Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Pauline Viardot's Russian Compositions, Amy Jo Hunsaker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910), an internationally famed opera singer well known for her vocal dexterity and range, was an intelligent and sophisticated woman who circulated easily among the brightest stars of the nineteenth century. Viardot, who was fluent in five languages, composed over 100 songs and was one of the first Western Europeans to set Russian words to music. Many of her French, German, Spanish, and Italian songs were translated into Russian and published in St. Petersburg. Viardot’s interest in Russian music began early in her career, when she performed with the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg from 1843 to 1846. …

"Heimatlos In Dieser Welt": The Isolated Modern Woman In Edith Södergran’S Vaxdukshäft Poetry, Kajsa M. Spjut

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore how, although Edith Södergran’s Vaxdukshäf poems seem to support new female roles in early 20th century European society, they also reflect on the danger in changing from traditional to modern roles. As the poems illustrate, this change can create an isolated woman, who becomes trapped in her new independence and is unable to alter herself to connect with others. In order to understand what is meant by traditional and modern female roles, I present a historical background that contrasts the woman of pre-20th-Century Europe with the new woman that emerged around the Turn of the …

Graduate Student Forum, Sibelan E. S. Forrester

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Work Of Architecture In The Age Of Its Technological Reproducibility, Elizabeth Rae Guthrie

Theses and Dissertations

Dresden's historic reconstructions bring up questions that reach far beyond the city's new/old Neumarkt district. In this thesis, I would like to take a closer look at the current ideological discourse surrounding the reconstruction of destroyed historic buildings in Dresden and other cities in the former DDR. What seems at first to be a simple culture war between progressive and reactionary city planners is actually, I will argue, a unique historical moment that blurs the dogmatically held ideas of rationality and nostalgia, ornament and function, and high art and kitsch. From the uncanny shadow of a church recently raised from …

Reinventing The Colonial Fantasy In The Post-Wwii Era: Jovita Epp's Amado Mio, Ivana R. Klammer

Theses and Dissertations

Austrian playwright Jovita Epp's German language novel Amado mí­o, which takes place in post-WWII Argentina, is a modern adaptation of the traditional colonial novel. As such, the romances between the female main character, an Argentine of German descent, and her two love interests, an Argentine of Spanish descent (Criollo), and an Austrian Argentine, reflect the hopes and fears of persons and/or cultures caught up in the imperialist dreams of their nation. In the wake of WWII, Argentina becomes a space in which European(-descended) settlers can look back at Europe's "barbarism," questioning the imperialist worldviews that brought Europe …

Bibliography For Work In Travel Studies, Carlo Salzani, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

The Liberal Gene: Sociobiology As Emancipatory Discourse In The Late Soviet Union, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

In the following analysis, we will find that Soviet sociobiology did not develop incrementally out of daring interdisciplinary probes; rather, it seemed to spring forth fully formulated in the comprehensive Novyi mir article. Moreover, already in 1971, several years before Wilson's book established its controversial eponymous discipline in the United States, the biosocial paradigm was framed by its earliest Soviet proponents as a scientific vindication for diversity, pluralism, individual difference, heterogeneity, human rights, and ultimately, individual responsibility for one's own actions. In short, the same scientific discipline that in the west was associated with racism, reductionism, and social determinism developed …

Bibliography For The Study Of Cultural Discourse In Taiwan, Yu-Chun Chang, I-Chun Wang, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Selected Bibliography Of Work On Identity, Migration, And Displacement, Li-Wei Cheng, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Translation Of "Meaning" By D. Slamnig, D. Slamnig, Sibelan E.S. Forrester , Translator

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

(Review) Polish Literature From 1918 To 2000: An Anthology, Andrea Lanoux

Slavic Studies Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Polish Literature From 1918 to 2000: An Anthology," edited and translated by Michael J. Mikoś.

Baring The Brain As Well As The Soul: Milan Kundera's The Joke, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

In what follows, I will argue that two current theories about how our minds ascribe intentional psychological states to other people (so-called Theory of Mind) as well as to non-personal events that happen to us (a proposed Existential Theory of Mind) provide a rich interpretive framework for understanding the social and historical context of Kundera’s innovative aesthetics.

Review Of "The Horse Has Six Legs: An Anthology Of Serbian Poetry" Translated By C. Simic, Sibelan E.S. Forrester

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Culture And Interreligious Understanding According To The Romanian Philosopher Lucian Blaga, Michael S. Jones

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

Culture affects how we interpret our experiences and the way we construct our world. It also affects our ability to communicate with one another. The late Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga developed a systematic philosophy of culture that explores and explains how culture challenges and at the same time facilitates interideological communication. This article introduces and explains these aspects of Blaga's philosophy and then applies them to the issue of interreligious dialogue. It concludes that Blaga's philosophy of culture promotes a high regard for culture and cultural distinctness and at the same time vindicates, enables, and promotes efforts at interreligious understanding.

Introduction To Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev And Crafting A National Past, Wendy Salmond, Cynthia Hyla Whittaker

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Wendy Salmond and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker's introduction to Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past, which "elaborates the origins of the Russian style in the 1830s and 1840s and celebrates the seminal role that Fedor Grigorevich Solntsev (1801-1892) played in its development."

Rescripting Stalinist Masculinity: Contesting The Male Ideal In Soviet Film And Society, 1953-1968, Marko Dumančić

History Faculty Publications

This dissertation traces the evolution of a new type of cinematic masculinity in the fifteen years following Joseph Stalin’s death and examines how controversial post-Stalinist movie heroes became a battleground for the country’s postwar values and ideals. During the 1950s and 1960s, postwar Soviet leadership faced the kinds of sociopolitical ruptures that were also evident on the other side of the Iron Curtain; the Communist Party leadership struggled to moderate the combined destabilizing effect of consumerism, a recalcitrant youth (sub)culture, and Cold War anxieties. Nowhere was the angst of the postwar period more obvious than in the way Soviet filmmakers …

The Struggle To Create Soviet Opera, Miriam Grinberg

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

It is opera, and opera alone that brings you close to the people, that endears your music to the real public and makes your names popular not only with individual small circles but, under favourable conditions, with the whole people. – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, premier composer of symphonies, ballets, and operas in Imperial Russia in the mid- to late 1800s.

Tchaikovsky made this remark while living under a tsarist regime, but the pervasive, democratic, and uniting qualities of opera that he so vividly described appealed to an entirely different party: the Bolsheviks. Rather than discard the “bourgeois” remains of the …

Foreword To Irina Yazykova, Hidden And Triumphant: The Underground Struggle To Save Russian Iconography, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Wendy Salmond's foreword to Irina Yazykova's Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Russian Iconography, in which Yazykova discusses how the art of icon painting survived during years of Russian Communism and is now poised to launch a new era that reflects modern experience.

How America Discovered Russian Icons: The Soviet Loan Exhibition Of 1930-32, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

On 14 October 1930, the first exhibition of Russian icons ever to take place in the United States opened at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Over the next nineteen months it traveled to nine venues across the country, introducing the American public to a form of medieval painting virtually unknown outside Russia. Billed as the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Loan Exhibition," its avowed goal was to share with the outside world the full story of Russian icon painting's evolution from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, thereby adding a vital missing chapter to the history of medieval …

Adult Learners’ Perspectives On The Acquisition Of L2 Russian Pragmatic Competence, Victor Frank

Russian Language Journal

Decades of research have highlighted the central role that instruction, interaction, and feedback play in the acquisition of a foreign or second language, whether in the classroom or in naturalistic contexts, particularly in the domain of interlanguage grammar. The role that these factors play in the acquisition of interlanguage pragmatics has come under rigorous investigation only in the last decade (Barron 2002). In this article, I will discuss the degree to which adult learners of Russian acquire native-­‐‑like pragmatic competence, and present their own unique perspectives on its acquisition, both in the domestic classroom and during study abroad.

Taking The “L” Out Of Lctls: The Startalk Experience, Catherine Ingold, Mary Elizabeth Hart

Russian Language Journal

The less commonly taught languages in the United States are often those most critical to national security. How, then, can the number of students learning these languages be increased, and how can high-­‐‑quality instructors be produced to teach these languages? Having determined that foreign language skills are essential to diplomacy, economic competitiveness, and the security interests of the U.S., the Secretaries of State, Education, and Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence coordinated their efforts to expand language education beginning in kindergarten and continuing through elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education and into the workforce (United States Department of Education, 2008). …

Introduction, William P. Rivers

Russian Language Journal

This volume is dedicated to an extraordinary leader, scholar, teacher, friend and mentor to many, Richard D. Brecht, in honor of his distinguished career as a researcher, organizer, advocate, and leader of significant and lasting institutions which have served the Less Commonly Taught Languages, the field of Russian, and the language readiness and preparedness of the United States. There is a tendency to count achievements as the measure of a man, more so when the qualities cited above are said to accrue to him. While Richardʹs work has always been scientifically rigorous and politically and epistemologically provocative, what is far …

Blogging And Tweeting And Chat, Oh My! Social Networks, Classroom Culture, And Foreign Language Instruction, Thomas Garza

Russian Language Journal

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed an unprecedented global explosion in the number of online social networking sites (SNSs) available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. SNSs, such as Facebook, LiveJournal, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Bebo, and SixDegrees, among scores of others1, have transformed the mode and medium of person-­‐‑to-­‐‑ person communication, by making instant, direct – and free – contact with tens of thousands of interlocutors at one time a reality. A 2007 study of the National School Boards Association showed that American school-­‐‑age children were spending nine to twelve hours per week …

The Influence Of Prior Language Learning Experiences On Learning Of Unrelated Or Distantly Related Languages, Ewa Golonka

Russian Language Journal

Existing research provides evidence that learning one foreign language, and learning it well, makes learning another much easier. Learning another foreign language as an adult is easier both for those who acquired a second language (L2) in childhood and for those who acquired a second language as adolescents or adults in school. The learning of multiple languages within school settings in European countries, such as Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, is a common experience. In the United States, deliberate adult third language (L3) instruction—which accounts for learner’s knowledge of other foreign languages—has been primarily in U.S. government training institutes. 2 …

A Concurrent Validity Study Of Self-­‐‑Assessments And The Federal Interagency Language Roundtable Oral Proficiency Interview, Charles W. Stansfield, Jing Gao, William P. Rivers

Russian Language Journal

The National Language Service Corps (NLSC) was established in 2006 as a pilot program under the auspices of the National Security Education Program (NSEP). This new organization was tasked with providing and maintaining a standing civilian corps of certified bilinguals who would be available for service to federal government agencies as they are needed, and to state and local government agencies in time of emergency. The intent of the NLSC is to fill the gap between full-­‐‑time language services professionals and individuals who wish to volunteer for temporary services for short-­‐‑ or medium-­‐‑term assignments. The NLSC recruits a readily-­‐‑available pool …

Examining The Validity Of The 2010 Prototype Ap Russian Exam Through A College Comparability Study, Camelot Marshall

Russian Language Journal

Since its inception twelve years ago, the Prototype AP® Russian Language and Culture Examination has developed into an assessment instrument that has increasingly become the culminating focus and a hallmark of high school Russian language study in select schools across the United States. Even more so, through the years of field-­‐‑testing, piloting, and making the tests operational, the design, content, development, administration, and analyses of the exam have evolved into the model for American Councils’ online assessments of language proficiency not only for Russian, but also for Flagship programs. These tests are already being developed in Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Russian, …

A Case Study Of The Acquisition Of Narration In Russian: At The Intersection Of Foreign Language Education, Applied Linguistics, And Second Language Acquisition, Benjamin Rifkin

Russian Language Journal

Studies of students’ foreign language proficiency—including Carroll (1967), Magnan (1986), and Thompson (1996)—have shown that students in their fourth year of language study typically demonstrate oral proficiency in the intermediate range. Thompson’s study found the median score of students’ oral proficiency in the fourth year to be at the intermediate high/advanced threshold, but her subjects at this level of instruction were students at Middlebury’s summer language program and were tested in the last week of the program. In my own teaching practice, I have found that most of the students majoring in Russian at the University of Wisconsin-­‐‑Madison graduate with …

Assessing The Oral Proficiency Of Adult Learners, “Heritage” And “Native” Speakers Using The Ilr Descriptions And Actfl Proficiency Guidelines: Considering The Challenges, Cynthia L. Martin

Russian Language Journal

The ILR Descriptions – Speaking and the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines – Speaking trace their genesis to an oral proficiency assessment system first developed at the Foreign Service Institute in the 1950s to assess “foreign language users’ abilities according to a consistent scale.” The original purpose was clearly aimed at assessing the abilities of non-­‐‑native, non-­‐‑heritage adult foreign language learners, and this genesis is still reflected in the current ILR Descriptions and the ACTFL Guidelines. However, tools based on these descriptions/guidelines are increasingly being used to assess the abilities of language users who are not what we would consider to be …

Heritage Is Not Enough: The Changing Demographics Of The Chinese Language Field In The United States, Scott Mcginnis

Russian Language Journal

In a series of articles beginning in 1994, Richard Brecht and the late A. Ronald Walton first identified four sectors in the United States as sources for providing national capacity in the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs).

Русификация И Казахизация Как Языковая Гомогенизация Многоязычного Казахстана, Элеонора Сулейменова

Russian Language Journal

Русификация и казахизация как процессы целенаправленной гомогенизации в языковом отношении располагаются в одном ряду с белорусизацией, украинизацией, полонизацией, узбекизацией, латышизацией, таджикизацией или исландизацией, и деятельность политических, образовательных, общественных, экономических, собственно лингвистических институтов по их реализации рассматривается как обычная государственная практика.