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Congratulations Erin Rosenkranz for winning The University of Arizona Foundation Outstanding Graduate Assistant in Teaching Award!

Time is Blood: The Battle of Stalingrad.
May 2, 2009. 7pm in the Ventana Room at the Memorial Student Union.  A lecture by Prof. John Garrard and Carol Garrard, authors of the book Bones of Berdichev: The Life and fate of Vasily Grossman.  Vasily Grossman was a correspondent for the Red Army and was witness to the Battle of Stalingrad.  Flyer available.

Arizona AATSEEL Meeting April 18, 2009. 9-1pm in EDUC 240.  Contact Lena Shishkin for more information.

Film: Nazi Skinheads: Hate Crime in Ukraine. April 7, 2009. 5-7pm in ILC 150.  Documentary presentation by Prof John Garrard and Carol Garrard.  See full information below.

"Reading Vis(ual)-Rep(resentations): A Methodolgy." March 6, 2009.  A graduate mini-seminar with Connie Wawruck-Hemmett.  The talk will introduce students to the idea of working with visual images, rather than written text. It will deal specifically with visual text produced in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s for and by a society that was still battling widespread illiteracy. Neglecting these texts leaves a huge gap in the study of the society. Visual cartoon representations of women found in the primary Communist Youth League newspaper, "Komsomolskaia pravda" from 1929-1936, are the material around which the speaker has developed a methodology that is both quantitative and qualitative, and which treats visual text as a primary rather than a secondary means of communication.

Humanities Week 2009 

Nauryz Celebration, March 11, 2009.  The students of UNVR195a are hosting a traditional Kazakh celebration, complete with a mock wedding! 

Club News and Current Business

Join the new Kazakhstan Club!  For more information email the club president Saltanat Satabayeva .

The Russian Club meets most Monday evenings in LSB 309. You can join the Russian Club listserv by emailing Sarah Monks.

Translation Certification will only be done for University-related purposes.  You may leave your documents off M-F 8am-5pm in LSB 305. 

Russian Language Tutors are available. 

The Russian Proficiency/Placement Exam will be held in the beginning of the Fall 2008 semester in the Humanities Computer Lab in Modern Languages room 511. 
All new and continuing UA students needing to take the exam should go to the College of Humanities Dean's Office, M LNG 345 as soon as possible.  There is a form that needs to be processed before you take the exam.  To take the exam, you must be registered to attend the UofA in the Fall 2008 semester.  All high school students needing to take the exam, must email Sarah Monks . 

Conference for K-12 educators in Foreign Languages: Developing and Assessing Intercultural Competence.  October 10-11, 2008.

Click on the picture to learn more about the 2007/2008 Shostakovich Festival.

Spring 2008 Speaker Events

Arizona AATSEEL and Drama Presentation - April 19, 2008
Chekhov's one-act farce "The Bear" performed by Kenneth Cargill, Jeremy Kraft, and Susan Sidenstricker. Dobro Slovo nominations and graduate presentations.  Please see pictures in the gallery. 

DOCUMENTARY FILM SHOWING

“Nazi Skinheads:  Hate Crime in Ukraine”

Sunday, March 30, Modern Languages Auditorium  3pm-7pm

Daniel Reynold’s documentary begins in the past but brings the story up to the present--it includes footage of neo-Nazi skinhead groups in modern Zhitomir, Berdichev, and Kiev, speaking openly to the camera about their activities.  The Zhitomir group will go on trial for murdering a foreigner in 2008.

An opening talk by director Daniel Reynold, a Peace Corps worker in Ukraine at the time he became interested in the film’s subject, will be followed by an introduction to the documentary by Drs. John and Carol Garrard. Questions and refreshments will follow the viewing.

ANNA SENARSLAN

Co-sponsored by Russian & Slavic Studies Department, Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Near Eastern Studies Department, and the COH Office of the Dean

Tuesday, February  12:   “Research in Azerbaijan: A Report from the Field” 12-2pm (CMES Lecture Series; public talk) Marshall 490.

Wednesday, February 13: Topic: women singers of traditional Kazakh music  11-11:50 (class lecture) Chavez Bldg 109.

Anna Oldfield Senarslan earned an MA from the UA department of Russian and Slavic Languages and went on to a PhD in Turkic Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a specialty in the Caucasus and Central Asia. She spent 2004-2006 as a Fulbright fellow researching folklore in Azerbaijan. Her research on women poet-minstrels led to her dissertation and forthcoming book, Singing the Past, Calling the Future: The Women Ashiqs of Azerbaijan. Recent projects include translations and liner notes for Smithsonian Folkways Music of Central Asia volumes 4 and 6, entries in the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, and a British Library Endangered Archive grant in collaboration with the Azerbaijan State Archive of Sound Recordings. She is currently teaching Turkish/Azeri at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ARTEMY TROITSKY

Co- sponsored by the Dept of Russian and Slavic Studies and the COH Dean’s Office

Talks on Russian Rock and Roll by Russia’s most famous cultural commentator

Monday, February 18^:  “Between Putin and Piracy: Russian Pop and the Music Industry in the 21^st Century” (class lecture with available seating for public)  1-1:50 in Music 146

Monday, February 18^: “Back in the USSR: the History of Soviet Rock" (public talk) 4-6pm in Music 146.  

Tuesday, February 19: "Women in the World of Russian Pop" (class lecture with available seating for public) 4-6pm    Check back for room information. 

Talks will be in English

Artemy Troitsky entered Moscow State University in the early 1970s under Brezhnev, where he became notorious for hosting illicit discos from one of the university canteens. His professional career continued in the same vein, with underground assessments of the Beatles and Deep Purple in illegal samizdat journals. By the mid-‘80s, however, he had entered the mainstream as editor of the Soviet Union’s most influential music papers. Troitsky’s views grew increasingly important and, as a consequence, he was promoted to even more noteworthy publications as the USSR collapsed.

He famously worked at the Novaya Gazeta in the 1990s, the brave newspaper that regularly published the work of Anna Politkovskaya (tragically murdered last year for her reporting on the Chechnya conflict). Disturbed and yet intrigued by the changing nature of modern Russian journalism, he even – with pronounced irony – accepted the position of editor at Playboy for a short while.

The end of communism also meant the explosion of corporate TV, and here Troitsky’s influence grew beyond the printed page. He hosted the hugely significant media show “Programma A” that served to promote and explain a sudden diversity of culture(s) in the wake of state-controlled entertainment. Subsequent projects on other stations (NTV, Rossiia, and others) have served to keep him at the forefront of public attention today.

He is the author of six books, translated and published all over the world; in the US he has been represented by Faber and Faber. His most famous monograph, on the role of rock music in the late Soviet Union, has just been republished this summer. For Troitsky’s most recent project, a web-based endeavor entitled “TV Click,” go to www.tvclick.ru/channel - and (quite fittingly) click on the striped TV.

Past Events

Undergraduates Zak Friedman (Mahatma Ghandi), Kevin Turousky( Vladimir Lenin), Joel Shooster(Hugo Chavez), Julio Valdiviezo(Che Guevara), and Dmitriy Aminov(Joseph Smith)

Student Outcomes Document (for BA and MA students)