared in Russian, it seems appropriate to give a short overview of the model in English. The only presentation of the model in English thus far …
Implementing Task-Based Teaching From The Ground Up: Considerations For Lesson Planning And Classroom Practice, William Comer
Implementing Task-Based Teaching From The Ground Up: Considerations For Lesson Planning And Classroom Practice, William Comer
Russian Language Journal
In the past twenty years, Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) has become a widely discussed approach to teaching foreign and second languages, and a significant body of literature has grown up around it. The approach has even been implemented on a large scale in some areas; for example, since 1990, instruction in Dutch as a second language in the Flemish areas of Belgium has been organized solely around the principles of TBLT (Van den Branden 2006, 13).
Change Agents And Change Agencies In Language Education: Implications For Langnet, Richard D. Brecht
Change Agents And Change Agencies In Language Education: Implications For Langnet, Richard D. Brecht
Russian Language Journal
Educational innovation is a richly satisfying enterprise, particularly in an age of rising demands and expanding technology. But unless the innovators have an explicit strategic plan and a dedicated system for diffusing their work, innovation is destined to have little or no impact on the teachers and learners for whom it is intended. That truth lies at the heart of the literature on the diffusion of innovation.