April 2009 Newsletter
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TheAATSEEL NEWSLETTER American Association of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages Contents Message from the President ...............3 Letter from the Editor ...........................3 State of the Field ...................................7 Member News .......................................9 Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Grammar But Were Afraid to Ask ....................................10 Belarusica .............................................12 Russian at Work ..................................13 Czech Corner .......................................14 Recent Publications ............................14 Cross Cultural Communications .....15 Graduate Student Forum ...................16 Psychology of Language Learning .............................................17 Summer Programs ..............................18 Professional Opportunities ...............24 Volume 52 Issue 2 April 2009 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 52, Issue 2 April 2009 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 NANCY CONDEE [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 Swarthmore College [email protected] NINA WIEDA 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 KEITH LANGSTON P. O. Box 569 University of Georgia 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] BORIS WOLFSON Amherst College Layout/Advertising: CDL Services [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 2 April 2009 Vol. 52, Issue 2 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER while for more people. Here, trying to Message from the get bigger can coexist with capitalizing Letter from the Editor AATSEEL President on our cozy size. The Annual Conven- Dear Readers, tion in Philadelphia this coming Decem- If all goes well, this issue will be Three years ago NewsNet, the ber will have a number of innovations the last electronic-only newsletter. I AAASS equivalent of the AATSEEL tailored to smallish gatherings: 8:00 remember when we went all-electronic, Newsletter, featured a column by “coffees” with senior scholars; partici- there was a lot of enthusiasm for mov- Ronald Suny and Dmitry Gorenburg patory master classes on literary history ing ahead with technology. (We had a titled “Where are We Going? What Is or theory; workshops intended not for technology in teaching column, too, at To Be Done?” (August 2006, v. 46.4). the presentation of finished papers but that time.) Time have changed, how- Among the confusions, challenges, and for the discussion of some passionate, ever, and technology is now a routine suggestions for the field raised in that small-scale, scholarly pursuit-in-prog- part of our lives. The column has gone excellent essay were some problems we ress. In this age of intimate interactive by the wayside; such information is recognize as routine for social scien- access to everything, we should not no longer novel. As for the newslet- tists: global versus regional approaches be tethered to the monologue-lecture ter itself, however, some people never to our subject matter; Eurasia versus droned out in a big hall — except, per- made the conversion from paper to Russocentrism versus Eastern Europe haps, at celebratory bonding moments. electrons. Over time, we have found that as political and geographical entities. Finally, the future of the field. A many previously avid readers have also There was also discussion of problems financial nightmare such as this nation dropped by the wayside. Libraries, too, that are also routine for us: the upgrad- has been through the past half-year is often prefer paper formats still. So, the ing of websites; the internationalization sobering. Familiar paradigms, and with Executive Committee at the 2008 An- of professional journals to include not them our sense of the possible, can nual Meeting decided to return to paper only reviews of non-English works but change massively overnight. Perhaps this fall. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, essays in languages other than English; some of you saw the “Washington we are going in a direction that is the op- the diversification of conference formats Diarist” column by Leon Wieseltier in posite of the current trend in publishing, so that the “scholarly panel + discus- March 18, 2009 issue of The New Re- and the ease of finding a printer-mailer sant” is not the only way to share one’s public entitled: “The Tolstoy Bailout.” combination has become a relic from personality or work. AAASS warmed Wieseltier takes to task all those nervous the past. I would like to ask any read- to the idea of a “theme” for the entire funding agencies and well-wishers who ers who know of any inexpensive and conference, and to special forums on insisted that the humanities are “imprac- reliable printers who also do bulk mail individual prize-winning books (in this tical” —and thus people who love them distribution to let me know. I will be case, Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Cen- will have to make them “relevant.” He searching for a replacement for Crouse tury), both of which were well received. has some wonderful lines: “The crisis in Printing, which formerly printed and Re-reading that column in 2009, I began which we find ourselves was the work distributed the newsletter but no longer to think of Where We (AATSEEL) Are of practical men. The securitization of does our sort of thing. Any place in the Now. mortgages was not conceived by a head country is okay because most printers First, geopolitical crises of nomen- in the clouds. No poet cost anybody now use digital files. And this is what I clature have less impact on us. Not their house. The creativity of bank- will be working on this summer. no impact, of course, but less. As an ers is a luxury we can no longer afford. I hope you will all have an enjoy- organization specializing in the creative . Regression analysis will not get us able summer break--if you are taking humanities and their many languages, through the long night.” And the advice one. If not, I wish you a productive we are comfortable with the idea that at the end to humanists: stay put, hang summer! legitimate worlds are created and dis- in, believe in our worth, for (as Tolstoy solved constantly in the imagination insists) even our present unhappiness is Betty L. Leaver — and that these worlds not only exist a deepening experience. as autonomous realities, but that most Caryl Emerson people live more of the time inside them than outside them. Second: we are still small — too small. Efforts have been Call For Papers AATSEEL 2009 Conference made to increase membership and turn the slippage around, especially among Abstracts are due April 15 for more slack senior professors and the pre- professoriat (graduate students). Anna information, visit AATSEEL on the web: Berman is especially to be thanked for http://www.aatseel.org her initiative here. But we must make our annual getting-together more worth- 3 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 52, Issue 2 April 2009 pages), as well as study questions, in and popular culture, as well as language AATSEEL mid September. and literature. The focus of this initia- Master Classes tive is on language itself, especially The AATSEEL Executive Council as manifested in literature and other (2009 Philadelphia) will continue Master Classes at the cultural narratives, rather than on areas AATSEEL announces two innova- following conference in January 2011, of geographic or national origin. tive Master Classes, led by renowned when Prof. Boris Gasparov (Columbia) Despite increasing public interest in scholars who will provide AATSEEL leads a seminar on semiotics and its world literature and growing enrollment members with an intensive