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TheAATSEEL NEWSLETTER American Association of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages Contents Message from the President ...............1 Letter from the Editor ...........................1 Recent Publications ..............................1 State of the Field ...................................2 Member News .......................................7 Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Grammar But Were Afraid to Ask ......................................8 2009 AATSEEL Awards ......................10 Belarusica .............................................12 Cross Cultural Communication .......13 Graduate Student Forum ...................15 Psychology of Language Learning .............................................17 Summer Programs ..............................19 Professional Opportunities ...............22 Volume 53 Issue 1 February 2010 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 53, Issue 1 February 2010 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER EDITORIAL STAFF AATSEEL POINTS OF CONTACT Editor: BETTY LOU LEAVER President: Assistant Editor: ANNA JACOBSON CARYL EMERSON Contributing Editors: VALERY BELYANIN Princeton University SIBELAN FORRESTER [email protected] President-Elect: ELENA DENISOVA-SCHMIDT NANCY CONDEE ALINA ISRAELI University of Pittsburgh ALLA NEDASHKIVSKA [email protected] MILA SASKOVA-PIERCE Past President: RACHEL STAUFFER SIBELAN FORRESTER MOLLY THOMASY BLASING Swarthmore College NINA WIEDA [email protected] Vice-Presidents: CURT WOOLHISER JULIE BUCKLER NL Coordinates: Harvard University [email protected] Editor: [email protected] JULIE A. CASSIDAY Assistant Editor: [email protected] Williams College Layout/Advertising: [email protected] [email protected] LYNNE DEBENEDETTE AATSEEL Office: Brown University PATRICIA ZODY [email protected] Executive Director, AATSEEL JAMES LAVINE P. O. Box 569 Bucknell University Beloit, WI 53512-0569 USA [email protected] Phone: 608-361-9697 JANE SHUFFELTON Fax: 608-363-7129 Brighton HS, Rochester, NY (retired) [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] VALERIA SOBOL Layout/Advertising: CDL Services University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign [email protected] Submitting Copy: Editor, SLAVIC & EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL: GERALD JANECEK (1) Foreign languages are accommodated if prepared on Ma- University of Kentucky cIntosh with a truetype or postscript font that can be shared. [email protected] (2) Eps or pdf with embedded fonts, Indesign, PageMaker, Editor, AATSEEL NEWSLETTER: and Quark Express documents can be accommodated. BETTY LOU LEAVER [email protected] (3) Please do not double-space between sentences in elec- Conference Program Committee Chair: tronic submissions. ALEXANDER BURRY (4) Please query the editor about formatting, content, graph- Ohio State University ics, or language. [email protected] Executive Director: (5) The AATSEEL Newsletter is not copyrighted. Authors PATRICIA L. ZODY wishing to protect their contributions should copyright their Beloit College materials. [email protected] Conference Manager: (6) Full specifications are available at the AATSEEL web site. DIANNA MURPHY University of Wisconsin-Madison [email protected] AATSEEL Web site AATSEEL Web Master: For current online information about DAVID GALLOWAY AATSEEL and its activities, visit AATSEEL Hobart and William Smith Colleges on the web: [email protected] http://www.aatseel.org February 2010 Vol. 53, Issue 1 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Message from the are like music or sports: they are not claim that all libraries of the future will just stories, but feed the whole body. be electronic only (although we do have AATSEEL President Second, if academic professionals must one university here in California that has exist and if they are obliged to meet only an electronic library -- wonder how The calendar year 2010, our sched- with one another at all, Tolstoy would the students like that). uled “year without an AATSEEL Con- be wholly in favor of smaller gatherings I am sorry I missed folks at the con- ference,” also marks the centennial of with more interactive formats, rather ference. We had too much family trials that year when the world began to do along the lines of our recent AATSEEL and angst going on at the time for me to without Leo Tolstoy. Accordingly, our innovations (workshops, readings, mas- join you in Philly, but I do hope to see annual gathering in Los Angeles in ter classes, roundtables). And finally, he everyone at the next annual meeting. January 2011 will feature, in addition would be delighted that the Word (at I would like to thank all those who to William Todd’s rescheduled Class on which he was such a master) no longer have written State of the Field articles the Rise of the Novel, a master class by stands naked and alone. In his final and especially Nancy Condee for scout- Irina Paperno (UC-Berkeley) on teach- decade he became acquainted with the ing them out and shepherding them in. ing Tolstoyan themes and genres. Be- gramophone and moving picture, and AATSEEL members tell me that they tween now and the Battle of Borodino was thrilled with the potential of both appreciate them. Centennial in 2012, the Slavic world for sharing human experience. In fact, Our columns are disappearing, and will be celebrating — or subjecting interdiscipinarity is built into our master it is not page space. It is for lack of to criticism — this very great writer writers — even the most curmudgeonly, editors. We are currently looking for on all topics related to peace and war. as Tolstoy is often taken to be —because editors for the Ukrainian column and the Tolstoy is so dynamic, diverse, outra- above all they wanted to communicate Russian at Work column. If you have the geous, and well-documented by his own loudly and widely. Perhaps we can take time and interest to edit either column, hand that almost any position on these heart over these durable facts in this please let me know. We could not find subjects can be extracted from his life centennial year. an editor for the technology column, or writings. His Sevastopol Stories can and I assume that is because tech is no be read equally as chauvinistic exer- Caryl Emerson longer new. It is now run-of-the-mill, cises on behalf of the patriotic Russian so probably such a column is no longer soldier-peasant and as anti-war tales exciting. However, there are untapped of unprecedented frankness. War and Letter from the Editor areas, such as Serbo-Croatian and Bul- Peace and Hadji Murad glorify battles garian. I know there are folks working and bonding in military brotherhood As I write to you, I have taken some in these areas, so if you have an idea for with as much epic fervor as Tolstoy’s annual leave town and flown off to the a column (any column, these or others), pacifist tracts condemn both. Of course cold (and snowy) Baltic Sea where I am please let me know. Tolstoy had no fondness for the “profes- teaching a course in Second Language Wishing you all a great winter/ soriat” and little hope that wisdom could Research Methods for undergradu- spring semester. Keep warm! (I’m be imparted through any of the rituals ates at LCC International University definitely trying to do that as I type with that make up our daily academic lives. in Klaipeda, Lithuania. I did the same frozen fingers.) But assuming he could suspend those thing last year at the coldest time of year prejudices temporarily: what might here (quite a contrast with my sunny Betty Lou Leaver Tolstoy have to say about the state of California) at this time. It reminds me our field today? a bit of time spent in Siberia, except of Three things, I suggest. First (be- course Siberia has more snow. (As for cause Tolstoy was a passionate creator cold, once you dive below zero degrees RECENT of literary fiction until the end of his centrigrade, it does not much matter PUBLICatIONS days), he would be gratified that the whether it is 10 below or 75 below, the Russian literary canon now belongs latter being the temperature I endured The Recent Publications column in- to the world — to a degree that no -- and perversely enjoyed -- in Siberia cludes books published in 2008-2009. other national literature has managed many years ago. Authors and publishers are invited to to achieve. We can still fill up audito- I hope you have enjoyed having the submit information about their new riums with hundreds of students from paper version of the newsletter back. publications. every discipline who know they need to We have been “papering” for those read at least one novel by Tolstoy and who especially wanted it -- libraries, Culture Dostoevsky, with an urgency that other advertisers, and a surprising number of Kohn, Michael. 2009. Russia (Country very great European writers (Goethe, readers who still do not “do” electrons -- Guide). Schiller, Flaubert, George Eliot) cannot for three issues now, and it seems to be Lonely Planet. match. Russian literature and culture meeting a need. So much for those who Continued on page 16 1 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 53, Issue 1 February 2010 Editors: Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh & State OF THE FIELD Sibelan Forrester Swarthmore College Russian Thinkers from contours of a firmly post-Soviet intel- new dimensions in the history of a lectual landscape. The high-water mark Russian liberalism, far beyond the rigid the Other Shore: of Russian thought in the Anglophonic schematics of Isaiah Berlin (the main History of Ideas Today world was reached with the convergence source for Stoppard). of two events in 2002: the invasion of In literary studies scholars have The editors have invited Boris Wolfson the English-language stage by Belinsky, been learning better to weave intel- (Amherst College) to serve as Guest Herzen, Bakunin and company in Tom lectual history with aesthetic analysis Editor for the newest State of the Field Stoppard’s major dramatic trilogy The to reveal finer patterns than hitherto column (see previous columns on poetry Coast of Utopia, and the election as were evident. A notable new study of a in the October 2009 issue and film stud- Archbishop of Canterbury of Rowan well-known philosopher-poet is Judith ies in the April 2009 issue).