Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures - Harvard

03/01/2021

Congratulations to Julie Buckler, one of the three editors (alongside Julie Cassiday and Boris Wolfson) of Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), which won the AATSEEL Prize as the Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume for 2020. The citation, https://www.aatseel.org/about/prizes/recent-recipients/book-prize-winners-for-2020/, reads in part: "this eloquently original volume should inspire further studies of Russian culture from a boldly novel perspective that enables us to consider familiar works anew, thereby transforming our sense of them.” Congratulations!

11/23/2020

Czech Zone 2:
Comenius at 350!
In Czech and English.

On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the death of the 17th century poet, pedagogue, and theologian John Amos Comenius (1592-1670), students of Czech come together with Houghton Library curators to perform dialogues and vignettes in an online montage of words, images, and music. Have you ever wondered what a beehive is and how it works? Why Cotton Mather invited Comenius to lead Harvard College?

Tune in for a good old allegorical schooling on the hows and whys of the world on Friday December 4th, from 12 to 1pm.

More information on how to stream coming soon.

The play will be Czech and English. Please invite your friends!

10/26/2020

You are warmly invited to our Slavic Get-Together on Thursday, November 12, 4-5pm ET.

Several professors and students will read from Slavic texts of their choice – come to listen and enjoy!

A great chance to meet faculty and peers from different Slavic courses, and to learn more about Slavic languages and literatures (Russian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, BCS) – especially for students who are thinking about Slavic concentration, secondary field, and language citation, or just taking more courses in the Slavic Department.

If you have any questions, or if you would like to read a text with us, too, please email the Slavic DUS, Prof. Aleksandra Kremer: [email protected].

10/01/2020

In solidarity with the peaceful protests against Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime that are happening in Belarus now, a small group of graduate students of the Slavic Department at Harvard will be performing a reading of “Insulted. Belarus(sia),” a new topical play by Andrei Kureichik.

The event will be live streamed via YouTube: https://youtu.be/tytgJ9IebTk
on Wednesday, October 7, 5-7pm.

A discussion with the author and translator will follow.

No previous knowledge of the Belarusian protests or history is necessary. The play—performed in English—speaks for itself.

It is a fascinating example of art “responding” to history-in-the-making in real time and will appeal to anyone interested in Eastern Europe, (post-)Soviet space, and the relationship between art and politics.

Please join us! And spread the word!
Thank you!

Jenya Mironava and Giulia Dossi, organizers
Visit https://bit.ly/insulted2020 for more details.

08/31/2020

Learn about the Slavic languages that we teach at Harvard University in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Russian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian...

08/12/2020

06/12/2020

The Harvard Slavic Department affirms its commitment to moving our country toward racial justice.

We support the statements of professional organizations of which our faculty are members, as well as that of the American Historical Association, which offers a valuable account of the historical basis for the crisis we all face.

https://www.aseees.org/advocacy/aseees-statement-condemning-systemic-racism-and-police-brutality

https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-the-history-of-racist-violence-in-the-united-states-(june-2020)

https://www.aatseel .org/about/presidents-message/messages/

In the statement of ASEEES, we would single out these paragraphs as expressing well the role we hope to play as educators:

The Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) condemns the brutal killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Darnesha Harris, Tamir Rice and many others. We further condemn the decision of local police to resort to coercion in response to the protests and the inflammatory actions by the US administration. We stand in solidarity with Black and other marginalized communities in this moment of collective action against systemic violence directed at people of color by police. We recognize that the dehumanization directed against Black people in the US is a legacy of our history of slavery and a horrifying consequence of racism.

As scholars and students of Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasian history and society, we have gained intimate knowledge of the atrocities committed by authoritarian regimes, which have deployed military and secret police to deprive people of their rights of association and expression. But we also study people who engage in courageous individual and collective acts against such regimes, in some cases leading to revolution. Crucially, we are familiar with rulers who declare that protestors deserve the coercion used against them and squash the protests, leading to more authoritarianism. This should never happen in a democracy.

04/06/2020

Warmest congratulations to our Harvard students on their superb performances in the 4th annual New England Olympiada of Spoken Russian that took place over the first weekend in April (online)! They did an amazing job reciting Russian poetry and delivering a monologue on the topic of their choice:

Alexander Lee - 1st place in monologues among 1st year students

James Hill - 1st place in poetry recitation and 2nd place in monologues among 2nd year students

Lucia Gordon - 3rd place in poetry recitation among 2nd year students

Soheil Sadabadi - 1st place in poetry recitation and 3rd place in monologues among 3rd year students

You have made us all extremely proud! Keep up the good work!

03/31/2020

Check out Raymond De Luca’s excellent essay, “Reimagining Women at War” on the NYU Jordan Center’s website:

Inspired by Svetlana Alexievich’s "The Unwomanly Face of War" (1985), an oral history of women who served in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, Kantemir Balagov’s arresting 2019 film, "Beanpole [Dylda]", challenges the patriarchal images of womanhood and motherhood as peddled by the So...