TheAATSEEL NEWSLETTER American Association of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages Contents Message from the AATSEEL President ..........................1 Letter from the Editor ...........................1 State of the Field ...................................2 Member News .......................................4 Technology & Language Learning .....5 Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Grammar But Were Afraid to Ask ......................................9 Cross Cultural Communication .......11 Graduate Student Forum ...................13 Czech Corner .......................................14 Psychology of Language Learning .............................................16 Summer Language Programs ............18 Recent Publications ............................19 Professional Opportunities ...............22 Volume 53 Issue 4 December 2010 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 53, Issue 4 December 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 MOLLY THOMASY BLASING [email protected] President-Elect: ELENA DENISOVA-SCHMIDT NANCY CONDEE KATHLEEN EVANS-ROMAINE University of Pittsburgh SIBELAN FORRESTER [email protected] ALINA ISRAELI Past President: FERIT KILIÇkaya SIBELAN FORRESTER ANI KOKOBOBO Swarthmore College MILA SASKOVA-PIERCE [email protected] RACHEL STAUFFER Vice-Presidents: JULIE BUCKLER CURT WOOLHISER Harvard University NL Coordinates: [email protected] JULIE A. CASSIDAY Editor: [email protected] Williams College Assistant Editor: [email protected] [email protected] Layout/Advertising: [email protected] LYNNE DEBENEDETTE Brown University AATSEEL Office: [email protected] PATRICIA ZODY JAMES LAVINE Executive Director, AATSEEL Bucknell University P. O. Box 569 [email protected] Beloit, WI 53512-0569 USA JANE SHUFFELTON Phone: 608-361-9697 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 American Councils for International Education: materials. ACTR/ACCELS [email protected] (6) Full specifications are available at the AATSEEL web site. Conference Manager: DIANNA MURPHY University of Wisconsin-Madison [email protected] AATSEEL Web site AATSEEL Web Master: For current online information about AATSEEL DAVID GALLOWAY and its activities, visit AATSEEL on the web: Hobart and William Smith Colleges [email protected] http://www.aatseel.org December 2010 Vol. 53, Issue 4 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Message from the ists had been remarking that the great I noticed that several AATSEEL man was stimulating more passion, members have published this fall. I AATSEEL President reverence, and respect abroad than at have included those books, where I home. It seemed that even this jubilee- have learned about them (for the most We are reprinting October’s President’s loving country was growing weary of its part, serendipitously), in the publica- Message due to numerous typos that classic heroes and its heroic over-the- tions listing. Please do send me infor- occured in the original. top treatment of the Russian classics. mation when you have a book come The conference was very successful and out. It is especially pleasant to be able Thoughts From the Tolstoy everyone learned a great deal. Forget to include books of AATSEEL’s own Centennial even that Leo Tolstoy, alas, would have in the publications column. Further, Among the more heroic events wanted us all to put away our notebooks that is also something of interest for the planned for the Seventh International and nametags and go help fight the Member’s Column. Conference, on Lev Tolstoy and World peat bog fires, rather than adding to Speaking of publications, more Literature, held this summer at Yasnaya the hot air. But again it brought home and more books are appearing only in Polyana August 10 to 15, was a pilgrim- how much fulltime energy is required Kindle (or other ebook) format. I have, age by two seasoned American Tolstoy to keep the literary past alive. Come to date, resisted including these books scholars, Michael Denner and Thomas to Pasadena in January to sustain this in the publications column. However, Newlin. In honor of the Centenary of necessary work. some of the very newest e-books look Tolstoy’s death, they had been training intriguing. I would be interested to for months, physically with boots and November 2010; Let me add a win- know how readers view them. backpacks, to repeat Tolstoy’s own oc- ter postscript to that summer message. This issue is the end of my tenth casional trek by foot from Moscow to One initiative at the Pasedena Confer- year of editing this Newsletter. How his ancestral estate outside of Tula. But ence deserves special encouragement: time flies! We have gone through a by late July, the heat wave in Western the “Early Career Scholar Series,” number of changes in those years, espe- Russia was at its peak, brush fires founded by our Graduate Student Com- cially the conversion to online and then and peat bogs were aflame around the mittee. Three linked panels are planned reverting to print for those who prefer it. capital, and a hike of this intensity was around the theme of Reexaminations: However, the content of the Newsletter not medically wise. Participants who one dedicated to “Literature as a Vehicle and its layout follows fairly closely the arrived early (I had flown into Moscow for Ideas,” another to “Slavic Literatures re-design that was accomplished 2000. on August 5) were only reluctantly ven- between Literary History and Ethnog- We have had a few column changes; turing out on the streets. An orange sun raphy,” and a third to “Questioning some have disappeared (loss of interest? hung in the smoky sky like something Nationalization and Canonization.” The or at least loss of column editor), and out of Isaac Babel. The air stung the activity of these scholars is our future; some new ones have appeared. Let’s eyes, it was over 100 degrees, and the try to attend. have a dialogue at the Annual Meeting paper mouthmasks that people strapped as to whether the content of the Newslet- on were purely cosmetic. Caryl Emerson ter is continuing to meet the needs and The Moscow Times ran a lead interests of the association. (Or just send article on August 9 “Top Doctor Tells me an enote!) Foreigners not to Fear Smog,” declaring Letter from the Editor Finally, I would like to wish you that “an overwhelming part of Russian Once again, we have reached the a chaos-free end of semester (yeah, I territory doesn’t pose any danger and end of the calendar year and the AAT- know...). Happy holidays, one and all! is not engulfed in smoke, and “if a SEEL Newsletter that precedes the An- businessman visiting Moscow stays in nual Meeting. This year the meeting is Betty Lou Leaver a hotel, or an office, or a car, it’s safe.” in Los Angeles, which makes it an easy Indeed, but then why not arrange a drive for me since I am just up Route conference call and stay home? One 1 in Monterey. Perhaps some of you participant suffered heat stroke and had will have time to travel north and enjoy to leave on the eve of the conference. some beautiful scenery. In any event, I And Michael and Tom decided to cancel hope to see most of you at the meeting Looking for their commemorative trek. As it hap- in January. Employment pened, the Tula area was much cooler Column editors, thank you so much Opportunities? Try the and cleaner. But the polluted present had for your work this year. I hope we will proved a serious obstacle to the past. be able to meet each other over lunch AATSEEL Website! It’s a small point, even a one-liner, (most likely) or dinner at the Annual http://www.aatseel.org but worth pondering. For a year before meeting, date and meal to be determined the Centenary, Russian Tolstoy special- between now and then. 1 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 53, Issue 4 December 2010 Editors: Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh & State OF THE FIELD Sibelan Forrester Swarthmore College Summer Study Abroad: Wait! I was the one who selected Four and a Half Months Ago them. Who, if not I, should know best?! It is the opening of the major con- A Look Ahead There was an application; there was a ferences’ season. Program brochures Bojan Belić project proposal; there was an interview. are coming off of the press. My course University of Washington I took all of that into consideration. And is advertized in all of them. I wonder, I selected them. Final Evening though, if I did enough this season. I So I take a look back at the day question the strategy of advertizing We made it to the very end, both my almost students and I. The course is over; the the course at major professional con- work is done; everybody seems to be Three Months Ago ferences. I ask myself whether word of mouth is the way to do it. If so, is content. This is our last supper after all, Today is the deadline for applica- the one that comes after all the break- there anyone who will speak in favor tions.