TheAATSEEL NEWSLETTER American Association of Teachers of Slavic & East European Languages Contents Message from the President ...............3 2006 AATSEEL Executive Council .....4 Letter from the Editor ...........................5 Special in This Issue: Russian at Work ....................................7 Member News .......................................8 Technology and Language New National Foreign- Learning ...............................................9 Recent Publications ..............................9 Language Initiatives Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Grammar But Were Afraid to Ask ....................................10 Awards ..................................................13 Employment Opportunities ..............13 Czech Corner .......................................17 Ukrainian Issues .................................18 Summer Language Programs ............................................19 Psychology of Language Learning .............................................22 Graduate Student Forum ...................23 Professional Opportunities ...............25 Volume 49 Issue 1 February 2006 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 49, Issue 1 February 2006 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER EDITORIAL STAFF AATSEEL POINTS OF CONTACT Editor: BETTY LOU LEAVER President: Assistant Editor: ANNA JACOBSON CATHARINE THEIMER NEPOMNYASHCHY Contributing Editors: VALERY BELYANIN Barnard College [email protected] ALINA ISRAELI OLGA LIVSHIN President-Elect: KEITH MEYER-BLASING SIBELAN FORRESTER ALLA NEDASHKIVSKA Swarthmore College JEANETTE OWEN [email protected] MILA SASKOVA-PIERCE Past President: LINDA SCATTON BENJAMIN RIFKIN CURT WOOLHISER Temple University [email protected] NL Coordinates: Vice Presidents: Editor: [email protected] ANTHONY ANEMONE Assistant Editor: [email protected] College of William and Mary Layout/Advertising: [email protected] [email protected] BETSY SANDSTROM AATSEEL Office: Thomas Jefferson High School KATHLEEN DILLON for Science and Technology Executive Director, AATSEEL [email protected] P. O. Box 7039 STEVE FRANKS Berkeley, CA 94707-2306 USA Indiana University Phone/fax: 510-526-6614 [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] MARY NICHOLAS Layout/Advertising: CDL Services, Amman, Jordan Lehigh University [email protected] Submitting Copy: JANE HACKING (1) Foreign languages are accommodated if prepared on Ma- University of Utah cIntosh with a truetype or postscript font that can be shared. [email protected] (2) Eps or pdf with embedded fonts, Indesign, PageMaker, TODD ARMSTRONG and Quark Express documents can be accommodated. Grinnell College (3) Please do not double-space between sentences in elec- [email protected] tronic submissions. Program Coordinator: (4) Please query the editor about formatting, content, graph- WILLIAM COMER ics, or language. University of Kansas (5) Since the newsletter is produced in part in Jordan, submis- [email protected] sions must be sent by fax or email by deadlines given on the back cover and on the AATSEEL website. Editor, Slavic and East European Journal: (6) The AATSEEL Newsletter is not copyrighted. Authors GERALD JANECEK wishing to protect their contributions should copyright their University of Kentucky materials. [email protected] (7) Full specifications are available at the AATSEEL web site. Editor, AATSEEL Newsletter: BETTY LOU LEAVER New York Institute of Technology, Jordan AATSEEL Web site [email protected] Executive Director: For current online information about KATHLEEN DILLON AATSEEL and its activities, visit AATSEEL on the web: [email protected] Webmaster: http://www.aatseel.org MARTA DEYRUP Seton Hall Univ. 2 February 2006 Vol. 49, Issue 1 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Message from the carefully the various programs offered the year. Renovation of the AATSEEL by their institutions to maximize the website to better meet the needs of our AATSEEL President chances of attaining funding. members is very much a matter for In a similar vein, with the an- discussion, and I welcome your sug- Dear Colleagues and Friends, nouncement of the National Security gestions. First of all, let me thank all of you Language Initiative (NSLI)--a joint In addition to higher attendance and who have instilled a new vitality in AAT- effort of the Departments of State, participation at the Washington confer- SEEL, both through labors throughout Defense, and Education--at the U.S. ence, the success of our meeting really the year and at our wonderfully suc- University Presidents Summit on In- relied on the scholarly exchange and cessful conference in Washington, DC. ternational Education held on January intellectual connections that participants First and foremost our gratitude goes to 5-6, 2006, we were all reminded of how made during the three days. And so Bill Comer and the Program Commit- our field can be shaped by its historic for the 2006 conference we especially tee, who put together such an exciting proximity to politics. Spearheaded by encourage scholars to submit proposals conference, and to Executive Director Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for innovative sessions that can be ad- Kathleen Dillon, the person on whose who herself trained as a Russia spe- vertised in the on-line call for papers and desk the buck always stops. She should cialist during the tremendous boom in to organize whole panels on engaging certainly remember her final conference Russian studies in this country during topics, especially panels that facilitate as the gold standard we will all have the Cold War, the initiative recognizes dialogue among generations. to strive to meet in the future. I would the crucial importance of qualified Please note that organizers of panels also like to say a grateful farewell to language specialists to United States are encouraged to gather participant two especially valuable members of the national security and names Russian as abstracts and submit them directly as a AATSEEL Executive Committee whose one of its six priority languages. In the group to the appropriate contact person terms ended on January 1: Todd Golding words of Secretary Rice, this program by either the April 15 or the August and Emily Johnson. Both have served “will give earlier instruction in language 1 deadlines. The conference website our organization above and beyond the to our children, K through 12. It will guidelines will clarify that abstracts call of duty. As to the conference, all of encourage students in university and should be tightly focused and not you who participated—and a record of in graduate school to take on the hard longer than 300 words (although they over half of our members were in at- and critical languages. And it will press may be shorter). We hope that this will tendance—did AATSEEL proud. Our forward to bring people into the Foreign help streamline the process of panel keynote speaker, Alexander Schenker, Service and into the Defense Depart- formation and sharpen the intellectual eloquently posed the challenge of how, ment and into our intelligence agencies, exchange. As far as conference activi- in a post-communist world, we are to who are competent in those languages.” ties beyond panels are concerned, while define our scholarly boundaries geo- (For the full text, see http://www.state. we may not be able to match an embassy graphically, linguistically, and intel- gov/secretary/rm/2006/58735.htm; reception, there are a number of very lectually. Questions of related urgency for an overview of the summit, see exciting events in the works. Stay tuned reverberated throughout diverse panels, http://www.state.gov/r/summit/; and for more information. as we saw the bounds of our disciplines for the press briefing, see http://www. Finally—as promised—AATSEEL stretched beyond the traditional limits state.gov/g/rls/rm/2005/58737.htm). 2007 will convene in Chicago. of linguistics, literature, and pedagogy We must applaud this acknowledgement Best wishes for a wonderful 2006! into film and other media, cultural and of the crucial importance of the study historical studies, and even into ques- of languages and cultures and do our tions of how we might better engage best to see it implemented in a timely Catharine S. Nepomnyashchy the social and even natural sciences in and effective fashion at all levels of our intellectual dialogue. In this context, educational system. I urge you to inform special thanks must go to the represen- administrators at your home institutions Congratulations to tatives from IREX, ACTR, NCEEER, of this important development so that New AATSEEL Officers and the Kennan Institute who partici- we can without delay enter into the pated in the roundtable on applying for dialogue it promises to open up. Effective July 1, 2006 humanities grants in a political context Clearly, this is no time to rest on our New Executive Director that mandates policy relevance. The laurels. It is not too early to explore how Pat Zody (Beloit College) hopeful message that came out of the we can build on our DC momentum to panel is that all these organizations are produce an equally lively conference New Conference Manager working hard to fund quality propos- in Philadelphia this coming December, Dianna Murphy (University of als across the board. They encourage a conference that I hope will also focus Wisconsin-Madison) AATSEEL members to apply to one or on how AATSEEL can more energeti- more of these institutions and to explore cally support its members throughout 3 AATSEEL NEWSLETTER Vol. 49, Issue 1 February 2006 2006 AATSEEL Executive Council President (2-year term): Mary Nicholas