Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Old Belief And The Balance Of Red And Blue: How Old Believers Managed Cultural Infringement, Joseph K. Van Den Berg

History

This paper covers the spread of the Old Believers into Western society, studying how they changed and evolved during the Cold War. The paper focuses on two communities, using them to compare the different attitudes Old Believers had towards differing host cultures. Using a litany of newspapers and the work of a few dedicated anthropologists, "Old Belief and the Balance of Red and Blue: How Old Believers Managed Cultural Infringement" shows the vast array of responses to a small group of Russian sectarians establishing themselves within Western Cultures of differing size and values.

Russian Zoophonic Verbs Modifications' Domain. Peculiarity Of Synthesis, Irina V. Ivliyeva

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

The article examines capabilities of Russian zoophonic verbs (those describing sounds produced by animals) to create semantic modifications. Using the appending inventory of zoophonic verbal modifications from novel sources, previously unused in lexicographic practices, the open (infinite) nature of semantic modifications' domain, its composition and the fluidity of its lacuna zones are shown. The structure of zoophonic verbal modifications is examined; verbal modifiers, non-typical for this lexical-semantic group of verbs, are inventoried. The obstacles to successful production of semantically modified derivatives during different stages of synthesis are classified by several criteria: denotative, semantic, and distributive. The research findings demonstrate the …

The Centrality Of Human Freedom In Dostoevsky And Huxley, Evelyn J. Hylton

Masters Theses

Fyodor Dostoevsky learned the hard way that human beings need to be free. In a Siberian prison camp, a four-year period which would later inspire his semi-autobiographical prison memoir Notes from a Dead House, he was forced to come to terms with the realities of life under severe constraint and without the freedom for self-actualization, which convicted him of the dangers of the Westernized liberalism he once embraced. Dostoevsky’s transformed understanding of humanity and its need for individual freedom eventually matured to form the moral and philosophical foundations of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, whose support of the centrality …

Using Religious Themes And Content To Affect Cultural Sensitivity In Russian Language Learning, Paul Tristan Gallo

Theses and Dissertations

Specifically oriented towards Russian culture, this study addresses the need in diplomacy for deeper cultural understanding. As research suggests a link between the inclusion of religious perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) and student motivation and cultural empathy, this study examines how Russian language classrooms could leverage an understanding of Russian religious themes to foster cultural sensitivity. The study invited 24 second-year university students of Russian to complete a previously-validated assessment of cultural sensitivity: the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI). Divided into a control and a treatment group, the participants also watched a short video depicting a story from Russian history …

Title., Douglas Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Title is a series of drawings that explores the aspects of failed projects and the complications of representation within literary and visual practices. This series is informed by preliminary drawings, marginalia, and written notations that are inherent in the formulation processes of both visual and literary compositions. Through an investigation of the 19th Century Russian author Nikolai Gogol’s unfinished novel Dead Souls, I situate this series of drawings as a means to conflate literary theories with visual representation. In this way, the Title series presents fragmentary images, texts, and digressive narratives that demonstrate intermediaries between propositional states and reconciled …

Classical Literature And The Retroaction Of Socialist Ideology—The Sovietization Of A Medieval Georgian Epic Poem And Its Mysterious Author, Diego Benning Wang

Madison Historical Review

Shota Rustaveli, presumed author of the medieval Georgian epic poem vepkhistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther's Skin), was one of the most celebrated cultural and historical figures in Soviet Georgia. However, not much is known about Rustaveli apart from his work. In this essay, I argue that a series of policies under the Soviet government transformed Rustaveli into a national symbol of Georgia, but the celebration of Rustaveli and his poem scarcely deviated from the ideological guidelines of the Soviet state. In discussing the impact and legacy of the Soviet promotion of Rustaveli, I purport to highlight the "national in …

The Imperial Legacy: An Examination Of The Trends Of Empire And Genocide From German Southwest Africa To The General Government, Laura Guebert

Scholars Week

This project is an examination of the correlations between imperial enterprises of the Second German Empire and the Nazi Reich through the lenses of global and imperial critiques. By studying the realities and experiences of German Southwest Africa, the Ober Ost, and Nazi-occupied Easter Europe, this paper attempts to identify the common elements of German imperialism: pathos, frantic improvisation, cognizance of contemporaries, and industrial modernity. To help elucidate these elements, this research studied the themes and theories developed by leading historians of modern German and Eastern European history, including Timothy Snyder, Ben Kiernan, Shelley Baranowski, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, and Christopher …

Dostoevsky As A Translator Of "Eugénie Grandet", Julia Titus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this study in comparative criticism is a close analysis of Dostoevsky’s first literary publication - his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac’s Eugе́nie Grandet (1834) and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac’s novel. Through the prism of close reading this dissertation analyzes Dostoevsky’s literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, the dissertation focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky’s free translation …

Review Of "What We Saw From This Mountain: Selected Poems 1976-2014" By V. Aristov, Translated By J. Trubikhina-Kunina And B. Hulick, Sibelan E.S. Forrester

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Naming The Future In Translations Of Russian And East European Science Fiction, Sibelan E.S. Forrester

Russian Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Elizabeth Cheresh Allen (1951-2017) In Memoriam, Timothy Harte

Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Distorted Images And Realities Of Andrei Bitov’S Literary Photographs., José Vergara

Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship

Although Andrei Bitov’s best-known exploration of photography remains “Pushkin’s Photograph (1799–2099),” in which a young Pushkinist travels into the past to capture the poet’s image on film, this motif in fact appears throughout many of the author’s major works. This study addresses the two conflicting stances regarding photography that Bitov develops across a variety of genres. On the one hand, the manner in which a photo attempts to freeze or distort reality according to a particular worldview deeply disturbs his narrators, both fictional and semi-autobiographical. It becomes a tool for manipulation in texts such as “View of the Trojan Sky” …

Quantitative Fine-Grained Human Evaluation Of Machine Translation Systems: A Case Study On English To Croatian, Filip Klubicka, Antonio Toral, Victor Manuel Sanchez-Cartagena

Articles

This paper presents a quantitative fine-grained manual evaluation approach to comparing the performance of different machine translation (MT) systems. We build upon the well-established Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) error taxonomy and implement a novel method that assesses whether the differences in performance for MQM error types between different MT systems are statistically significant. We conduct a case study for English-to- Croatian, a language direction that involves translating into a morphologically rich language, for which we compare three MT systems belonging to different paradigms: pure phrase-based, factored phrase-based and neural. First, we design an MQM-compliant error taxonomy tailored to the relevant …

Memory And The Realization Of The Nothingness. On A Letter Of Vittorio Sereni To Giuseppe Ungaretti, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The problematic relationship of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) with Alexandria of Egypt – his city of birth – sheds light on the interplay between memory and oblivion in his poetry and prose. The shuttling back and forth between these poles marks the nature of his unfulfilled desire to recreate a lost Alexandrian atmosphere. In Ungaretti’s works, language opacity is coupled with his attempts to represent a city—as he writes—that is suffocated by the sun and whose hidden ancient port is submerged in the depth of the sea. Blinding light and the darkness of the deep waters make the understanding of Ungaretti’s …

Ideology In Literature And Literature As Ideology: Totalitarian And Reactionary Appropriation Of Resistant Texts, Huntley Hughes

Master’s Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the means by which nominally or potentially resistant texts are appropriated into violent or exploitative political structures for propaganda and profit. In the first chapter two pre-soviet Russian novels closely associated with the radical tradition are examined, through the lens of literary analysis, in order to uncover the ways in which ideologically egalitarian revolutionary movements can degenerate into authoritarian regimes. The second chapter is concerned with a Welsh text, How Green Was My Valley, which, despite being concerned with the conditions of the Welsh mining class, utilizes the narrative form of childhood recollection to insidiously …

Fatum Ad Benedictum: Moscow-Petushki, Homo Sovieticus, Postmodernism And The Fatidic Post-Soviet Irony Of Venedikt Vasilevich Erofeev, Paul N. Kleiman

Honors Papers

The following honors thesis is structured into two parts, four chapters apiece.

The first part is a philological study of the Soviet dissident and writer Venedikt Vasilevich Erofeev’s magnum opus, Moscow-Petushki (1969-70). This half of the thesis investigates Petushki in light of its thematic development of fate, or, more particularly, the fate of homo sovieticus—the ironic term devised by Soviet sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922-2006) to describe a typical conformist citizen of the Soviet Union. I will focus predominantly on Petushki’s connection to the end of the Khrushchev “Thaw” in the early-mid-1960s and the beginning of Brezhnev “Stagnation” in the late-1960s, …

How Do You Depict The Life Of A Soul?: Word And Text In And As Image In Soviet Nonconformist Art, Matthew Blong

MA Theses

Visual artworks by Soviet nonconformist artists, especially those associated with the Moscow Conceptualist and Sots-Art movements of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, prominently feature experimentations with word and text—both in and as image—for a wide variety of reasons that have been studied by scholars of Soviet and Russian art.

In this paper, a formal and conceptual analysis of nearly thirty text-and-image artworks by nonconformist artists of the period traces the motivations and inspirations for this highly creative and generative practice. Beginning with the desire to resume where the historic Russian avant-garde had left off, these artworks challenge notions of language as …

Cultural Differences In Russian And American Magazine Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach, Emily Furner

Russian Language Journal

Though some may think that TRANSLATION and LOCALIZATION are two words that represent the same function, many scholars make a distinction between the two terms, and some even add a third term, GLOBALIZATION, into the mix. Translator and localization specialist Bert Esselink (1998) perhaps best defined the distinctions in these terms: Globalization […] is typically used in a sales and marketing context, i.e., it is the process by which a company breaks free of the home markets to pursue business opportunities wherever their customers may be located. Translation is the process of converting written or displayed text or spoken words …

Introduction

Russian Language Journal

The editorial team of Russian Language Journal is pleased to present volume 68. This issue sees five articles received through our regular blind review process, one review article, and five book reviews.

In our first section on Pedagogy and Practice, Yunusova provides a theoretical framework for assessing the appropriateness of literary texts for use in foreign language classrooms. Caffee and Lucey describe an innovative peer-to-peer experiential learning project based around foodways. Both of these articles should provide concrete and innovative ideas for Russian language classrooms.

Our second section on Linguistics, contains three articles. Soboleva tackles the thorny question of aspect, …

Defining The Accessibility Of A Literary Text: Contemporary Russian Literature In A Cefr B2 Russian As A Foreign Language Classroom, Sofya Yunusova

Russian Language Journal

In the last three and a half decades, a considerable number of publications in foreign-language methodology have addressed the use of literary texts (LTs) in foreign-language classrooms. While at the beginning of the twentieth century learning a foreign language still meant a close study of canonical LTs for linguistic and humanistic purposes following the grammar-translation method (Kramsch and Kramsch 2000; Iatsenko 2017b), by the middle of the century, literature was replaced by more functional models of learning (Carter 2007). The 1980s opened new perspectives on the didactic role of L2 literary reading, which are commonly associated with the confluence of …

Borscht, Bliny, And Burritos: The Benefits Of Peer-To-Peer Experiential Learning Through Food, Naomi Caffee, Colleen Lucey

Russian Language Journal

Like other disciplines in the humanities, Russian Studies faces an ongoing crisis of recruiting and retaining majors and minors for the longevity of undergraduate programs (Looney and Lusin 2018). Shrinking budgets and limited resources compound the problem as language and culture departments across the United States are asked to do more with fewer resources (Gerber 2015). In the context of an increasingly corporatized academy where language and cultural studies are marginalized, faculty in Russian Studies have a powerful means at their disposal to attract new students and build cross-campus alliances: the common language of food. Courses on foodways can reinvigorate …

Вторичные Имперфективы В Системе Русского Глагола В Свете Классификации Глагольных Предикатов По Вендлеру, Валентина C. Соболева

Russian Language Journal

В данной статье представлена попытка проанализировать семантические особенности вторичных имперфективов и их видо- вых коррелятов на основе классификации глагольных предикатов по Вендлеру.1 Следует отметить, что наличие в аспектологической литературе необозримого количества исследований по самым разным вопросам, касающимся функционирования категории глагольного вида в русском языке, говорит о том, что в данной области многие кардинальные проблемы остаются нерешёнными, включая как видовую парность глаголов при наличии видовых троек и одновидовых глаголов, так и семантическое содержание каждого вида.2 И, наверное, в связи с нерешённостью этих кардинальных вопросов, глаголам вторичной имперфективации не уделяется достаточного внимания, хотя некоторые исследователи отмечали «загадочное» поведение вторичных имперфективов (О. Swan, …

Загадки “Слинкса” (Slynx) Татьяны Толстой. Дешифровка Мифологии Романа “Кысь” В Переводах На Французский И Английский Языки, Филипп Фризон, Елена Гаврилова

Russian Language Journal

“Кысь” (фр. Le Slynx, англ. The Slynx) - первый роман Т.Н. Толстой, увидевший свет в 2000 г. Его появление не осталось незамеченным: в следующем году книга стала победителем конкурса “Лучшие издания XIV Московской международной книжной выставки- ярмарки” (г. Москва) в номинации “Проза-2001” и удостоена литературной премии “Триумф”. На французском языке “Кысь” вышла в 2002 г. в переводе с комментариями Кристофа Глоговски, на английском - в 2003 г. в переводе Джейми Гэмбрелл, без комментариев, но с перечнем цитат в приложении. Предметом рассмотрения настоящей статьи стали именно иронические и фольклорные моменты повествования и подход французского и английского переводчиков в их стремлении передать …

Cherchez La Femme! Cherchez Laura A. Janda!, Michal Korenar

Russian Language Journal

In The Mohicans of Paris (1871), Dumas’s detective concludes at some point that a woman was necessarily involved in an investigated crime, leading him to famously exclaim: “Cherchez la femme!”, which is translated to English as “Look for the woman!” (Horn, 1991). One does not need to be an actual detective to reveal the purpose of the reviewed book Each Venture a New Beginning: Studies in Honor of Laura A. Janda. Needless to say, I do not want to imply in any way that Janda has committed a crime. Still, I find the expression rather apposite because the reader can …

Review: A Convenient Territory: Russian Literature At The Edge Of Modernity, Joe Peschio

Russian Language Journal

The Festschrift is an odd, performative genre, and it tends to comprise loose collections of gestures—gestures of gratitude, gestures of respect, gestures of celebration. Not so with this Festschrift. With only a few exceptions, the works here are very form- and literature-centric, something as rare these days as it is welcome. This is as good a reflection as any of the honoree’s place in our field. As the astonishing bibliography of Barry Scherr’s works at the end of the book attests, he has been a strong force in formal analysis, poetics, exact methods, and, in general, empirically minded literary scholarship …

Review: Studies In Phonological Theory And Historical Linguistics, James Joshua Pennington

Russian Language Journal

This volume represents a definitive collection of Bill Darden’s research over his career of more than forty years as a linguist. The book is divided along his main areas of expertise into two parts: (1) “Historical Linguistics,” consisting of 17 chapters that cover a variety of problematic issues in Indo-European, Balto-Slavic, and Slavic historical phonology, morphology, and syntax; and (2) “Phonological Theory,” comprising 10 articles, which illustrate Darden’s approach to tackling difficult issues in phonological theory through examples from Russian and Greenlandic.

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: 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 …

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.