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2021

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Articles 31 - 60 of 90

Full-Text Articles in Slavic Languages and Societies

Becoming An Andegraund Poet: Elena Shvarts And The Literary Environment Of The Late Soviet Era, Laura Little Jan 2021

Becoming An Andegraund Poet: Elena Shvarts And The Literary Environment Of The Late Soviet Era, Laura Little

Slavic Studies Faculty Publications

My dissertation focuses on Elena Shvarts (1948-2010), a Russian-language poet of the “unofficial” culture that flourished alongside state-sponsored arts in the post-war USSR. I ask how Shvarts became a leading talent of her generation in 1960s-1970s Leningrad, producing a substantial and sophisticated body of work without access to traditional print audiences. Studying Shvarts’s strategies for self-realization enhances our understanding of the forces that shaped late Soviet literature and the cultural field of dissidence from within and without. I trace her formation and rise to recognition, interweaving discussions of the political, literary, and social environment of her youth and early adulthood …

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"Divine Hunger": Not Transcending Trauma In Slavenka Drakulic's The Taste Of A Man, Carol A. Leibiger Jan 2021

"Divine Hunger": Not Transcending Trauma In Slavenka Drakulic's The Taste Of A Man, Carol A. Leibiger

Posters and Presentations

No abstract provided.

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Flap Your Wings For Goodbye: Avian Imagery In Sasha Sokolov’S Between Dog And Wolf, José Vergara Jan 2021

Flap Your Wings For Goodbye: Avian Imagery In Sasha Sokolov’S Between Dog And Wolf, José Vergara

Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship

The present article explicates a selection of bird imagery in Sasha Sokolov’s second novel, Between Dog and Wolf (1980). It analyzes the author’s use of certain birds and their folkloric and mythological subtexts for symbolic purposes. In particular, he pairs his protagonists with key birds (hoopoe, lapwing, goose, magpie, albatross) to underscore aspects of their personalities, behaviors, relationships, and experiences. This ornithic imagery emphasizes how the characters cannot overcome their temptations and other base feelings to attain higher meaning and ultimately remain bound to the physical, natural world. (For a plot synopsis of Between Dog and Wolf, please consult …

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Museum Representations Of Contested Spaces: The Kuril Islands, Emily Sandall Jan 2021

Museum Representations Of Contested Spaces: The Kuril Islands, Emily Sandall

Slavic Studies Honors Papers

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a boom of museums focused on the Ainu cultural subject has emerged in both Russia and Japan. By conceptualizing museums as nonneutral and culturally embedded productions which attempt to convey knowledge of foreign spaces to home spaces, this thesis will analyze the ways in which various museum institutions in Russia and Japan, as well as those produced by Ainu activist groups, choose to tell certain stories about the disputed Kuril Island territories and the Ainu people, and to map those stories within the broader colonial framework of the Kuril Islands dispute and indigenous …

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The Contested Works Of The Bakhtin Circle: A Stylometric Investigation, Brittany Pheiffer Noble Jan 2021

The Contested Works Of The Bakhtin Circle: A Stylometric Investigation, Brittany Pheiffer Noble

Russian Language Journal

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century as one of the most important theorists of literature, language, and cultural theory in the West. The discovery of the thinker in the nearly immediate wake of his death dovetailed with late twentieth-century critiques of language, authorial authority, and questions around the ethics of reading and media consumption. Bakhtin’s biography fueled his popularity: his was a life largely lived on the margins of an oppressive regime, and he wrote prolifically while surviving famine, siege, exile, health problems, and an almost complete absence of professional recognition save for …

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Translation In The Russian Language Classroom: Coming In From The Cold, Brian James Baer, Tatyana Bystrova-Mcintyre, Irina Dzero Jan 2021

Translation In The Russian Language Classroom: Coming In From The Cold, Brian James Baer, Tatyana Bystrova-Mcintyre, Irina Dzero

Russian Language Journal

For the past several decades, translation and interpreting have been largely excluded from the communicative language classroom—and not without reason. In traditional foreign language classrooms, “literal” or close translation was often used as a comprehension check or as part of a vocabulary or grammar drill, divorced from real-world context. This in turn encouraged students (and, on some rare occasions, foreign language teachers) to view language proficiency—and, by extension, translation competence—as a kind of linguistic matching game.

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Reading Russian For The Disciplines: Google Translate, Richard Robin Jan 2021

Reading Russian For The Disciplines: Google Translate, Richard Robin

Russian Language Journal

For many graduate students in areas such as history, economics, sociology, security policy studies, and arms control, the Russian reading requirement represents a significant barrier in terms of required coursework or reading proficiency, since Advanced-level reading proficiency at a minimum is necessary for reading in these disciplines. The question is, must that barrier be maintained? In a time when online machine translation (MT) is available on smartphones, is requiring a demonstration of L2 reading proficiency as part of the path to an advanced degree any more meaningful than requiring that statisticians be able to add up a column of figures …

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Towards Intelligent Correction Of Collocational Errors In Russian L2 Academic Texts In The Cat&Kittens Writing Support Platform, Aleksandr Klimov, Olesya Kisselev, Mikhail Kopotev Jan 2021

Towards Intelligent Correction Of Collocational Errors In Russian L2 Academic Texts In The Cat&Kittens Writing Support Platform, Aleksandr Klimov, Olesya Kisselev, Mikhail Kopotev

Russian Language Journal

The study of academic language is driven to a large extent by the need to teach second language (L2) writers about established practices and patterns found across different genres and registers common in academic written discourse. Over the span of the past few decades, the area of academic language research has been hugely influenced by two interconnected digital approaches: computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and computational linguistics, including corpus linguistics approaches and tools.

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Building Bridges With Language And Culture In Russia (Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad): Focusing On Intercultural Sensitivity, Alla Kourova, Florin M. Mihai Jan 2021

Building Bridges With Language And Culture In Russia (Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad): Focusing On Intercultural Sensitivity, Alla Kourova, Florin M. Mihai

Russian Language Journal

In our progressively globalized world, the need to build bridges between people of different languages and cultures has grown exponentially. The phrases globalization , global citizen, and increasingly interconnected world are frequently present in public discourse (Kulturel-Konak, Konak, and D’Allegro 2017). Educators can potentially play a core role in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps between people, groups, and institutions. Closing these gaps was the main goal of the Building Bridges with Language and Culture in Russia project. The project was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) program, which aims to improve US intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural …

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Review: Political Russian: An Intermediate Course In Russian Language For International Relations, National Security, And Socio-Economics, Maria Alley Jan 2021

Review: Political Russian: An Intermediate Course In Russian Language For International Relations, National Security, And Socio-Economics, Maria Alley

Russian Language Journal

The newest, seventh edition of Political Russian continues to serve the needs of students specializing in international relations, Russian affairs, politics, economics, government, national security, and related fields who wish to improve functional proficiency in reading, listening and speaking at the intermediate and advanced levels. However, the book’s reach is much wider. Several features of this course, including those new to this edition, make it a great resource for Russian-language instructors teaching a variety of courses and proficiency levels.

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Connecting Through Language And Culture Learning During The Covid-19 Pandemic: The University Of Wisconsin–Madison Russian Flagship Program, Karen Evans-Romaine, Dianna Murphy, Anna Tumarkin, Laura Marshall, Assel Almuratova Jan 2021

Connecting Through Language And Culture Learning During The Covid-19 Pandemic: The University Of Wisconsin–Madison Russian Flagship Program, Karen Evans-Romaine, Dianna Murphy, Anna Tumarkin, Laura Marshall, Assel Almuratova

Russian Language Journal

Research on the experiences of U.S. college students with emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of human interaction and relationships for students’ learning, their satisfaction with their academic coursework, and their overall mental health and well-being. Given the centrality of interaction in second language acquisition and teaching, theCOVID-19 emergency has revealed that instructional programs in languages are uniquely positioned among all academic disciplines as potential sites for human connection in emergency and non-emergency contexts alike. This article offers a case study of how one postsecondary Russian program, the UW-Madison Russian Flagship, leveraged existing affordances in the …

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From Blended Learning To Emergency Remote And Online Teaching: Successes, Challenges, And Prospects Of A Russian Language Program Before And During The Pandemic, Olga Klimova Jan 2021

From Blended Learning To Emergency Remote And Online Teaching: Successes, Challenges, And Prospects Of A Russian Language Program Before And During The Pandemic, Olga Klimova

Russian Language Journal

This paper reports on students’ perceptions of their learning experiences in this crisis-driven environment. It explores engagement at the behavioral, emotional, cognitive, agentic, and social levels. This exploration of the various levels of engagement adds to the view of engagement as a multidimensional concept whose various levels are often interconnected. They were complemented by an application of engagement facilitators and deterrents across the levels. This approach established categories that should be considered in a remote environment: interest; learning support; learner agency and autonomy; emotions; technology and external factors; social interaction; and social connection (see Table 1). The results have implications …

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Language Gains In Intensive Synchronous Online And Face-To-Face Russian Immersion Programs: A Comparison, Jason Merrill, Evgeny Dengub, Dmitrii Pastushenkov Jan 2021

Language Gains In Intensive Synchronous Online And Face-To-Face Russian Immersion Programs: A Comparison, Jason Merrill, Evgeny Dengub, Dmitrii Pastushenkov

Russian Language Journal

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most domestic language programs had to transition quickly to teaching online, often as emergency remote teaching, and many likely will retain some online offerings after the health crisis. This study’s goal was to compare the language gains of students in two intensive Russian summer language programs: 2019 face-to-face immersion and 2020 intensive synchronous online. Testing data included the results of entrance and exit oral, writing, and lexico-grammatical tests from 125 students in the face-to-face program and 59 students in the online program. The analyses revealed comparable learning gains in the 2019 and 2020 programs for …

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Make Me Talk: A Bichronous Russian Language Course For Beginners, Olga Garabrandt, Irina Six Jan 2021

Make Me Talk: A Bichronous Russian Language Course For Beginners, Olga Garabrandt, Irina Six

Russian Language Journal

This article reports on a new bichronous (combination of synchronous and asynchronous) online Russian course at the University of Kansas that was offered for the first time in Fall 2020. The article explains the key course development principles that guided the choice of the course structure, the types of activities, and the style of instruction. The article reports on teaching and assessment practices that worked well in the context of this course and could possibly serve as models for those planning to offer asynchronous and bichronous language courses. Additionally, the article summarizes the main outcomes of implementing the new bichronous …

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Teaching Russian To Visually Impaired Students During Covid-19: Technological Tools, Teaching Strategies, And Digital Materials, Giorgia Pomarolli Jan 2021

Teaching Russian To Visually Impaired Students During Covid-19: Technological Tools, Teaching Strategies, And Digital Materials, Giorgia Pomarolli

Russian Language Journal

With the transition of traditional programs to emergency remote teaching contexts due to the COVID-19 crisis, we have been faced with a challenge that primarily concerns access to instruction for all students. This unprecedented situation has reshaped the issue of inclusive education. This paper aims at furthering the debate on inclusive distance education in Russian language learning by presenting the experience of teaching Russian as a foreign language (FL) at an elementary level to a group of 20 Italian native learners, including some who are visually impaired (VI). The course took place in Autumn 2020 and was originally planned as …

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Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic: Boosting Student Engagement, Anna Kolesnikova Jan 2021

Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic: Boosting Student Engagement, Anna Kolesnikova

Russian Language Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped education in previously unimaginable ways. The shift from traditional face-to-face settings to online challenged instructors to create new ways to maintain and even increase student engagement. Engagement lessons from the pandemic fall into four main categories: 1) keeping students on track with course progress; 2) course design approaches that increase engagement; 3) engagement through interactive techniques; and 4) emergency-specific techniques. Many of these ideas will be applicable to post-pandemic teaching.

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Using Authentic Online Resources In Russian For Stem Coursework For Novice Through Superior Level Learners, Molly Thomasy Blasing Jan 2021

Using Authentic Online Resources In Russian For Stem Coursework For Novice Through Superior Level Learners, Molly Thomasy Blasing

Russian Language Journal

This article makes a case for incorporating STEM content into Russian language courses at the Novice through Superior levels of proficiency. The author presents models of asynchronous learning activities based on authentic online resources developed for a Russian for STEM pilot course taught during the COVID-19 pandemic. These lessons can be employed in online or face-to-face courses to prepare students to speak, read, write, and understand the language of STEM fields in Russian.

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Assessment Design In Online Russian Language Courses: Lessons From Covid-19, Yuliana Gunn Jan 2021

Assessment Design In Online Russian Language Courses: Lessons From Covid-19, Yuliana Gunn

Russian Language Journal

This article examines various tools, approaches, and strategies for conducting language assessments in an online environment for all language levels during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To complement tools available through the learning management system, online assessments can be retooled to be more communicative and interactive tasks, and measure language gains across the three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive and presentational). This article argues for increasing transparency in online classrooms and provides insights into initial student receptiveness and preferences for these new online assessments through an examination of anonymous student survey results.

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Memes: Learning, Bonding, And Emotional Support In Times Of Covid-19, Valentina Vinokurova Jan 2021

Memes: Learning, Bonding, And Emotional Support In Times Of Covid-19, Valentina Vinokurova

Russian Language Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic has created various challenges for language teachers. For instance, the online teaching/learning environment makes it difficult to create peer-to-peer relations in the classroom and to engage students in learning (in or outside of class). Furthermore, many students today have difficulties focusing on school assignments because they are emotionally affected by the pandemic. This paper proposes that memes can be part of the answer to these issues. Memes, a new internet genre, typically involve a witty juxtaposition of image and text that expresses their creators’ emotions about a widely relatable situation. This paper discusses a pedagogical innovation in …

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Afterword: Looking To The Future After The Pandemic, Cynthia L. Martin Jan 2021

Afterword: Looking To The Future After The Pandemic, Cynthia L. Martin

Russian Language Journal

1. Introduction At the time of publication of this special issue of Russian Language Journal, most language programs will have been teaching remotely or in a hybrid format for more than a year. This volume is a testament to the collective effort of administrators and instructors determined not to lose sight of the opportunities to learn from the pandemic and the emergency transition to remote learning. Although students are not represented here as authors, they contributed to these efforts, and hence they figure prominently in every article of the volume. Initial expectations for learning outcomes for them for online teaching …

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Full Issue Jan 2021

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

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Diversity, Equity, Access, And Inclusion: Lessons For The Russian Language Classroom, Colleen Lucey Jan 2021

Diversity, Equity, Access, And Inclusion: Lessons For The Russian Language Classroom, Colleen Lucey

Russian Language Journal

The current special issue tackles some of the most difficult pedagogical questions facing Russian language instructors today. As the articles illustrate, there is a growing awareness of the possibilities of critical pedagogy to dismantle existing hierarchies and to create inclusive spaces for learners. The authors included in this special issue provide us with what the field has long needed yet direly lacked: scholarship that offers both theoretical and practical guidance to integrate diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) in curricula and study abroad programming. A number of the authors turn, rightfully so, to existing research by foreign-language specialists who have …

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Who Are(N’T) Our Students? The Gender And Ethnoracial Distribution Of U.S. Bachelor’S Degrees In Russian Language And Literature Over Twenty Years, From 1999–2000 To 2018–2019, Dianna Murphy, Hadis Ghaedi Jan 2021

Who Are(N’T) Our Students? The Gender And Ethnoracial Distribution Of U.S. Bachelor’S Degrees In Russian Language And Literature Over Twenty Years, From 1999–2000 To 2018–2019, Dianna Murphy, Hadis Ghaedi

Russian Language Journal

This article is a report on the gender and race or ethnicity of students who earned bachelor’s degrees in Russian language and literature in the United States over a twenty-year period, from 1999–2000 to 2018–2019, as either a first or second major (N = 9,161). This study complements national data available through organizations such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which, through the Humanities Indicators project (http://www.humanitiesindicators.org), publishes information on the gender and ethnoracial distribution of bachelor’s degrees in languages other than English (LOTEs) together but not for individual languages (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, n.d.). This …

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Rectifying Wikipedia Racial Bias In A Russian Language Classroom, Veronika Trotter, Svitlana Melnyk Jan 2021

Rectifying Wikipedia Racial Bias In A Russian Language Classroom, Veronika Trotter, Svitlana Melnyk

Russian Language Journal

Over the last decade, minority representation has emerged as a subject of critical self-reflection in the field of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES), prompting discussions that have centered on both the limited participation of minority populations within the community of SEEES scholars and students and the relative lack of attention that minority communities receive in SEEES teaching and research. Efforts to grapple with both issues became more urgent in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the massive protests for racial justice throughout the United States and beyond. Major centers for SEEES teaching and research have organized well-attended …

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Teaching And Learning Indigenous Languages Of The Russian Federation, Hilah Kohen, Irina Sadovina, Tetyana Dzyadevych, Dylan Charter, Anna Gomboeva, Lenore A. Grenoble, Jessica Kantarovich, Rossina Soyan Jan 2021

Teaching And Learning Indigenous Languages Of The Russian Federation, Hilah Kohen, Irina Sadovina, Tetyana Dzyadevych, Dylan Charter, Anna Gomboeva, Lenore A. Grenoble, Jessica Kantarovich, Rossina Soyan

Russian Language Journal

On March 20, 2021, one of my students sent a message through his college network: “Happy New Year! Happy Naýryz! Наурыз құтты бол- сын! Naýryz qutty bolsyn! S Vesennim prazdnikom Nauryz! ... Remember to celebrate with friends and family (family meaning chosen, adoptive, or biological, etc.)!” This student grew up in a Spanish-speaking foster family and recently, after a DNA test, discovered his ancestral roots in Bashkiria, Tatarstan, and Kazakhstan. He now wants to learn more about his origins, and he is looking for sources to learn about non-Russian languages and cultures in the Russian Federation (RF) and former USSR. …

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Implementing Inclusive Secondary Russian Language Exchange Programs, Anna Stewart, Rebecca Berman, Emily Olmstead, Ashlynn Cobb, Emily Matts Henry Jan 2021

Implementing Inclusive Secondary Russian Language Exchange Programs, Anna Stewart, Rebecca Berman, Emily Olmstead, Ashlynn Cobb, Emily Matts Henry

Russian Language Journal

This discussion is a case study of the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program’s overseas and virtual Russian language offerings. The study also provides considerations and examples for embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into the program design. Special attention is given to identifying Russian language opportunities for American high school students, expanding accessibility, centering program materials on inclusion, and embedding perspectives of the robust regional diversity within the Russian-speaking world into the NSLI-Y program. While the NSLI-Y program partners with many organizations in various locations, examples provided here focus on NSLI-Y programs implemented by American Councils for International …

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Review: Da!: A Practical Guide To Russian Grammar, Erik Houle Jan 2021

Review: Da!: A Practical Guide To Russian Grammar, Erik Houle

Russian Language Journal

The Russian contribution to the Routledge Concise Grammars series is Da!: A Practical Guide to Russian Grammar by Tatiana Filosova. Different from the reference grammars more-advanced students and scholars of Russian may turn to, this book’s intended audience is the less-experienced language learner. Those familiar with the first edition know that within each of the book’s thirty-one chapters, the author suggests the relevance of each chapter’s content according to three levels of proficiency: elementary (referred to as level one), lower intermediate (level two), and upper intermediate (level three). Each level is given a description based on approximate equivalents with and …

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Review: Russian In Plain English: A Very Basic Russian Starter For Complete Beginners, Veta Chitnev Jan 2021

Review: Russian In Plain English: A Very Basic Russian Starter For Complete Beginners, Veta Chitnev

Russian Language Journal

Natalia Parker’s Russian in Plain English: A Very Basic Russian Starter for Complete Beginners is designed for beginning students and independent learners who are not familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. The textbook’s primary aim is to help students develop skills in reading aloud in Russian with correct pronunciation. The textbook is divided into ten units. Each unit centers on particular letters and sounds rather than on a specific theme. Every unit includes an objective (with the title “What’s the Plan”), information on Russian letters and the sounds they denote, reading exercises, speaking activities that can be used individually or in …

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Review: “The Nose”: A Stylistic And Critical Companion To Nikolai Gogol’S Story, Sara Jo Powell Jan 2021

Review: “The Nose”: A Stylistic And Critical Companion To Nikolai Gogol’S Story, Sara Jo Powell

Russian Language Journal

Ksana Blank’s companion to Gogol’s “The Nose” is an excellent new resource for students of Russian language and literature. The book consists of two sections: the first, a series of annotations to the story’s text, and the second, several short essays on a wide range of related topics. Finally, readers are provided with a carefully selected bibliography of secondary sources, which will be particularly valuable for those new to Gogol research and criticism.

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Full Issue Jan 2021

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

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