Congratulations to Sarah Erickson for receiving a Fulbright ETA Award! Sarah completed her BA in Russian and Slavic Studies at the UA and is currently finishing her MA degree in the department. We are so proud of her amazing accomplishment! 

Students in two popular College of Humanities courses invite the campus to explore myths and what it means to be human.

Three figures – the zombie, the vampire and the werewolf – have captivated the human imagination for centuries. These creatures have become ubiquitous in contemporary pop culture, but beneath the stories, films, shows and books are some very serious questions: What is life? What is death? And what does it mean to be human?

Two of the most popular general education classes in the University of Arizona College of Humanities engage undergraduates in literary and cultural analysis of those fundamental questions. On April 11, the courses will combine to showcase interactive student projects in the inaugural Monster Bash. Held on the UA Mall, the Monster Bash is free and open to the public, and features costumes, games, trivia and food.

"We're really obsessed with monsters, but we're not the first to be so. The romantics and the modernists were, as well," said Joela Jacobs, an assistant professor of German studies at the UA. "A lot of this is about making sense of the world. That's what narratives do. By telling stories, we're thinking critically through the ways we make sense of the world. We're questioning our own assumptions and hearing from other perspectives about how to distinguish between the living and the dead."

Jacobs' class, German Studies 160A1: From Animation to Zombies, and Colleen Lucey's class, Russian and Slavic Studies 315: Werewolves and Vampires, both explore the mythological origins and cultural implications of these "monsters," which emerge as reflections of cultural fears and morality.

"What we can do in the humanities is show the trajectory of belief systems," says Lucey, an assistant professor of Russian and Slavic studies. "The humanities connect to ways in which science and belief or faith have been challenged and the ways we use stories to understand the incomprehensible. Vampires deal with the question of death and longing and mourning. We take how the vampire myth originated as a way to come to terms with loss and the sense of survivor's guilt, and the fear of what that would mean in terms of an animated corpse."

The Monster Bash originated when the two professors were discussing their courses, both the similarities and the implications of a crucial difference: Jacobs' focuses on how to define life, while Lucey's deals with how to define death. As general education courses, both reach students across campus, so the idea to showcase the subjects for the entire university took root.

Funded by a College of Humanities teaching and outreach grant, the event will bring students from both classes, 340 in all, to the UA Mall from 2-3 p.m. Students will  reconceptualize course content and explain it to others in theme-appropriate posters or group projects, like interactive games and trivia questions.

"These are serious courses and the content is heavy, but we engage with the material in empowering ways. You learn something in more depth when you teach it to other people," Lucey says. "Students work together and use the course content in interactive ways. They show their grasp of the major contents of the course and bring them to life, even when we're talking about the dead and undead."

Both classes focus on teaching students to engage with literature in different ways and to analyze different perspectives.

"This course breaks up the boxes in which our thinking operates. We do the kind of critical thinking where we discuss where boundaries are drawn between the living and the dead, and why," Jacobs says. "Zombies and werewolves are exactly the kinds of creatures that aren't clearly defined in those terms. Those in-between places are where we can interrogate the things we take for granted.

"We talk about the question of, what is life? And we look at philosophy, at human life and plant life and life in outer space, and the undead and artificial intelligence. It deals with my research, which is an interdisciplinary approach of looking at how we define life."

Students might not have a strong interest in German studies or Russian and Slavic studies when they sign up for the general-education courses, but the professors see that as an opportunity to expand the ways students think about the subject matter.

"It's important that they leave the class with a sense of the richness of the culture and that stays with them for years to come," Lucey says. "It's a way to captivate the attention of students and ideally, it's an entrance to the rest of the curriculum."

2019 AATSEEL–Arizona Conference

The University of Arizona

Department of Russian and Slavic Studies

April 5-6, 2019, Tucson

Friday, April 5 – Location - Modern Languages Building (MLB) (1423 E. University Blvd)

2:00 – 2:50       Pre-session– Graduate Colloquium, MLB410

Chair: Dr. Liudmila Klimanova

Natalia Sletova, University of Arizona
“Pushkin as a Prophet of the Russian Civilization”

Jiahao Zhou, University of Arizona
“The performativity of “Socialist Realism” in early Soviet Movies”

3:00 – 4:50       Pre-Conference Event, MLB 412: “Teaching Russian with Real World Language: A Hands-On Workshop on Data-Driven Language Teaching”, led by Anna Katikhina and Aleksey Novikov, SLAT, University of Arizona

Saturday, April 6 – Presidio Room- The Student Union Level 4 (1303 E. University Blvd)

8:30                  Breakfast

9:00                  Opening Remarks – Dr. John Leafgren, Head of Department of Russian and Slavic Studies

9:10– 9:50        Invited Speaker – Dr. Ana Hedberg Olenina, Arizona State University
“Poetry as Movement: Sofia Vysheslavtseva’s Theory of Verse between Formalism and Plastic Dance”   
Introduction:  Dr. Liudmila Klimanova, University of Arizona

9:50                  Break

10:00 – 11:20   Panel 1: Culture and Identity
                                               
Chair: Prof. Suzanne Thompson

Erica Glenn, Arizona State University
“Song as Expression of Ukrainian Identity in the Ukrainian War (2013-present)”
 

Theodora Brown, Barrett, the Honors College, Arizona State University

“Constructing Soviet Community in Six Objects”
 

Helen R. Durst, University of Arizona

“Culture, Politics, and the Purity of Mathematics”
 

11:20                Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:50   Panel 2: Women and Literature

                        Chair: Dr. Colleen Lucey

Dr. Hilde Hoogenboom, Arizona State University
“Noble Sentiments and the Rise of Russian Novels”

Michelle Ort, University of Arizona

“Women, Class, and Socialism in the Writings of Natal’ia Baranskaia”

Irina Potapova, University of Arizona
“Three “Unknown ladies” of A. Blok”
 

12:50 – 2:00     Lunch on your own (Student Union) \AATSEEL-AZ Executive Committee Meeting

2:10 – 3:10       Panel 3: Politics and Nationalism
                        Chair: Dr. Benjamin Jens

                        Dr. Robert Niebuhr, Arizona State University

“Yugoslav Press and the Imagination of China: 1948–1958”

Emma Anderson, University of Arizona

“The New Era of Nuclear Uncertainty”
 

3:10 -               Coffee Break

3:20– 4:40        Panel 4: Trauma and Conflict in Literary Texts

                        Chair: Dr. Anastasiia Gordiienko

Alexey Shvyrkov, University of Arizona
“Outliving the Collapse: Trauma and Memory in Contemporary Russophone Kazakhstani Literature.”

Valentina Vinokurova, University of Arizona

“Script, Language, and Identity in Anuar Duisenbinov’s “Iazyk Dovedem””

Sarah Erickson, University of Arizona   

“A Cerebral Symphony: The dichotomy of the Nietzschean Apollonian and Dionysian as interpreted by Andrey Bely in Petersburg”

4:40                 Closing Remarks

Dr. Helena Goscilo (Ohio State University), visited University of Arizona on March 14-15 to give our Russian and Slavic Studies Art and Culture Lecture “Graphic Imperatives in Soviet Sport.” In addition, Professor Goscilo conducted the workshop “Performing Presidency in Four Acts” for the Russian and Slavic Studies graduate students. Thank you, Dr. Goscilo, for your engaging lectures and thought-provoking insights!