This is the introduction to a SEEB series organized by Ani Kokobobo, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Kansas.
A funny thing happened to Eliot Borenstein while he was writing his book on conspiracy theory and contemporary Russia: my obscure little corner of Russian cultural studies suddenly threatened to become relevant.
Preparing 21st-century learners with the skills to use Russian in a variety of social and rhetorical settings in which they can communicate meaning effectively requires a self study of existing language programs. Thomas Jesús Garza shares his methods.
Anne Lounsbery offers some tips for reading and teaching Chekhov in an era marked by moral catastrophe.
Except Princess Olga, Elizabeth, and Catherine II, there were few women discussed in the Russian civilization and culture course that Rachel Stauffer taught. There was little discussion of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class in Russia’s artistic, literary, and cultural history. In light of recent events, she has decided that she can no longer continue to teach this course without devoting more time to these topics.
Rather than reading the poetry of Anna Akhmatova as discrete entities, Sarah Krive shares her experience reading them as they once were, situated in journals, newspapers, and small anthologies of their original publication. She wants to see how they appeared on the page, what other texts and images surrounded them. Remediating is a way of trying to understand, in part, “crucial cultural information about how different components of the periodical’s readership were intended to interact with its content.”
Cassio de Oliveira introduces us to the readership of the Soviet magazine 30 Days (30 dnei, 1925-1941). Better known nowadays for having been the venue for the publication in installments of Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov’s famous novels The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf (Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev and Zolotoi telenok, published in 1928 and 1931 respectively), 30 Days also holds a unique place in the Soviet publishing environment between the NEP Era and the First Five-Year Plan.
An interview with Boris Dralyuk (Executive Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books) and Maya Vinokour (Assistant Professor at NYU and Editor, All the Russias’ Blog).
José Vergara writes of his discussions with prisoners at Oakhill, a men’s minimum-security prison located about twenty minutes south of Madison, Wisconsin, where he witnessed immense talents gone unnoticed by society and a pure desire to learn and engage with new material that rivals that of any so-called traditional college student.