Photo by Eileen Barroso, Columbia University.

By Masha Udensiva-Brenner Catharine Theimer in NepomnyashchyProfile A closer look at the Harriman Institute’s first female director and 2012 Alumna of the Year.

Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, the first woman to first comprehensive book on the Abram Tertz works of the become director of the Harriman Institute, is described by Russian dissident writer Andrei Sinyavsky and edited the first- friends, students, and colleagues as a “sparkplug,” a woman ever English-language volume on the Russian poet Alexander with a sense of adventure, infinite ideas, and the capacity Pushkin’s African heritage, she is known for exploring to undertake (and accomplish) even the most outlandish- topics—such as Russian chat rooms that focus on the English seeming endeavors. An innovative scholar who wrote the writer Jane Austen and President Vladimir Putin’s fashion

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A scene from Václav Havel’s adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The 2006 Untitled Theater Company #61 production at Miller Theatre was sponsored by the Harriman Institute and the Barnard Slavic and Theatre Departments. It was codirected by Amy Trompetter of Barnard and Sergei Zemtsov of the Moscow Art Theatre School.

harriman magazine ­­ | 25 ­­ course her first year (1969–70), but Brown He wanted out of the Soviet Union, and he went on strike against the bombings in Cambodia during her second semester, and was considering scuba diving to Turkey she says the classes “just stopped,” so she “spoke very little Russian.” The summer of under the Black Sea. 1970, she travelled to the Soviet Union for the first time, on the pilot program of the American Institute for Foreign Study. choices—that would not occur to many was spent commuting from her hometown, The group had plans to spend most of her contemporaries. Nepomnyashchy’s Rumson, New Jersey), she voiced her of its time divided between Moscow and students emphasize the “democratic” disappointment with the fact that few Sochi. While it was in Sochi, a cholera approach with which she treats people— modern scholars explore beyond their epidemic hit the Soviet Union. In typical putting undergraduates, graduate students, niches: “The kind of time and thought, Soviet fashion, the authorities left everyone and clerical workers on equal footing with and intellectual independence that would in the dark. Nepomnyashchy and her even the most distinguished scholars in allow you to follow your instincts and take compatriots stayed put—Sochi was one of her field—and see her as a mentor who your attention away from the immediate the only cities not quarantined—without will always “have your back.” But, most goal, is getting lost.” Nepomnyashchy, any knowledge of what was going on and importantly, Nepomnyashchy is someone who has always followed her instincts, is seemingly no way out. (They tried twice to who sees connections between seemingly thankful to be in the type of university visit Tbilisi and were mysteriously denied unrelated topics, and the efforts she setting where students have the resources entry, one time even making it as far as undertook during her eight-year tenure to develop a wider perspective. She sees the the Georgian border on a rickety tourist as director (2001 to 2009) have broadened Harriman Institute, in particular, as “an bus.) It was there, on the beach, that the Harriman Institute’s scope in the outpost” where heated cross-disciplinary Nepomnyashchy met Viacheslav (Slava) areas of culture, literature, and the arts, discussion still exists. Nepomnyashchy, the man who would and deepened its ties to Central Asia and Though she has no direct ties—“My eventually become her husband. “We were the Caucasus. childhood had nothing to do with Russia, brought together by a cholera epidemic,” “It used to be a given that as an educated I have no Russian blood, and in grade she reflected (Slava, who had planned to person, you would be broadly educated,” school I studied French”—Nepomnyashchy be in Yalta, was only in Sochi because of Nepomnyashchy said over lunch at has been drawn to Russia since she was a the quarantine). Columbia University’s Faculty House. little girl, finally pursuing her interest at That summer, Nepomnyashchy em- Sitting next to a window overlooking Pembroke College in Brown University, barked on what she figured was just a fling, Manhattan, where she has lived since which was known for having one of the but was unknowingly igniting a seven-year she started her second year as a graduate best Russian and French departments in uphill battle to get Slava to the United student at Columbia in 1974 (her first the country. She took a Russian language States. “He was a rebel with romantic

From left to right: Catharine Nepomnyashchy and Slava Nepomnyashchy during their first summer together (Sochi, August 1970); Catharine Nepomnyashchy and Slava Nepomnyashchy in their Upper West Side apartment in the late 1970s, within the first years of Slava’s arrival to the United States; Olga Nepomnyashchy at the Requiem for Anna Politkovskaya, a puppet performance commemorating the life and death of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (created and directed by Amy Trompetter, October 7, 2007). Watch the performance at http://vimeo.com/793471.

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notions,” she related. “He wanted out of Nepomnyashchy currently serves on the editorial boards of the Soviet Union, and he was consider- Slavic Review, Novyi zhurnal, and La Revue Russe. ing scuba diving to Turkey under the Black Sea.” He spoke “perfect English,” She was president of the American Association of Teachers which was a plus, and was arrested for of Slavic and East European Language (AATSEEL) from being caught in a “Berezka Bar” (a place 2005 until 2007. designated for foreigners) on the morning Nepomnyashchy left Russia. He was soon She has chaired the Executive Committee of the Slavic Division let out, and a month after Nepomnyashchy of the Modern Language Association and served a number of returned to the United States, started send- ing her letters, initiating a correspondence terms on the MLA Delegate Assembly. that would last years. “I was nineteen, I She has been on the Board of Directors of AAASS since 2003. wasn’t planning on getting married until well into my thirties, so this was all very She is recipient of the 2011 AATSEEL Award for Outstanding abstract,” Nepomnyashchy confided. But, the following summer she returned to Service to the Profession. Russia, spent two months with Slava, and decided to marry him. A wedding, though, was impossible. Slava’s father, who was head of the personnel department at Bykovo Airport, “had no desire to see his son emi- grate to the United States.” When word got out that he wanted to marry an American, Slava was sent to Siberia, “basically into a punishment battalion,” explained Nepomnyashchy. He was released two years later and became a refusenik. She waited for him to get out of the Soviet Union, finishing college and launching a career in academia. Nepomnyashchy was not always on the path to become a Russian literature professor. Her dream was to be a United Nations interpreter. After graduating from Brown, she decided to get a Ph.D. in Russian at Columbia University (thinking she needed it to work at the UN), but her adviser at Brown, a Pushkin specialist named Sam Driver, told her: “If you say on your application that you want to study language, they’ll throw it in the waste basket.” She was nonetheless accepted to the doctoral program at Columbia and studied under the late Rufus Mathewson, then chair of the Slavic Department. He ul- A scene from Amy timately convinced her “that it was okay Trompetter’s puppet to study literature, and stay in academia.” adaptation of The Golden A large part of Nepomnyashchy’s Cockerel, which premiered graduate career was spent running on May 3, 2009, during between the Barnard Slavic Department the 100th anniversary of (where many of the graduate courses were the Ballet Rousses series.

harriman magazine ­­ | 27 ­­ Catharine Nepomnyashchy with Mikhail Gorbachev during his visit to the Harriman Institute on March 11, 2007.

held) and the School of International the Ulbandus Review. Ulbandus, which January 1977, while Nepomnyashchy Affairs (SIA). At that time, the Columbia means “big exotic wandering animal,” a was studying for her comprehensive Slavic Department and the Russian term introduced to the Old Slavs by the examinations, she received an unexpected Institute (which became the W. Averell Old Goths, began as a vague concept and phone call: “It was a journalist announcing Harriman Institute in 1982) were both materialized into a difficult undertaking. that my fiancé was getting out, asking me in SIA and very much involved with one In addition to rigorous editing, there was what I thought about it.” Slava had left a another. The Institute hosted brown bag manual labor—“typing and retyping, personal message for journalist Tom Kent lectures every Tuesday and Thursday, running to the library, and cutting and at the Associated Press, who had gotten to “which everyone came to,” and Nepom- pasting,” as Nepomnyashchy described know him well while covering the couple’s nyashchy remembers it as a sort of utopia, in a 2002 article for Ulbandus, which story. Kent, though, was on leave in the “a wonderful place for someone who did is still in existence nearly 40 years later. United States, and another journalist not want to be stuck in one discipline.” There were also all sorts of fundraising took the call; without his knowledge, he As a graduate student, Nepomnyashchy efforts—bake sales, sales of Soviet posters turned Slava’s message into an article. And longed for a greater sense of community and knickknacks—to keep the journal so, through the media, Nepomnyashchy between her colleagues, whom she felt afloat (“Sometimes I feel like I spent most discovered that her fiancé would be in the were somewhat fragmented and unfocused. of the Ulbandus years mass-producing United States later that week. Over lunch at a “mediocre” Mexican brownies”). The project became a focal By U.S. law, the couple had to be restaurant, she and Michael Naydan, point during Nepomnyashchy’s years as a married within 90 days of Slava’s arrival. another student in the Slavic Department, Ph.D. student. Meanwhile, Nepomnyashchy was “a conceived of a community project— During this time, the struggle to get her nervous wreck”; she joked that letting Slava an academic journal run by graduate fiancé, Slava, out of the Soviet Union— out during her exams “was the final revenge students and focused on Slavic languages false hopes, failed invitations, pleas to the of the Soviet government.” But, she passed and cultures—that eventually became State Department—persisted. Finally, in the comps, and two weeks later, on the 90th and final day of the allotted period, they were married. Perhaps the most exciting period in September 11 sparked the realization that Nepomnyashchy’s early career came during the years surrounding the fall of the United States suffers from a strategically the Iron Curtain. After years of having her visa denied, Nepomnyashchy was finally dangerous shortage of regional specialists. allowed entry and began taking frequent

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trips to the Soviet Union. At that time, an intense collaboration developed between In Harriman style, we were very hands on. American and Russian scholars. In 1989, during a frigid Moscow winter, she became We paid for the entire event, there was a friends with the now prominent Russian journalist Nadezhda Azhgikhina and her dinner, and Gorbachev picked the menu. husband, the late investigative journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin. Azhgikhina was in the process of finishing her graduate work Moscow Coup, and the 41st anniversary her priority. Along with a variety of panels at Moscow State University and remembers of his meeting Nepomnyashchy in about the regional and transnational hearing a lot about Nepomnyashchy Sochi.) The same year as the adoption, implications of the event, she initiated the through mutual acquaintances. The two Nepomnyashchy became director of the “Director’s Seminars,” an ongoing series of instantly connected after she spent a week Harriman Institute. roundtables that would focus on questions driving Nepomnyashchy around Moscow, Her opening reception never took about the field of area studies. taking her to the houses of various Russian place. It was scheduled for the evening of On the six-month anniversary of writers. “It was an intense and happy time September 11, 2001. That morning, she the attacks, Nepomnyashchy arranged in our lives,” said Azhgikhina, recalling took the elevator to the top floor of the for Mikhail Gorbachev to speak at the the array of projects she started with School of International and Public Affairs Institute. “I felt that one way to make Nepomnyashchy on topics previously building for a meeting and watched the my mark was to have an unexpected or neglected by literary scholars—such as first tower of the World Trade Center particularly big Harriman lecture.” To the feminism and contemporary Russian fall. September 11, she would write in best of her knowledge, Gorbachev had culture. The pair were together in August the February 2002 Harriman Institute never spoken at a private university before, 1991, during the Moscow coup—a Newsletter, “sparked the realization or to a public audience in New York City. transformative moment for both of them— that the United States suffers from “In Harriman style, we were very hands on. and are currently finishing a book about a strategically dangerous shortage of We paid for the entire event, there was a the event, which is dedicated to their youth regional specialists.” The event was also dinner, and Gorbachev picked the menu.” and their hopes beyond the Cold War. an important geopolitical moment for The Gorbachev lecture set the tone for The summer of 2001, after an ordeal of Russia: Vladimir Putin was the first world the rest of her directorship—“The ante equal magnitude to getting Slava out of the leader to call George W. Bush after the was up about visibility,” she said. Through- Soviet Union, Nepomnyashchy and her attacks. Nepomnyashchy emphasized that out her tenure, Nepomnyashchy brought husband adopted a two-year-old girl, their this call “put Russia back on the world in various diplomats, luminaries, and daughter Olga, from Russia. (Sadly, Slava stage.” During the initial months of her politicians, including Russia’s Minister passed away only a decade later, on August directorship, responding to 9/11 in the of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov (who 18, 2011—the 20th anniversary of the Harriman Institute’s programming became was then the ambassador to the UN), the

From left to right: Catharine Nepomnyashchy with Mikhail Gorbachev during his March 11, 2007, visit to the Harriman Institute. Roman Khidekel, Leonid Lubianitsky, Russian dancer, choreographer, and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, Regina Khidekel, Olga Nepomnyashchy, and Catharine Nepomnyashchy at the opening reception for “People,” an exhibit of photographs by Leonid Lubianitsky, curated by Regina Khidekel. Olga Nepomnyashchy, flanked by her parents, Slava Nepomnyashchy and Catharine Nepomnyashchy, during a faculty trip to Turkmenistan in 2008.

harriman magazine ­­ | 29 ­­ mounting art exhibits that complemented But one of her greatest accomplishments the Institute’s lectures and conferences. At the beginning of her second term, she as director was the versatility and creativity oversaw the redesign of the Institute’s interior, bringing in architects to open she brought to the Institute’s programming. up the once cluttered, dusty office (as a former student described it) and create a space where the Institute mounts art famous Albanian writer and poet Ismail tennial of the founding of St. Petersburg. exhibits three to four times a year. The first Kadare, and the Nobel Prize–winning The series contained a segment devoted Harriman exhibit was in March 2005—a Hungarian author Imre Kertesz. She also to ballet, and Garafola partnered with the collection of Horst Tappe photographs collaborated with the Columbia Univer- Institute to stage a performance, a lecture, titled, “Nabokov in Montreux” that went sity World Leaders Forum to host leaders and demonstration on the choreographer up in conjunction with other events cele- ranging from Russia’s President Vladimir George Balanchine by the ballet dancer brating the 50th anniversary of Nabokov’s Putin and Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Suki Schorer, among other things. “Cathy most famous novel, Lolita (Nepomnyash- Berdymukhammedov to Georgia’s Mikheil is someone who makes you feel that you chy, a Nabokov enthusiast, is currently Saakashvili and Estonia’s Toomas Hendrik can just run with something, and that working on a book titled Nabokov and His Ilves. But one of her greatest accomplish- generosity of spirit allows people to Enemies: Terms of Engagement). During the ments as director was the versatility and flourish,” said Garafola. She continued her 2009 Ballets Russes series, the Institute creativity she brought to the Institute’s involvement with the Harriman Institute displayed reproductions from Diaghilev’s programming. “The thing that was most throughout Nepomnyashchy’s tenure, co- stage designs, titled “Homage to Diaghilev: important to me, and that I’m kind of organizing events such as a series devoted Enduring Legacy.” proud of from being director, was trying to the 100th anniversary of the Ballets In 2006, when Columbia’s President to involve as many people as possible from Russes. She stressed how the collaboration Lee C. Bollinger invited Czech playwright different parts of the University.” provided opportunity for “ballet people who and former president Vaclav Havel One such person is Lynn Garafola, don’t necessarily self-identify as Russianists for a seven-week residency of lectures, Professor of Dance at Barnard College, to be in touch with a broader field.” interviews, conversations, and other who first worked with Nepomnyashchy Nepomnyashchy strove to represent events organized by the Columbia Arts in 2003, during a series of lectures and the versatility of every issue in her pro- Initiative, Nepomnyashchy involved the performances in celebration of the tercen- gramming. One way she did this was by Harriman Institute in the heart of the

Acting director Kimberly Marten presenting Catharine Nepomnyashchy with the 2012 Alumna of the Year Award at the Harriman Institute Alumni Reception, October 25, 2012 (photo: Lynn Saville, Columbia University).

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planning, famously collaborating with concert,” said Harwood. He can still noted Cooley, adding that “faculty trips Columbia’s Miller Theatre and Barnard picture Nepomnyashchy dancing in the are a logistical undertaking and very theater professor Amy Trompetter to stage front row: “I imagined her channeling challenging to put together.” Kimberly a puppet production of Havel’s play The Stevie Nicks; she was so into it.” Marten, acting director of the Harriman Beggar’s Opera, and bringing in speakers Nepomnyashchy, though, extended Institute (2012–2013) was also a part to complement the event. “The program- the Institute’s focus in more ways than of the 2008 delegation to Turkmenistan. ming Harriman did around Havel’s visit expanding activities in the cultural sphere. She sees Nepomnyashchy’s ability to completely transformed it, and this was “Cathy made a real attempt to open up connect with people, and her limitless largely a product of Cathy’s vision,” re- the Institute to the Eurasian region,” reserve of ideas as “an inspiration,” and marked Christopher W. Harwood, a Czech said Alexander Cooley, Tow Professor of marvels that while traveling to Georgia or specialist and former graduate student of Political Science at Barnard College who Central Asia for research, everyone she met Nepomnyashchy’s, who is currently a recently published a book on Central “seemed to know and ask about Cathy.” lecturer in Czech at Columbia and a teacher Asia, “to take it seriously, to understand Likely, this is because of Nepomnyashchy’s of hers (Nepomnyashchy has a fascination the dynamics.” Cooley was part of a ability to draw people in. “One of the best with languages and over the course of her delegation of Columbia faculty, initiated things about knowing Cathy is that there career has taken Czech, Georgian, and and organized by Nepomnyashchy, is always something going on with her Serbo-Croatian, among others—“when I which travelled to Turkmenistan in both that’s generally more interesting than die I will probably be studying some bizarre 2008 and 2009, in an effort to establish whatever is going on with you,” said her language,” she said, “maybe Papiamento”). cooperation on education reform between former advisee Karin Isaacson, for whom Harwood admires the vastness of Nepom- Columbia and Turkmenistan and to Nepomnyashchy became a mentor and nyashchy’s imagination and her ability to bring over Turkmen students to study at close friend. “You walk into a room with “see potentialities.” He was particularly Columbia. He and Nepomnyashchy also her and you can’t help getting pulled into struck by her idea to invite the historically took a faculty trip to Georgia, visiting the whatever is already in progress.” significant dissident Czech rock band breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South The Plastic People of the Universe during Ossetia a few months before the Russia- Havel’s visit. The event was unique in the Georgia War. “These trips emphasized academic world: “It’s one thing having Harriman’s strong sense of being an academics in a room talking to one another important institutional actor in post-Soviet about The Plastic People of the Universe; states, and they probably wouldn’t have it’s another thing to have them all at a rock happened without Cathy as director,”

Catharine and Olga Nepomnyashchy at the 2012 Harriman Institute Alumni Reception (photo: Lynn Saville, Columbia University).

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