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The Survival Of Art And The Art Of Survival In Stalin's Russia, Marietta Chudakova

Russian Culture

There are several questions that should be posed before one begins the study of 20th century Russian literature, to prevent such an undertaking from becoming merely a series of witty observations. The first of these questions is where do the boundaries of 20th century literature lie, not in the order of books on a bookshelf, but as objects of academic study? The second is how unified was the the literary process, which is the primary focus of the literary historian? In modern academic and near-academic discourse two approaches exist to answering these questions.

The Art Of Criticism? Criticism As Art!, Natalia Ivanova

Russian Culture

The study of Russian-Soviet and post-Soviet literary criticism in the second half of the twentieth century (henceforth denoted in the text as RLC) has been largely based on the chronological principle.

By way of introduction, I will begin with a brief overview of the RLC phenomenon-its origins, fundamental characteristics, and processes of change.

Colonizing Chaos: Russian Literature At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Alexander Genis

Russian Culture

Culture sets the parameters of our reality, defines its boundaries, gives each of us a system of values and reference points and, most important, provides our subconscious with the materials necessary for an awareness of chaos and the universe, space and time, cause and effect. Beginning my essay with these broadest categories, I will attempt to sketch the coordinates of that landscape in which the stormy drama of post-Soviet literature is played out. This will be followed by an analysis of the literary situation in the period directly preceding our own. Coming next will be some brief sketches of nine …

Rethinking The Canon: Nonconformist Soviet Classics In Post-Soviet Perspective, Alexander Zholkovsky

Russian Culture

In the four-plus decades since Stalin's death, the Soviet literary canon has undergone a series of changes. Thus, Fedor Dostoyevsky, Konstantin Leontiev, and Apollon Grigoriev, seen in all their complexity, gradually resumed their pride of place in nineteenth-century literary history, while Gogol was allowed to be more of a conservative thinker and modernist stylist than during the period of High Stalinism. Twentieth-century literature welcomed back the early Vladimir Maiakovsky, then all of Aleksandr Blok (previously represented in the Soviet canon only by his The Twelve), and finally the entire Silver Age. The list of writers now rehabilitated, republished, and "recognized" …

The Aesthetic Code Of Russian Postmodernism, Mark Lipovetsky

Russian Culture

Postmodernist discourse has become central to literary criticism in the 1990s. Unlike many other literary discourses, it was never formally announced, yet beginning in the late 1980s (with Mikhail Epstein’s articles) it took over almost all literary publications and effectively led to a new polarization of literary forces. If, during the first years of Perestroika, literary and cultural factions were divided primarily along political lines, with Western liberal sympathizers and anti-Communists on one side, and nationalist defenders of Communism on the other, then by the middle of the 1990s debate about postmodernism had split the liberals into those who sided …

Russian Literature In The Christian Context, Boris Paramonov

Russian Culture

In examining Russia’s cultural history one encounters an incontestable fact: the literary nature of its spirituality. At the same time, Russian literature is distinguished by its high caliber. If one examines Russia’s cultural significance in the context of the Western world, or generally attempts to evaluate the nation’s achievements on a Western European scale, one finds that Russian literature stands out with particular distinction. The West places Leo Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky on a par with Shakespeare, while Chekhov’s plays enjoy a popularity comparable with the Bard’s in the sheer number of theatrical performances, even in England, where Chekhov’s Western renown …

Popular Culture: Russian Folklore And Mores, Zara Abdullaeva

Russian Culture

The heroine of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," a Russian woman named Shosha, explains to Hans Kastorz, a German, what Russians mean by morals: "Morality? Do you want to know about morality? Well, we believe that morality is not to be found in virtue, that is, not in reason, discipline, good manners, or honesty; quite to the contrary, we find it in sinfulness, in danger to which one exposes oneself and evil which could devour us. We believe it is morally loftier to perish, to drive oneself into the ground, than to save one's soul. . . ."

Russian Art In The Second Half Of The Twentieth Century, Ekaterina Dyogot

Russian Culture

This essay concerns Russian art in the second half of the twentieth century, yet any such description requires constant reference to the Russian avant-garde and the Soviet art system. The country's isolation made Soviet art such a specific, aesthetic, and particularly institutional phenomenon that it becomes critical to any understanding of art in the post-Stalinist period.

The Russian Cinematic Culture, Oksana Bulgakova

Russian Culture

The cinema has always been subject to keen scrutiny by Russia's rulers. As early as the beginning of this century Russia's last czar, Nikolai Romanov, attempted to nationalize this new and, in his view, threatening medium: "I have always insisted that these cinema-booths are dangerous institutions. Any number of bandits could commit God knows what crimes there, yet they say the people go in droves to watch all kinds of rubbish; I don't know what to do about these places." The plan for a government monopoly over cinema, which would ensure control of production and consumption and thereby protect the …

Russian Architecture Between Anorexia And Bulimia, Vladimir Paperny

Russian Culture

The Russian visual sensibilities (if there is such thing) are formed by two contrasting influences. On the one hand, there is a natural attraction to decorative surfaces, to richness of colors and shapes. Historians tell us that in the 10 th century Prince Vladimir decided to convert to Christianity mainly because of the visual experience his emissaries had had in Constantinople: “The Greeks led us to the building where they worship their God,” they wrote to the Prince, “and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such …

The Art Of Dissent: Parody, Travesty And Irony In Late Soviet Culture, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

Irony is the favorite tool of Russian postmodernists fighting discourse totalitarianism. They wield it like a crowbar to pry open in the simulacrum, to tear down the Potemkin portable villages built by forced discursive labor. Every new blow the ironist strikes against the official reality reaffirms his intonational freedom amidst the most coercive discourse. An ultimate weapon of the spiritual proletariat, irony proves to the intellectual that he is a subject rather than an object of discourse. Alas, ironic vigil takes its toll. The self busily disclaiming identity with itself loses track of what it really is. It knows not …

Introduction

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Results 2012: Using Flagship Data To Develop A Russian Learner Corpus Of Academic Writing, Anna A. Alsufieva, Olesya V. Kisselev, Sandra G. Freels

Russian Language Journal

This paper presents a project developed at the Russian Flagship Center at Portland State University, the pilot Russian Learner Corpus of Academic Writing (piRULEC). PiRULEC is the first of its kind Russian learner corpus that contains academic texts written on a variety of topics produced by advanced learners of Russian from a variety of linguistic backgrounds (heritage speakers of Russian and mainstream American students).

Toward The History Of Study Of Symbiogenesis: On The English Translation Of B. M. Kozo-Polyansky’S A New Principle Of Biology (1924), Victor Fet

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

We reproduce the text by Victor Fet, which was read on 6 October 2011 at the Moscow Society of Naturalists during the presentation of new book translation (B.M. Kozo- Polyansky. Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution / transl. by Victor Fet; ed. by Victor Fet & Lynn Margulis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. 138 p.) This half- forgotten book by Boris M. Kozo-Polyansky was known only by name to Western biologists. Victor Fet gives a brief history of this new translation, enthusiastically initiated and supported by Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), a famous naturalist who was always eager to gave credit …

How To Ask For A Favor: An Exploration Of Speech Act Pragmatics In Heritage Russian, Irina Yevgenievna Dubinina

Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses

Heritage language (HL) is a linguistic system that arises in the context of early childhood bilingualism, both sequential and simultaneous, when one of the languages is not fully acquired. The performance of speech acts in HLs is yet to be understood, and this dissertation is a first step in this direction. The study investigates the pragmatic competence of adult Heritage Russian (HR) speakers dominant in American English by focusing on their ability to comprehend and produce requests for favor that appeal primarily to the addressee's good will.

The data were collected through a questionnaire and role-play enactments in nativespeaker (NS) …

Vladimir Nabokov’S Singular Nature Of Reality: A Close Reading Of Despair And Bend Sinister, Hannah Kim

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Balkan Minds: Transnational Nationalism And The Transformation Of South Slavic Immigrant Identity In Chicago, 1890-1941, Dejan Kralj

Dissertations (1 year embargo)

At the start of the twentieth century, America was inundated with unskilled workers eager to fuel the engines of the new economy. The South Slavs of the Balkans joined countless others from the furthest corners of the European continent during the final years of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth. Millions of foreign and unfamiliar faces, outlandishly clad, replaced the previous fair-haired and fair-skinned Western Europeans that originally populated the nation. These innumerably diverse peoples of eastern and southern European origin redefined the character of twentieth-century America.

The vast majority of South Slavic immigrants arrived in …

The Visual, The Epic, And Pasternak’S ‘Devjat’Son Pjatyj God’, Ludmila Lavine

Faculty Journal Articles

In this study I consider the role of poetic description in Pasternak’s ‘Deviat’sot piatyi god’ (‘1905’) in the context of the genre of the poema. Descriptive passages in poetic narratives, as a rule, provide a static setting for a protagonist’s actions. In the absence of any single hero in Pasternak’s poema, topography itself begins to move. I examine the categories of stasis and motion, central to ‘1905’, at the intersection of the visual and the verbal. The idea of reanimating the events of the first Russian revolution twenty years after the fact borders on the ekphrastic in places, where the …

Bibliography Of Central European Women's Holocaust Life Writing In English, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Russian Spirituality And The Theology Of Negation, Mikhail Epstein

Russian Culture

Toward the end of the twentieth century Russian culture found itself at a crossroads which cannot be ascribed to any political election but which rather presupposed a radical change in its religious and social orientation. Two somewhat opposing theses will be developed in this article. First I will discuss the processes of secularization in Russian culture and the necessity of a third, neutral zone between the "sacred" and the "profane." Next, the dangers of social neutralization in culture and the necessity of retaining elements of the dual model along with the introduction of intermediate elements will be presented. We will …

Bibliography For The Study Of Text And Image In Modern European Culture, Natasha Grigorian

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Болото В Молчании, Или Пути Развития Тезауруса Учащихся При Обучении Русскому Языку На Продвинутом Уровне, Дарья Колесова

Russian Language Journal

Как понять эту фразу человеку, давно и эффективно изучающему русский язык? Да, он знает, что такое болото - это то, о чем можно сказать swamp, marsh, bog, muskeg. Но почему это название может показаться русскому человеку обидным? Из какого именно болота хочет вырваться автор и та группа людей, с которыми он себя объединяет?

Использование Актуальных Жанров Интернет-Общения (Форума И Блога) На Занятиях По Развитию Навыков Устной И Письменной Речи, Дарья Колесова, Ирина Вознесенская

Russian Language Journal

Прагматика общения, как известно, в значительной мере опреде-ляется спецификой жанра: существуют жанровые каноны, допуска-ющие ту или иную степень вариативности, но выход за рамки таких канонов приводит к коммуникативным неудачам. Попадая в стан-дартные условия общения, люди вырабатывают оптимальные для этих условий способы общения. Новые же коммуниканты, осваивая жанровый канон, стараются ему следовать, и в этом смысле оказы-ваются полностью зависимыми от жанра. Каким же образом можно обучить иностранца русским речевым жанрам? Какие именно речевые жанры стоит рассматривать как объект и предмет обучения на уроках РКИ?

Использование Киноцитаты На Уроке Рки, Джамиля Садуллаева

Russian Language Journal

Достаточно долгий опыт преподавания с одной стороны РКИ и истории и поэтики кино, с другой, привел меня к выводу, что изучение цитат из отечественных кинофильмов не только возможно, но и просто необходимо на продвинутом этапе обучения. Повседневная речь носителей языка переполнена цитатами разного уровня сложности и из разных источников. В речи молодежи, а именно молодежь – основной контингент изучающих русский язык в университете, постоянны мимолетные цитаты из видеотекстов, предназначенных для ежедневного, но не долгосрочного использования. Телевизионные сериалы, реклама на улице, в газетах и на телевидении, ошибки и оговорки в прямом эфире, забавные ролики в youtub’e, маргинальные тексты небольших сообществ вроде …

Чтение Как Один Из Видов Речевой Деятельности В Процессе Обучения Русскому Языку, Kupa Рогова

Russian Language Journal

Обучение языку на продвинутом этапе стажёров из США, приезжающих в Россию после прохождения основного курса русского языка дома, ведётся в СПбГУ по программе «Флагман» уже несколько лет при постоянном поиске оптимальных способов отбора языкового материала, форм и средств его усвоения. На исходном этапе учащиеся, хотя и с некоторыми индивидуальными различиями, владеют всеми видами речевой деятельности, так что процесс обучения состоит, с одной стороны, в расширении запаса слов, овладении синтаксическими конструкциями, которые обладают по сравнению с элементарными более сложной грамматической семантикой и, с другой, – в развитии и совер-шенствовании умений в восприятии и построении связной речи. Все эти знания и умения …

Heritage Language Learners Of Russian And L2 Learners In The Flagship Program: A Comparison, Olga Kagan, Anna Kudyma

Russian Language Journal

The paper will compare heritage language learners (HLL) with traditional learners of Russian as a foreign language (L2 learners). We will focus on the Intermediate-High and higher levels of proficiency in order to determine whether these two groups of students can profitably share the classroom and use a common curriculum. The findings of a new study as well as UCLA Flagship experience over several years confirm that these two groups are compatible at higher levels of oral proficiency as measured by oral proficiency tests.

Comparing Heritage And Non-Heritage Learning Outcomes And Target-Language Utilization In The Overseas Immersion Context: A Preliminary Study Of The Russian Flagship, Dan E. Davidson, Maria D. Lekic

Russian Language Journal

The heritage learner within U.S. foreign language education has received increasing attention over the past two decades, as university programs with substantial numbers of heritage students have developed improved diagnostic and curricular offerings for addressing the particular needs of those whose learning of their native language was incomplete or interrupted due to immigration to the U.S. (Valdés, 2000; Kagan & Dillon, 2004). While the heritage learner within the domestic language learning context is relatively well represented in the literature, relatively little research has been devoted to the acquisition experiences of heritage learners engaged in overseas immersion study (re-learning) of their …

Student And Tutor Perspectives Of Tutoring In A Russian Flagship Program, Dianna Murphy, Karen Evans-Romaine, Snezhana Zheltoukhova

Russian Language Journal

This paper presents findings from a small-scale qualitative study based on interviews with Russian Flagship students and tutors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to explore students’ and tutors’ perceptions of tutoring in the UW-Madison Russian Flagship Program. The UW-Madison Russian Flagship is a rigorous undergraduate program funded by a grant from the National Security Education Program (NSEP) to provide opportunities for highly motivated students of any major to reach a Superior level of proficiency in Russian by graduation. Students in the program are provided with two to four hours per week of individual tutoring in Russian. The present study follows …

Argumentation And Debate In The Foreign Language Classroom: Russian And American University Students Collaborating Through New Technologies, N. Anthony Brown, Ekaterina V. Talalakina, Irina V. Yakusheva, Dennis L. Eggett

Russian Language Journal

As pressure to articulate clear learning outcomes has increased in recent years, many foreign language departments across the United States have drawn on proficiency guidelines established by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to define expectations of their curricula. Misguided perceptions in the past about the “hardness” of the discipline frequently stemmed from a combination of instructors relying on arbitrary measures rather than nationally recognized standards, and administrators failing to provide financial support needed to carry out proficiency testing.

«Речевые Маски» Повествователя И Речь Персонажей (На Материале «Московских Сказок» А. Кабакова), Кира Щукина

Russian Language Journal

«Московские сказки» А. Кабакова, написанные в 2005 году, несомненно интересны и с точки зрения лингвистики, и, в частности, лингвистического анализа текста. Сам А. Кабаков отзывается о своих «Московских сказках» следующим образом: «Это действительно сказки и мифологические истории от Красной шапочки до строительства Вавилонской башни. Но действия их перенесены в современную Москву. Это карманная энциклопедия современной русской жизни, с чиновниками, бандитами, иногородними девушками, политтехнологами и другими сомнительными, но очень современными личностями"1. «Энциклопедичность» «Московских сказок» Кабакова и их лингвистическое и стилистическое богатство дают возможность результативно использовать этот материал при обучении чтению студентов III-IV уровня, в частности, на программе «Флагман», а также использовать …