Podcasts about Slavic languages

On 6th June 2023, the Nova Kakhovka dam was breached while under Russian occupation, releasing a wave of toxic pollution into Ukraine's rivers. The number of casualties – both human and animal – may never be fully known. Ukraine is one of a small number of countries to include ecocide in its domestic criminal code, and the destruction of Kakhovka Dam is one of hundreds of incidents that prosecutors are studying while building environmental damages cases against Russia. On the global stage, Ukraine is leading efforts for the International Criminal Court to recognise ecocide as the fifth core international crime, alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.  Bertie speaks to Darya Tsymbalyuk, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, about her new book, “Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War.” They discuss the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, the sensory impact of war, and Tsymbalyuk's intention to bring Ukrainian environmentalists and humanities scholars into this growing legal dialogue.  Buy a copy of Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War from Polity Press here.   Further reading: Destruction og Ukraine dam casued 'toxic timebomb' of heavy metals, study finds, The Guardian, March 2025 Ukraine's Ravaged Environment, The New York Times, April 2025 Constellations of Ukranian Thought and the Environmental Humanities, Tanya Richardson and Darya Tsymbalyuk, 2024 What my body taught me about being a scholar of Ukraine and from Ukraine in times of Russia's war of aggression, Springer Nature – Darya Tsymbalyuk, July 2023  The unlikely species entangled in Ukraine's resistance to Russia, BBC, February 2024 A Landmine Detonates in the Woods, IWM – Darya Tsymbalyuk, October 2022 Darya's fundraising for Ukraine  Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

Day 1,136.Today, as the heads of the French and British armed forces arrive in Kyiv for talks on what the ‘Coalition of the Willing' might look like, we talk to the Chief Executive of the HALO Trust on how drone-mounted lasers are helping in the demining effort. Later, Francis Dearnley interviews the author of a new book that explores how Russia's War has not only destroyed millions of human lives, but has been catastrophic for the environment.Contributors:Dominic Nicholls (Associate Editor of Defence). @DomNicholls on X.James Cowan (CEO of HALO Trust). @TheHALOTrust on X.With thanks to Darya Tsymbalyuk (Author and Assistant Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago). @DaryaTsymbalyuk on X.Content Referenced:Darya Tsymbalyuk's book, Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecocide-Ukraine-Environmental-Cost-Russias/dp/1509562508?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLENOW AVAILABLE IN NEW LANGUAGES:The Telegraph has launched translated versions of Ukraine: The Latest in Ukrainian and Russian, making its reporting accessible to audiences on both sides of the battle lines and across the wider region, including Central Asia and the Caucasus. Just search Україна: Останні Новини (Ukr) and Украина: Последние Новости (Ru) on your on your preferred podcast app to find them, or click the links below.Listen here: https://linktr.ee/ukrainethelatestLearn more about the tech: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/24/ukraine-the-latest-podcast-russian-ukrainian-ai-translation/Subscribe: telegraph.co.uk/ukrainethelatestEmail: ukrainepod@telegraph.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(re)place: A Sound Design Exploration of Kraków's Market Square "The field recording of Kraków's Market Square captures the energy of a living, pulsating space that has survived for centuries. My personal connection to this place lies in my study of the Polish language (during my Bachelors I minored in Slavic Languages), and my subsequent visits to the city as a professional musician. What struck me most in this recording was its mosaic qualities, shifting layers that were independent of each other but unified in subtle ways. My goal was to find these unifying subtleties and explore their resonances and movements musically, and find a way to connect those features to the traditions of its past. This layering of sounds inspired me to conceive of a horizontal splitting of the sample. Typical sample treatment involves splitting a sample vertically, separating elements in time, often to create a repetition pattern that we recognize as rhythm. I thought I would leave time to the larger scale, that of the entire sample. I discuss this in more detail below.  One way of looking at tradition is that it can be understood as a process of narrowing possibilities, a society falling into certain patterns that allow certain behaviours to endure and others to either discontinue or become taboo. Changes brought about by war, new governments or technologies will stir the choices of the past and settle into new patterns. My composition reflects this by loosely iterating three cycles of stirring and settling through three repetitions of the field recording, preceded by a cacophonous trumpet fanfare. The field recording goes "underground" at times, sometimes only sensed through its resonating pitches. The three repetitions should not be taken as a literal navigational tool for the listener; sometimes change happens when our attention is drawn elsewhere.  "Nine roads lead off Kraków's market square, therefore, I separated the field recording horizontally (spectrally) into nine sonic components using non-negative matrix factorization, a technique typically used for source separation in audio processing. However, instead of isolating individual sounds, I extracted the fundamental pitch of each component. These nine pitches, some of which are quite dissonant when played together, represent a collection of independent voices I could use to create new mosaics of differing timbres. For me, this reflects the multiplicities from which tradition can evolve.  "There are notable absences in the field recording: the Hejnał mariacki, the iconic bugle call, and the presence of street musicians, both of which are hallmarks of the city's and its marketplace square's sonic identity. I introduce the concept of these into my work. "In contrast to the nine pitches of the recording, the Hejnał mariacki bugle call contains only three pitch classes, forming a major triad, which I use to symbolize the settling of tradition—a move from the many to the few. The Hejnał mariacki is a historically significant sound, marking the passage of time and serving as a call to attention. Bugle calls are fraught with cultural meaning, often signaling moments of importance or alarm. A happy coincidence is that two of the Hejnał's three pitches are shared by the nine pitches of the field recording. I made the most of this by loosely using these two common pitches as magnets that draw the one group towards the other. Like tradition, this represents the many possibilities settling into the few, but always in variations unique to each era (repetition). "To introduce a sense of irony (is time not the ultimate cosmic joker?), the nine basic pitches of the field recording are fanfared by trumpets at the opening. This gradually resolves into the two pitch classes which are shared by the two groups (the rising minor third). At the end of the work, the Hejnał bugle call is not played by a trumpet as expected, but though the filtered field recording itself. Through this timbral replacement, the sound sources switch roles: the traditional (past) informs the present, and the present speaks back to the past.  "Tourism and market trade are also historically significant, both introduce an ever-changing population to this marketplace, adding to the babble of voices and the promise of commerce. These aspects draw street musicians to the scene. Here I introduce the idea of street musicians, but rather than performing, they are warming up, listening to get a feel for the place. The electric bass, glass harp, a distant, fragmented trumpet band, and upright piano each contribute to the shifting mosaics. The electric bass is confined to the three pitch classes of the Hejnał, but seeks their tuning. The fragmented trumpet band is mostly confined to the two common pitches, the glass harp embraces all nine pitches of the sound recording and bursts into melody from time to time, and from an open window nearby, an upright piano picks out pitches inspired from the sounds in the marketplace. All of these added elements are triggered by events in the field recording, and they in turn, affect the audio processing of the field recording, creating a feedback network between the two worlds.  "By allowing the ambiance of the marketplace itself to evoke the bugle call at the end, the composition suggests a continuous cycle of transformation. The timbral shift from live instruments to the filtered field recording reflects how traditions morph over time yet remain rooted in their origins. The shared pitches always remain and serve as a starting point for what is to come next. That the shared pitches portray the hallmark "unfinished" ending of the original Hejnał melody (the rising minor third), gives scope for new things to come.  "The Sonic Heritage Project poses the question: How do we preserve sonic heritage while allowing it to evolve naturally? Here I attempt to acknowledging the fluidity and interpenetrability of parallel cultural soundscapes. We can celebrate their riches by allowing them to co-exist and hope their commonalities and intersections prevent them from ossifying." Credits: sample of Hejnał accessed from: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Cracow_trumpet_signal.ogg; samples of other bugles accessed from: https://www.drumcorps.marines.mil/About/Music-Resources/ Krakow market square reimagined by Helen Bledsoe. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world's most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

Vienna's walls are full of signs, stickers and graffitis in South Slavic languages. How does this come about? – In this episode, Leonid Motz (RECET) talks to Prof. Katharina Tyran (University of Helsinki) about Vienna's linguistic landscape and how it is shaped by Post-Yugoslav migrants. What can we learn about power dynamics from the linguistic practices in which they engage? Tyran highlights how – often subversive or subcultural – linguistic signs are rooted in transnational cultural contexts that transcend the linguistic borders of the modern nation-state. Katharina Tyran is an Associate Professor of Slavic Philology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on South Slavic languages. Tyran's interests include sociolinguistic topics with a focus on minority languages, language and identity, linguistic landscape research, language commodification, writing systems and orthography.

Panelists will offer a wide array of perspectives on acting, scenic design, playwriting, diversity in theatre, theatrical institutions, and possibilities for a more equitable and inclusive theatre world. Sharon Marie Carnicke, author of Dynamic Acting through Active Analysis and Stanislavsky in Focus, is an internationally acclaimed expert on acting for stage and screen. Her award-winning translations of Chekhov’s plays have been produced nationally. Her other books include Checking out Chekhov and Reframing Screen Performance. She is a professor of Dramatic Arts and Slavic Languages and Literatures at USC and founder of the Stanislavsky Institute for the 21st Century. Snehal Desai is the artistic director of Center Theatre Group, one of the largest theatre companies in the nation. Previously, he was producing artistic director of East West Players. A Soros Fellow and the recipient of a Tanne Award, Snehal was the Inaugural Recipient of the Drama League’s Classical Directing Fellowship. He has served on the boards of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, Theatre Communications Group, and currently serves on the board of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. Snehal was on the faculty of USC’s graduate program in Arts Leadership and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Rena Heinrich is an associate professor of Theatre Practice at USC. Her book, Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Asian Experience in American Drama, traces the shifting identities of multiracial Asian figures in theater from the late-nineteenth century to the present day and exposes the absurd tenacity with which society clings to a tenuous racial scaffolding. She is a contributor to Shape Shifters: Journeys Across Terrains of Race and Identity and The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. Maureen Weiss is a performance designer and scenic investigator who has worked in all aspects of theatre, design, and art for the past 25 years. Her work has been seen internationally, and was honored at the Prague Quadrennial in 2023. As a designer, her work has been seen nationally, as well as locally in Los Angeles at The Getty Villa, The Latino Theater Company, The International City Theatre, and 18th Street Arts Center. Maureen is the co-author of Scene Shift: U.S. Set Designers in Conversation, with Sibyl Wickersheimer, which inspired an exhibition at the USC Fisher Museum of Art. She was an associate professor of Performance Design at Alfred University before coming to Los Angeles City College in Fall 2023.  Moderator: Luis Alfaro is a Chicano playwright born and raised in downtown Los Angeles and an associate professor of Dramatic Writing and director of the MFA Dramatic Writing Program at USC. His fellowships include the MacArthur Foundation; United States Artists; Ford Foundation; Joyce Foundation; Mellon Foundation & the PEN America Award for a Master Dramatist. His plays, including The Travelers, Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada, have been seen throughout the United States, Latin America, Canada, and Europe. 

Aro Velmet is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern California, where he is a historian of modern Europe, colonialism, science, technology, and medicine with an overarching interest in gender studies. For Baltic Ways, he shares insights into the progression of LGBTQ+ rights in Estonia and the broader region and the path that has led to legislative change over the past decade.   Mentioned in this episode:Velmet, A. (2019). Sovereignty after Gender Trouble: Language, Reproduction, and Supranationalism in Estonia, 1980–2017. Journal of the History of Ideas 80(3), 455-478. Põldsam, Rebeka, et al. Kalevi Alt Välja: LGBT+ Inimeste Lugusid 19. Ja 20. Sajandi Eestist. Eesti LGBT Ühing : Rahva Raamat, 2023.Elisarion: Elisàr von Kupffer and Jaanus Samma at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn Irina Roldugina, UCIS Postdoctoral Fellow, History, Slavic Languages and LiteratureBaltic Ways is a podcast brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI. 

Aro Velmet is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern California, where he is a historian of modern Europe, colonialism, science, technology, and medicine with an overarching interest in gender studies. For Baltic Ways, he shares insights into the progression of LGBTQ+ rights in Estonia and the broader region and the path that has led to legislative change over the past decade. Mentioned in this episode:Velmet, A. (2019). Sovereignty after Gender Trouble: Language, Reproduction, and Supranationalism in Estonia, 1980–2017. Journal of the History of Ideas 80(3), 455-478. Põldsam, Rebeka, et al. Kalevi Alt Välja: LGBT+ Inimeste Lugusid 19. Ja 20. Sajandi Eestist. Eesti LGBT Ühing : Rahva Raamat, 2023.Elisarion: Elisàr von Kupffer and Jaanus Samma at the Kumu Art Museum in TallinnIrina Roldugina, UCIS Postdoctoral Fellow, History, Slavic Languages and LiteratureTranscriptIndra Ekmanis: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies. I'm your host Indra Ekmanis. Aro Velmet is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern California where he is a historian of modern Europe, colonialism, science, technology, and medicine, with an overarching interest in gender studies. Today in our conversation, we speak about recent changes to LGBTQ-plus issues in Estonia and the broader region and the path that has led to where we are today. Stay tuned. Dr. Aro Velmet, thank you so much for joining us on Baltic Ways. Your research interests are pretty varied, right? They stretch across the globe to look at how microbiology became a tool of French colonial governance, all the way to the history of digital statecraft in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Estonia and in the global south. But today our conversation is going to focus a little bit on your work on gender and the current state of LGBTQ rights in the Baltic states. But before we get there, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your academic interests?Aro Velmet: Well, thank you, Indra, for inviting me to the show. I am, as you said, primarily a historian of science and technology, and I'm interested in the ways that various kinds of experts make claims on politics and power: how they reformulate questions that we think of as essentially questions of politics—who gets to cross borders, who gets to have various kinds of rights—as questions of technological expertise.So this may mean formulating public health policy, right? If the pandemic breaks out, then who needs to be vaccinated? What kinds of populations need to be surveilled, monitored, and regulated? This is what the first decade of my academic career was dedicated to in the context of the French Empire. Or it may mean questions around gender and reproduction. It may mean questions around how democracy is conducted, which is sort of what I'm researching right now. But I guess at the heart of it really is this question, and really this kind of utopian vision, of using technological expertise to solve these political quagmires, these debates that Western societies have been wrestling with for well over a century, that lots of different scientists have had the idea that maybe the way to break these problems open is through the application of this or that novel technology. So that's kind of what I'm broadly interested in academically. IE: Thank you for sharing that is really interesting. I'm sure that there are many, many different ways you can take that too—a lot of those questions resonate in today's world. Well, returning to the subject at hand today: In the past year or so, we've had some significant legislative steps happen in the Baltic states around LGBTQ-plus rights, particularly in Estonia and Latvia. Estonia adopted a marriage equality bill. In Latvia, civil unions are legal as of July 1st this year. Efforts in Lithuania to recognize same-sex partnerships, however, were also kind of in the legislative mix, but ended up stalling. I wonder if you can give us some insights into where the Baltic states currently stand with regard to LGBTQ rights and, more of some of the historical context of those rights in the region.AV: So I should preface this by saying that I really am not an expert on the histories of Latvia and Lithuania, even though the three Baltic states get lumped into one category very often. They are quite different, particularly in this question of LGBTQ rights.IE: That's fair.AV: To start off, I think the one bit of historical context that is really important is just how rapid and dramatic the shift in public attitudes and the legal situation towards LGBTQ people has been all over the Baltics, and I can speak for Estonia, specifically. And just to give you some idea of that, in 2012—this is a couple of years before same-sex civil unions were legalized—popular support for marriage equality in Estonia stood at roughly about a third of the population. So it was a sort of minority position. And we've now, over the course of twelve years, come to a point where not just marriage equality is now legal, has been legal for just about a year, and it also enjoys growing popular support. It now has majority support and had majority support in 2023 when it was legalized in parliament. So the shift really has been quite dramatic; that's kind of one thing to keep in mind. And I sort of remember when I first started getting involved with this question in 2011, it really was the kind of topic that no mainstream publication, no mainstream politician wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole. We tried to poll legislators, at the time, on their opinion about same-sex marriage or same-sex civil partnerships. And the vast majority of legislators declined to answer the question; they just didn't want themselves to be associated with this. So this situation is now quite dramatically different. The other thing that I already alluded to is that the situation is quite different in different Baltic countries. So while Estonia now has broad majority support to same-sex marriage and overwhelming support, over 70 percent, to same-sex civil partnerships and kind of broad question of do you think homosexuality is acceptable, these numbers are quite different in the Baltic states.So the kind of contrast to this is Lithuania, where a recent survey showed that only barely a quarter of the population supports same-sex marriage: so dramatically different contexts. And to a degree, these are contexts that are explained by history, culture, and politics, right? Lithuania is a strongly Catholic country, and the kind of Catholic discourse that is global and particularly prominent in Poland, but also in other Catholic countries such as France, that really sees homosexuality as a sin and same-sex marriage as an affront to church doctrine, is really something that dominates in Lithuania.I think the situation in Latvia is a bit more complicated, and you probably can tell me more about this than I can tell you. But it seems to me that a lot of that discourse has to do with Russian-oriented political parties and the discourse that is connected to the Kremlin's official position on gay rights and the preservation of so-called traditional marriage.So there's lots of context here that makes these three countries in some ways quite different, but I think they are also similar in that the broad sort of direction of travel over the past two decades has been towards increasing acceptance of the LGBTQ community and increasing moves towards legislation that protects the rights of gay and queer people around the three Baltics states.IE: Thank you for sharing that background. I'm no expert on the situation in Latvia, but it's quite interesting. Edgars Rinkēvičs, the current president, is the first gay head of state in Europe. At the same time, you're right that the discourse is quite difficult and legislatures have taken quite a long time to implement some rulings from the Supreme Court, which has urged them to take steps towards approving civil unions and same-sex partnerships for a while. It's quite a mixed bag. You mentioned the situation in Lithuania and the kind of deep ties to Catholicism and faith. That's something that, I think often, is thought of when we think of resistance to LGBT rights. But you also wrote an article in 2019, called “Sovereignty After Gender Trouble,” where you look at, more specifically, Estonia, which is not really a particularly religious society in the same sort of way. And you look at how the opposition to LGBT rights drew arguments more broadly linking them to demography, state sovereignty, language, resistance to that kind of supranational authority: in this case, it was the European Union. And certainly, demography and language in the Baltic states are quite existential hot topics.So I would love it if you could tell us a little bit more about that research. I found that article really interesting.AV: I think the research was basically spurred by this question of why is this attack on what certain conservative groups called gender ideology—and we can characterize this as a sort of broadly homophobic sentiment—so popular? Not just in Estonia, but in a variety of different places where it seems that just saying that this is a movement that's grounded in religious sentiment doesn't quite explain its broad popularity among many different social groups. And it is true, it is true also in the Estonian case, that a lot of the leading activists of the so-called anti-gender movement, come from religious backgrounds. So in the case of Estonia, they are fundamentalist Catholics. This is particularly puzzling because Catholicism in Estonia is sort of small—there are very few people who are Catholics. Estonia in general is one of the least religious countries in the world. And yet at the same time, this movement gained a lot of traction in the 2010s during this debate over same-sex civil unions.Now, basically what I found in my research when I looked at the kinds of arguments that these anti-gender activists and conservative politicians were making, their arguments weren't really about religion. They weren't really about something like natural law—something that's often invoked in Catholic discussions.But they were really about a question of sovereignty. And the way this argument was made was roughly, like this: The symbol of health for the Estonian state is population growth, right? When the population is growing, then the state is healthy. When the population is declining, then this means that Estonian sovereignty is under attack.And we see this in the Soviet period when mass migration of Russophone citizens threatened the Estonian demographic situation in the 1980s. This is how this argument is made. AV: And we're seeing this in the 2000s where the Estonian population, the kind of natural birth rate is declining. And what this must mean is that Estonian sovereignty is under threat by this different supranational organization, the European Union. The links that these groups draw between the European Union and the Soviet Union are in some cases, very direct. There are cartoons where you have a kind of fat cat Estonian politician bowing toward Moscow in 1988 and then toward Brussels in 2014. And the problem with these kinds of supranational organizations is that they are out of touch with the will of the people. They're out of touch with what people consider to be a healthy way of living, and this is expressed through these programs supporting LGBT rights.So really I think that this tells us quite a bit about what draws the sort of broader population to this kind of rhetoric. It's not really Christian rhetoric, which is quite downplayed, about sinfulness and natural law and righteous living and things like that. It's really a language about giving away power to supranational entities. And in this telling, the support of the political class, of Estonian liberals and social democrats, towards LGBT rights then becomes a kind of proxy for saying, “Look, these are people whose interests lie with Brussels and not with the people in Tallinn or in Paide or in Kohtla Järve or in these small towns that are being forgotten.”And I think actually that move—where gay rights become a stand-in for a kind of liberal alienation and a representation of a loss of sovereignty to supranational institutions—is actually quite revealing because I think that is broadly the same kind of argumentation that is being put forth in Poland by the Law and Justice Party, by Viktor Orban's Fidesz, with a sort of heavy dollop of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure, and by the Rassemblement National in France as well. And by peeling away the religious layers of this rhetoric, we really get to what is at the heart of the matter.IE: Yeah. Maybe the supranational part is also perhaps not as intensive in the United States, but the idea of the kind of alienation, especially of the rural population and the areas that are underserved, and homosexuality as a kind of stand-in there for politicians is—I think it's instructive also there. As you noted, this article focuses on the backlash to the European Union's more progressive stance. You know, you mentioned Poland and Hungary—these are also the close neighbors of the Baltic states in some ways. But on the other side, you have Finland, Sweden, and Northern Europe—decidedly more progressive in their stances. So I wonder if you could perhaps tell us a little bit about how the international community—be it organizations or be it close neighbors or even further neighbors—have influenced the trajectory for the Baltic states on these questions.AV: Yeah, of course. It's interesting that you bring up the Nordics because I think something that has made a very substantial difference in Estonia's trajectory compared to Latvia and Lithuania is the very close economic and cultural ties to Sweden and Finland and Norway as well. And therefore they were able to benefit from many of the resources of these countries and in ways that are quite material. So Norway's gender equality fund, for instance, has financed a lot of Estonian NGOs, and had for a long time financed the office of gender equality at the Ministry of Social Affairs. Lots of activists, who've been working at this in Estonia for a long time, have either family in Finland or Sweden or hail from there, or sort of Estonian Swedes or something like that, and generally the sort of links and networks with Nordic organizations have been very tight. And so there's always been a lot of people who are willing to do advocacy work in Estonia when in moments where local politicians have not been willing to speak up for gay rights it has been quite easy to get someone like Alexander Stubb, the current Finnish president, to give an interview on the issue, you know, way back in 2011. So I think that has made quite a big difference. I mean, this, in some ways, also opens up the local community to the criticism that they're astroturfing, right: that these organizations are EU-funded organizations that, again, are somehow alienated from the rest of the population. I just want to make very, very clear that this is a very misleading argument. Because it hasn't been for a lack of wanting or a lack of initiative that these organizations have evolved over the time that they have. It's been primarily due to a lack of funding. It's been due to the fact that there simply haven't been funding sources for people to build these organizations within Estonia. So they've gone to supranational organizations like the EU, like the Soros Foundation or various Nordic sources of funding to do it. IE: Maybe we can continue on—because I think we're already on this path—that you can tell us a little bit more about local activism, local organizations, and how that's impacting both the political side legislation but also the social side. That's quite a dramatic statistic that you cited for Estonia, right? In just a handful of years moving general acceptance of same-sex marriage.AV: So the support for same-sex marriage right now is just over half of the population. And you can break this down demographically and see some interesting things there. The below-25-year-olds overwhelmingly support it. Russian-language speakers tend to be more skeptical, but they are, the growth has been, perhaps the fastest over the past couple of years. So yeah, the changes have been quite dramatic. And thinking about the organization and the kind of activists seen in Estonia, some things appear quite different if you look at it, particularly from an Anglophone or an American's perspective, which is that, by and large, organizations in Estonia tend to be more oriented towards either internal community building or kind of professional policy work. Really sort of working together with the Minister of Social Affairs with legislators in the parties who are broadly favorable to LGBT rights, with various ministries and state organizations, rather than having a kind of strong on the streets presence, right? This putting bodies on the streets and really pushing in that form hasn't been a particularly big part of political activism and certainly not in Estonia. I know less about Latvia and Lithuania. And in some sense this has been, I think, both a positive and a negative aspect. Certainly, we've seen how quickly and well conservative organizations have organized, precisely around big public meetings and building a kind of mass base of support for their agenda. And this certainly made the fights in 2014, and to a lesser extent last year, quite complicated. The other thing I think that's worth mentioning, that some researchers like Pauliina Lukinmaa have pointed out, is that the LGBTQ community and the organizations in particular tend to be quite divided along ethnic lines, right? There are many different communities that for a long time didn't really talk to one another and have had very different experiences. In Estonia this has been compounded by the arrival of folks who are fleeing persecution in Russia and also Ukrainian LGBTQ people who have arrived in Estonia with the ongoing war in the past two years. So thinking about how to bring these communities together has generally been one of the challenging aspects. Again, I'm relying here on research that I've read, more than direct experience. IE: Yeah, that is interesting to see how those cleavages also carry over into this type of work and activism. I wonder, what do you see as the future for LGBT rights in the Baltic states? Do you see this growing convergence, this very rapid kind of shift that you've already pointed to continuing and will convergence with Northern Europe may be on the horizon? Is it tangible?AV: Yeah, I think it depends a lot on political contingency. One thing to keep in mind is that, for instance, both the same-sex civil partnership law that was passed in Estonia in 2014, and the marriage equality law that was passed in 2023—these were not foregone conclusions. These were narrow votes, products of a lot of lobbying that could have gone in a different direction had a few things here and there been different. So they were really kind of utilizing the opportunity handed in a moment. And we need to keep this in mind, right? I think the Baltics are broadly in a similar situation all around where small shifts in the political makeup of the country can dramatically change the situation on rights. I think one of the challenges that all three countries will face, and certainly Estonia is seeing this unfold right now, is that generally, the parties that have most steadfastly supported queer rights have been liberal parties in the sense of being sort of broadly on the right, economically speaking. So the Reform Party in Estonia—that's the current prime minister's party—at a certain point, can only go so far in that direction, right? And already after the last elections, we saw quite a bit of debate over whether the winning of marriage equality was really—well, let me think of how to sort of put this, in the best way. That there's a trade-off if you sacrifice, for instance, progressive healthcare policy or progressive taxation policy for something like marriage equality. Because, of course, queer people also need healthcare. In fact, they are more likely to require healthcare. They are more likely to be vulnerable to social dislocation. They are more likely to need government services. They are more likely to experience workplace discrimination. So, they also need stronger labor protections. So, this question of how much do you want to hitch your ride to the liberal bandwagon is one that I think is going to become increasingly acute now that these basic questions of civil rights have been more or less settled. I don't think these are going to be turned back.But now we're starting to see that actually the experience of middle-class queer people in Tallinn can be quite different from poor queer people in the countryside. We are starting to think more about what is the difference between the experience of queer people who speak Estonian versus those who speak Russian. And I think figuring this out is going to be quite the challenge because there is not nearly as much consensus on issues of social policy than there is emerging on this sort of broader question of civil rights. IE: Yeah, that's a really good point to make. Thank you for highlighting it. Well, we're nearing the end of our time, but I want to ask you to tell us a little bit about what you are currently working on and if you have any recommended reading for listeners.AV: Sure, the answer to the first question is going to take us quite far from this conversation since gender and gender studies are a part of all of my research. You know, it's a fundamental part of the human condition, so anything one studies, I think, should have a gender component to it, but it's not the primary topic of my research right now. I'm interested in the history of information processing and governance and the idea of solving politics through computers. I'm following the story from the 1960s and the foundation of various institutes of cybernetics in places like Tallinn, Kyiv, Vilnius, and elsewhere, to the story of the Estonian digital state that emerged in the 1990s and is still kind of the main branding exercise. IE: E-stonia.AV: Yeah, E-stonia, exactly. The digital republic. And, you know, it's still asking questions about the relationship of expertise to power. The way people imagine political communities and the way people imagine bodies. So it carries many of the themes of the stuff that I've researched before, but taking it a little bit closer to the Baltic states.And then as for reading recommendations, I really would love for people to engage with the work of Irina Roldugina, who is, I think, currently at the University of Pittsburgh. She's a fantastic scholar of Soviet social queer history, really a kind of queer history written from the bottom up. And it's this really phenomenal reading. She's found archives that are just astounding in what they reveal, but also in how difficult it is to really discover queer voices in the archive, which have tended to marginalize them throughout the 20th century. Folks who read Estonian, I really would like to recommend the collected volume titled Kalevi Alt Välja, which is edited by my friend and colleague Uku Lember and Rebeka Põldsam and Andreas Kalkun, which chronicles again, sort of, bottom-up queer histories in Estonia from the 19th century to the present. And I think it'd be a very nice companion to this exhibit on queer Balto-German art that's right now running at the National Art Museum in Tallinn. So, also really, really interesting stuff—again, uncovering a part of Baltic queer history that I had no idea about, personally. And it's great art to boot. So yes, lots of good stuff out there. IE: Those are excellent recommendations. We'll be sure to link them in the bottom of our podcast notes. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, for sharing your perspective on your vast array of research topics, and for honing in on this subject with us this time. But perhaps we'll have to speak again on some of your other work. So I just want to thank you. Thank you so much.AV: I would be happy to talk more. Thank you for inviting me. IE: Thank you for tuning into Baltic Ways, a podcast from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. A note that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI. I'm your host Indra Ekmanis. Subscribe to our newsletters at aabs-balticstudies.org and FPRI.org/baltic-initiative for more from the world of Baltic studies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Image: Facebook | Baltic Pride This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fpribalticinitiative.substack.com

On this episode, Nick speaks with Susanna Weygandt a scholar studying performance theories of Russian and East European theater. She discusses the work of Anatoly Vasiliev, famed Russian theater director for the Moscow School of Dramatic Arts. Thanks for listening! ABOUT THE GUEST: Elena Susanna Weygandt analyzes and documents performance theories indigenous to Russia and East Europe that have not yet been documented. She draws on methods of interview and ethnography as well as digital display in her research on contemporary topics. In her soon-to-be published book with the University of Wisconsin Press, From Metaphor to Direct Speech: Drama and Performance Theory in Contemporary Russia, she identifies the main writers and performance theories of the vibrant movement, Novaia Drama, and situates this pioneering literature in the contemporary Russian literary canon, the Performance Studies field, and within Post-Soviet studies. The New Dramatists assert that it is precisely in the theatre, with its inherent form of critique and reflection provided by the stage, where the contemporary moment of the present can be held at arm's length away, which creates enough of a distance from the present for a historical perspective about it to emerge. This research has shaped her into a scholar and teacher of visual language, the body, feminist art, gender, exhibition on digital platforms, and all genres of documentary and realism in Russian and East European literature. Her publications on these topics of cultural history in Russia and East Europe from 1953 to the present appear in The Russian Review, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, TDR: The Drama Review, Apparatus: Film, Media, and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, and in a co-edited anthology published by Columbia UP. She received her training in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton (PhD 2015; Graduate Certificate in History of Science 2015). At Sewanee: The University of the South she teaches all levels of Russian in the Russian Department and her joint affiliation in the Humanities Program. https://new.sewanee.edu/programs-of-study/russian/faculty-staff/susanna-weygandt/ If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch! PRODUCTION CREDITS Assistant EP: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy) Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana) Associate Producer: Eliza Fisher Assistant Producer: Taylor Helmcamp Assistant Producer/Videographer: Basil Fedun Social Media Manager: Faith VanVleet Host/Supervising Producer: Nicholas Pierce Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Beat Mekanik, Crowander, Dlay) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@MSDaniel) www.msdaniel.com DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin. https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/9/9a59b135-7876-4254-b600-3839b3aa3ab1/P1EKcswq.png

On this episode, Nick speaks with Susanna Weygandt a scholar studying performance theories of Russian and East European theater. She discusses the work of Anatoly Vasiliev, famed Russian theater director for the Moscow School of Dramatic Arts. Thanks for listening! ABOUT THE GUEST: Elena Susanna Weygandt analyzes and documents performance theories indigenous to Russia and East Europe that have not yet been documented. She draws on methods of interview and ethnography as well as digital display in her research on contemporary topics. In her soon-to-be published book with the University of Wisconsin Press, From Metaphor to Direct Speech: Drama and Performance Theory in Contemporary Russia, she identifies the main writers and performance theories of the vibrant movement, Novaia Drama, and situates this pioneering literature in the contemporary Russian literary canon, the Performance Studies field, and within Post-Soviet studies.  The New Dramatists assert that it is precisely in the theatre, with its inherent form of critique and reflection provided by the stage, where the contemporary moment of the present can be held at arm's length away, which creates enough of a distance from the present for a historical perspective about it to emerge. This research has shaped her into a scholar and teacher of visual language, the body, feminist art, gender, exhibition on digital platforms, and all genres of documentary and realism in Russian and East European literature. Her publications on these topics of cultural history in Russia and East Europe from 1953 to the present appear in The Russian Review, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, TDR: The Drama Review, Apparatus: Film, Media, and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, and in a co-edited anthology published by Columbia UP. She received her training in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton (PhD 2015; Graduate Certificate in History of Science 2015). At Sewanee: The University of the South she teaches all levels of Russian in the Russian Department and her joint affiliation in the Humanities Program. https://new.sewanee.edu/programs-of-study/russian/faculty-staff/susanna-weygandt/ If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch! PRODUCTION CREDITSAssistant EP: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy)Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana)Associate Producer: Eliza FisherAssistant Producer: Taylor HelmcampAssistant Producer/Videographer: Basil FedunSocial Media Manager: Faith VanVleetHost/Supervising Producer: Nicholas Pierce Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Beat Mekanik, Crowander, Dlay) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@M_S_Daniel) www.msdaniel.com

In this episode, after taking a long break, we will talk about how we learned Slavic languages with my new co-host Marvin. I have a Slavic background while Marvin is a native French speaker, so tune in to find what makes learning Slavic languages so... exciting!  Support the Show.Support Slavstvuyte through www.buymeacoffee.com/slavstvuyteFollow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.For additional information, go to www.slavstvuyte.org All inquiries, questions, and comments can be sent to slavstvuyte@gmail.com

Ann Komaromi (Professor in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto) presented on her book, “Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society,” on Thursday, November 9, 2023 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive. About the lecture: Komaromi will talk about the research associated with her book Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (2022). She will describe the process of pursuing archival research of underground (samizdat, or self-published) journals in a variety of collections at established institutions and in independent organizations. Komaromi will also discuss the interdisciplinary method of the study, spanning historical investigation and literary analysis, and reflect on the development of a critical perspective on samizdat, as developed in and through the materials surveyed. Samizdat facilitated the formation of imagined communities of readers through extra-Gutenberg communications. While the goals and styles of expression differed from democratic dissidents to the Jewish national movement, and from Leningrad poets to the fans of rock music, some common values and strategies characterized these varied groups, creating a positive basis for grassroots renewal of society and culture in the Soviet Union. About the speaker: Ann Komaromi is professor in the Centre for Comparative Literature and in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. Her research has focused particularly on late Soviet culture, samizdat (underground publishing) and dissidence in the USSR. Her articles theorize the formation of alternative publics and epistemologies in samizdat, while attending to specific texts and groups. Komaromi is interested in the return of modernism and avant-garde in nonconformist and oppositional literary and art movements in the late twentieth century and beyond. Current projects include studies of dissident memoirs and archives and a history of Jewish activism in Leningrad.

Ostap Kin presented and read from his book, “Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond” on Thursday, April 4, 2024 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive. About the Lecture: On September 29 and 30, 1941, Nazis executed 33,771 Kyivan Jews in Babyn Yar. By the time the Soviet army recaptured Kyiv, the total number of people exterminated at the ravine had reached some 100,000 to 150,000. The name Babyn Yar has become synonymous with one of the most horrific massacres of World War II. "Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond" features poems by Ukrainian Jewish and non-Jewish poets from the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, written in response to the tragedy at Babyn Yar. The poems in the anthology create a language capable of portraying the suffering and destruction of the Ukrainian Jewish population during the Holocaust, as well as other people who lost their lives at the Babyn Yar site. About the Lecturer: Ostap Kin is the editor of Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute) and New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City (Academic Studies Press). He is the translator, with John Hennessy, of Yuri Andrukhovych's Set Change (forthcoming from NYRB/Poets), Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (HURI) and Serhiy Zhadan's A New Orthography (Lost Horse Press). He translated, with Vitaly Chernetsky, Yuri Andrukhovych's Songs for a Dead Rooster (Lost Horse Press). He's pursuing a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University.

Do we have the concepts and ideas necessary to think critically about Russian cultural imperialism? Why are the existing concepts not sufficient? Are “Russian studies” still dominating Western academia's view of Eastern Europe? Why is it time to rethink Russian cultural imperialism and decolonize the “Slavic” or “Eurasian” studies? Our guest on the Explaining Ukraine podcast is Vitaly Chernetsky, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas, and the current President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, Ukrainian philosopher, chief editor of UkraineWorld and president of PEN Ukraine UkraineWorld (ukraineworld.org) is brought to you by Internews Ukraine, one of the largest Ukrainian media NGOs. Listen on various platforms: https://li.sten.to/explaining-ukraine Support us at patreon.com/ukraineworld. We provide exclusive content for our patrons. You can also support our volunteer trips to the frontlines at PayPal: ukraine.resisting@gmail.com.

Today We have Boris Dralyuk With us. He is speaking about his translation of 'The Silver Bone' Written in Russian by Andrey Kurkov. 'The Silver Bone' is Long-Listed for International Booker Prize - 2024.Boris Dralyuk is a poet, translator, and critic. He holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA and has taught at UCLA and the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022), co-editor with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015), and translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. In 2020 he received the inaugural Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing from the Washington Monthly. In 2022, he received the inaugural Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle for translating Andrey Kurkov's Grey Bees. In 2024, he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.you can buy 'The Silver Bone' using the link here - https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/silver* For your Valuable feedback on this Episode - Please click the link below.https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/feedbackHarshaneeyam on Spotify App –https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/onspotHarshaneeyam on Apple App – https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/onapple*Contact us - harshaneeyam@gmail.com ***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement's philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius). A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Micić's ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski's lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID's lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. Reaching the wider international audience for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism. Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. Bošković specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media.  Steven Teref is a translator from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. He specialists in translating Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry, focusing on writers from the early 20th century through to the present. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement's philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius). A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Micić's ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski's lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID's lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. Reaching the wider international audience for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism. Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. Bošković specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media.  Steven Teref is a translator from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. He specialists in translating Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry, focusing on writers from the early 20th century through to the present. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement's philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius). A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Micić's ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski's lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID's lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. Reaching the wider international audience for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism. Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. Bošković specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media.  Steven Teref is a translator from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. He specialists in translating Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry, focusing on writers from the early 20th century through to the present. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement's philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius). A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Micić's ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski's lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID's lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. Reaching the wider international audience for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism. Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. Bošković specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media.  Steven Teref is a translator from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. He specialists in translating Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry, focusing on writers from the early 20th century through to the present. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is the first-ever English language anthology of zenithism – an eclectic avant-garde movement that operated in the Yugoslav region between 1921 and 1927. The founder of Zenithism – poet Ljubomir Micić – envisioned the movement as a fusion of futurism, dada, constructivism, expressionism, and proto-surrealism, with the movement's philosophy embodied in the figure of the Balkan Barbarogenius (barbarian-genius). A hallmark of the movement was its embrace of cross-genre writing, from Micić's ciné-poem Rescue Vehicle and Branko Ve Poljanski's lyric novel 77 Suicides to MID's lyric philosophic treatise The Sexual Equilibrium of Money. Reaching the wider international audience for the first time, this anthology sheds light on an untapped chapter in European modernism. Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. Bošković specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media.  Steven Teref is a translator from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. He specialists in translating Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry, focusing on writers from the early 20th century through to the present. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

On this episode, Valeria Sobol of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaigne talks with us about her 2000 book "Haunted Empire." Dr. Sobol guides us through the tapestries of Imperial Russia, where crumbling estates and eerie figures cast long shadows over the pages of history. Drawing on her meticulous research and profound insights, she unveils the intricate interplay between Gothic motifs and the imperial legacy, offering a captivating exploration of power, trauma, and the uncanny in Russian literature. ABOUT THE GUEST Valeria Sobol is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Febris Erotica and a coeditor of Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe. Check out her book Haunted Empire on the Cornell Press website: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501770104/haunted-empire/#bookTabs=2. PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on December 15, 2023 via Zoom. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch! PRODUCTION CREDITS Host/Assistant Producer: Eliza Fisher Host/Editorial Director: Sam Parrish Assistant EP: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy) Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana) Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar Assistant Producer: Taylor Helmcamp Assistant Producer/Videographer: Basil Fedun Social Media Manager: Faith VanVleet Supervising Producer: Nicholas Pierce Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Audiorezout, Beat Mekanik, Damiano Baldoni, Alex Productions) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@MSDaniel) www.msdaniel.com DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin. https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/9/9a59b135-7876-4254-b600-3839b3aa3ab1/P1EKcswq.png Special Guest: Valeria Sobol.

In this episode, I speak with my colleague at TU, Boris Dralyuk on Vladmir Nabokov's delightful take on the campus novel, Pnin.  We explore our endearing hero's journey from being a man on the wrong train to becoming an American behind the wheel at long last.  I hope you enjoy our conversation.    Boris Dralyuk is a poet, translator, and critic. He holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA, and has taught there and the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Tulsa. His work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, London Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta, and other journals. He is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022) and Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907-1934 (Brill, 2012), editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 2016), co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015), and translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. He received first prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition and, with Irina Mashinski, first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky / Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition. In 2020 he received the inaugural  from the Washington Monthly. In 2022 he received the inaugural  from the National Book Critics Circle for his translation of Andrey Kurkov's Grey Bees. You can find him on X .   Jennifer A. Frey is the inaugural dean of the , with a secondary appointment as professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy and religion. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland faculty fellow in the . Prior to her tenure at Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a junior fellow of the .   She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 2015, she was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, titled “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life,” She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology, and she has edited three academic volumes on virtue and human action. Her writing has been featured in First Things, Image, Law and Liberty, The Point, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.  She lives with her husband and six children in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is on X      

Gary Saul Morson is the Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. Saul's work ranges from literary theory, the history of ideas, and the relation between literature and philosophy in the works of Chekov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Get full access to What Happens Next in 6 Minutes with Larry Bernstein at www.whathappensnextin6minutes.com/subscribe

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today.  Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a short break, I am bringing you back the episode we talked about a lot back in 2021.Here, I explain the terminology used in Slavic languages in order to describe a gay person. This is a very sensitive topic and it's not meant to offend anyone. I would also like to state that I won't tolerate homophobic comments. Thank you!Support the showSupport Slavstvuyte through www.buymeacoffee.com/slavstvuyteFollow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.For additional information, go to www.slavstvuyte.org All inquiries, questions, and comments can be sent to slavstvuyte@gmail.com

Today, we have an interview with Valeria Sobol professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, author of the book, Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny. You can find her book here -  https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501770104/haunted-empire/#bookTabs=1Support the show

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together. In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas. A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together. In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas. A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together. In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas. A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together. In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas. A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(00:07) Introduction to Greybees and its Author(01:47) Background(01:55) Early Life and Influences(05:35) Journey into English Language and Literature(07:23) Living in Hollywood: Impact on Literary Temperament(12:10) Approach to Translating Prose and Poetry(15:56) Mentors and Collaborators(20:32) Experience as an Editor and Reviewer(32:23) Discussion on the Novel 'Greybees'(44:46) Reading from 'Greybees'(47:02) Conclusion of the PodcastThe novel 'Grey Bees' is one of the most powerful novels you can read about war and how it destroys the lives of ordinary people. The beauty of the novel is its understated way of narration. It was written by Ukrainian author Andrei Kurkov in Russian and wonderfully translated by Boris Dralyuk. In this episode, We speak to Boris Dralyuk, about the craft of translation, Editing, Andrey Kurkov and the novel 'Grey Bees'.Boris Dralyuk is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022) and the translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, and other authors. His poems, translations, and criticism have appeared in the NYRB, the TLS, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He won several awards for his work. He is the recipient of the 2022 Gregg Barrios Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle. Formerly editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, he is currently an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa.He holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA, where he taught Russian literature for several years. You can buy the book using the link given in the show notes.https://tinyurl.com/greybees* For your Valuable feedback on this Episode - Please click the below linkhttps://bit.ly/epfedbckHarshaneeyam on Spotify App –http://bit.ly/harshaneeyam Harshaneeyam on Apple App –http://apple.co/3qmhis5 *Contact us - harshaneeyam@gmail.com ***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In part 2 of our discussion on the short fiction of Nikolai Gogol (as selected in the recently published Norton Library edition), translator Michael Katz and introducer Kate Holland tell us their favorite lines from Gogol's work and highlight the qualities of his unique style and voice that have captured readers across the centuries.  Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, including Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov.Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s. She is President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Selected Tales, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales.Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Listen to our Spotify playlist inspired by Selected Tales: https://shorturl.at/oSUX4.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter @TNL_WWN.Episode transcript at: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales/part2/transcript.

Just in time to help kick off the third annual Beyond the Grave: An Evening with Bram Stoker, Dianne and Jennie engage in a captivating conversation with Stanley Stepanic, an Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia who teaches a VERY popular course called "Dracula". With his vast knowledge of Slavic folklore and the origins and subsequent manifestations of vampirism, Professor Stepanic helps Jennie and Dianne take a deep dive into the world of Bram Stoker and how his iconic novel "Dracula" became his most celebrated work. He sheds light on Stoker's  Ordinary Extraordinary life and how his novel helped to establish the timeless allure of vampires in popular culture. To purchase tickets to Beyond the Grave: An Evening with Bram Stoker in Colorado Springs, Colorado, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-the-grave-an-evening-with-bram-stoker-tickets-696195337997?aff=oddtdtcreator

Prismatic and polysemous, On the Road to Lviv (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) invites us on an odyssey across Ukraine in the hour of war. "This chronicle/ Took shape the day the war began, which was/ My 65th birthday," writes legendary traveler, war correspondent, memoirist and poet Christopher Merrill. At once deeply personal yet rooted in history so recent you can almost see the smoke billowing from the ruins of Mariupol, the poem is equal parts chronicle, a document of war crimes, and a sober self-reflection in which the poem's speaker examines his own engagement with Ukraine as a "democratic-minded" Westerner "determined to develop/ Civil societies around the world." Not since Byron's Mazeppa has there been an English-language poem comparably engaged with Ukrainian history, appearing here en face with Nina Murray's masterly translation into Ukrainian. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Prismatic and polysemous, On the Road to Lviv (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) invites us on an odyssey across Ukraine in the hour of war. "This chronicle/ Took shape the day the war began, which was/ My 65th birthday," writes legendary traveler, war correspondent, memoirist and poet Christopher Merrill. At once deeply personal yet rooted in history so recent you can almost see the smoke billowing from the ruins of Mariupol, the poem is equal parts chronicle, a document of war crimes, and a sober self-reflection in which the poem's speaker examines his own engagement with Ukraine as a "democratic-minded" Westerner "determined to develop/ Civil societies around the world." Not since Byron's Mazeppa has there been an English-language poem comparably engaged with Ukrainian history, appearing here en face with Nina Murray's masterly translation into Ukrainian. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this episode of the Norton Library Podcast, we welcome translator Michael R. Katz and scholar of Russian literature Kate Holland to chat about one of the most celebrated figures in all of Russian literature: Nikolai Gogol. We discuss the influence of Gogol's Ukrainian background on his acclaimed short fiction as well as the challenges—and delights—of translating his singular comedic voice. Michael R. Katz is C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. He has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, including Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and The Brothers Karamazov.Kate Holland is Associate Professor of Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Novel in the Age of Disintegration: Dostoevsky and the Problem of Genre in the 1870s. She is President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Selected Tales, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales.Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Listen to our Spotify playlist inspired by Selected Tales: https://shorturl.at/oSUX4. Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter @TNL_WWN.Episode transcript at: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/selectedtales/part1/transcript.

Guest: Anna Kovalova, Pitt's new Visiting Assistant Professor in Slavic Languages and Literatures, on her work on early Russian cinema. The post REEES Faculty Spotlight: Anna Kovalova appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.

On this episode, Cullan is joined by Dr. David Cooper, the department head and associate professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, to speak about his recent book on two Czech Manuscripts and the story of their successful forgery and dramatic discovery in the early 19th century. Dr. Cooper elaborates on the manuscripts' importance to the Czech cultural revival during the period of "Medieval mania" in Europe and the role they played in proving that Czech culture was just as rich and dated as any other European country. Thanks for listening! ABOUT THE GUEST: Dr. David Cooper is the author of The Czech Manuscripts: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth (Cornell, 2023) and Creating the Nation: Identity and Aesthetics in Early Nineteenth-century Russia and Bohemia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). Cooper also is the editor of Traditional Slovak Folktales; Collected by Pavol Dobšinský (2001) and The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts, With Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 2018). PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on August 18th, 2023 via Zoom. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch! CREDITS Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana) Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar Associate Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy) Production Assistant: Faith VanVleet Production Assistant: Eliza Fisher Supervising Producer: Nicholas Pierce Music Producer: Charlie Harper (@charlieharpermusic) --Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Stobotone, Jazzafari, Blue Dot Sessions Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (@MSDaniel) www.msdaniel.com DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin. https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/9/9a59b135-7876-4254-b600-3839b3aa3ab1/P1EKcswq.png Special Guest: David Cooper.

Anna Wylegala, Sabine Rutar, and Malgorzata Lukianow's edited volume No Neighbors' Lands in Postwar Europe: Vanishing Others (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) focuses on the social voids that were the result of occupation, genocide, mass killings, and population movements in Europe during and after the Second World War. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists adopt comparative perspectives on those who now lived in 'cleansed' borderlands.  Its contributors explore local subjectivities of social change through the concept of 'No Neighbors' Lands'. How does it feel to wear the dress of your murdered neighbor? How does one get used to friends, colleagues, and neighbors no longer being part of everyday life? How is moral, social, and legal order reinstated after one part of the community participated in the ethnic cleansing of another? How is order restored psychologically in the wake of neighbors watching others being slaughtered by external enemies? This book sheds light on how destroyed European communities, once multi-ethnic and multi-religious, experienced postwar reconstruction, attempted to come to terms with what had happened, and negotiated remembrance. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Anna Wylegala, Sabine Rutar, and Malgorzata Lukianow's edited volume No Neighbors' Lands in Postwar Europe: Vanishing Others (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) focuses on the social voids that were the result of occupation, genocide, mass killings, and population movements in Europe during and after the Second World War. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists adopt comparative perspectives on those who now lived in 'cleansed' borderlands.  Its contributors explore local subjectivities of social change through the concept of 'No Neighbors' Lands'. How does it feel to wear the dress of your murdered neighbor? How does one get used to friends, colleagues, and neighbors no longer being part of everyday life? How is moral, social, and legal order reinstated after one part of the community participated in the ethnic cleansing of another? How is order restored psychologically in the wake of neighbors watching others being slaughtered by external enemies? This book sheds light on how destroyed European communities, once multi-ethnic and multi-religious, experienced postwar reconstruction, attempted to come to terms with what had happened, and negotiated remembrance. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Anna Wylegala, Sabine Rutar, and Malgorzata Lukianow's edited volume No Neighbors' Lands in Postwar Europe: Vanishing Others (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) focuses on the social voids that were the result of occupation, genocide, mass killings, and population movements in Europe during and after the Second World War. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists adopt comparative perspectives on those who now lived in 'cleansed' borderlands.  Its contributors explore local subjectivities of social change through the concept of 'No Neighbors' Lands'. How does it feel to wear the dress of your murdered neighbor? How does one get used to friends, colleagues, and neighbors no longer being part of everyday life? How is moral, social, and legal order reinstated after one part of the community participated in the ethnic cleansing of another? How is order restored psychologically in the wake of neighbors watching others being slaughtered by external enemies? This book sheds light on how destroyed European communities, once multi-ethnic and multi-religious, experienced postwar reconstruction, attempted to come to terms with what had happened, and negotiated remembrance. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

To lead into the next season of Enduring Interest, we're re-releasing our first two seasons, covering totalitarianism and ideology and liberal education.  We'll be back on September 8 with a new season covering free speech and censorship. In this episode I speak with Clare Cavanagh, Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. She's the author of a forthcoming authorized biography of Czeslaw Milosz and a prize-winning translator of the poets Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska. Her essays and translations have appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Partisan Review. Some of her recently taught courses include What is Lyric Poetry? ; Gender and Revolution in Soviet Russian Culture; Heart of Europe: Poland in the Twentieth Century; Poetry and the Cold War; and 19th Century Russian Poetry. Clare and I discuss three poems by Czeslaw Milosz: “You Who Wronged”; “Child of Europe”; and “Mittelbergheim.” These poems are from an early collection called Daylight, some which were written when Milosz was working as a cultural attaché for the post-war Polish government. Clare calls Daylight a “book of struggle” where Milosz is asking questions about his audience and his own perspective and role as a poet. He writes about the falsification of history and the corruptions of ideology. We draw some connections between the poems and the arguments elucidated in his famous book The Captive Mind. Clare also offers her thoughts on Milosz's conception of the role of poetry broadly speaking. We conclude our conversation with some recommendations for listeners on where one might start to engage with Milosz's vast body of work. Clare also shares some of her experiences in meeting Milosz in Krakow and her impressions of him.

Ivan and Phoebe (Deep Vellum, 2023) spotlights the uproarious generation that led the Ukrainian independence movement of 1990; from subjugation to revolution to post-Soviet rule, it investigates the difficulties and absurdities of societal change and the families that change with it. Ivan and Phoebe chronicles the lives of several young people involved in the Ukranian student protests of the 1990's, otherwise known as the Revolution On Granite or the "First Maidan." The story bounces between politically charged cities like Kyiv and Lviv, and protagonist Ivan's small, traditional hometown of Uzhgorod. As characters come to exercise their rights to free speech and protest, they must also re-evaluate the norms of marriage, family, and home life. While these initially appear to be spaces of peace and harmony, they are soon revealed to be hotbeds of conflict and multigenerational trauma. Married couple Ivan and Phoebe grapple with questions about family, trauma, and independence. Although Ivan tells the story, Phoebe's voice rings through the text as she divulges her own traumas through poetic monologues. The two reflect on the traumatic aftermath of revolution: torture at the hands of the KGB and each other. While Ivan refuses to talk about his pain, Phoebe describes her past through poetic monologues. Lutsyshyna's poetic form allows her to experiment with characterization and genre, creating her own category. Through her characters' vivid voices, Lutsyshyna creates a his- and her-story of Ukraine: a panoramic view of post-Soviet society and family life through social, political, and economic crises. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so much of the news has been focused on events in central and eastern Europe. Marc Greenberg, an expert in Slavic, German and Eurasian studies, talks about the languages, cultures and national identities driving history in a volatile region.

Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomenon of the late Soviet era that provided an uncensored system for making and sharing texts. In bringing together research into the underground journals, bulletins, art folios, and other periodicals produced in the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, Ann Komaromi reveals how samizdat helped to foster new forms of imagined community among Soviet citizens. Komaromi's approach combines literary analysis, historical research, and sociological theory to show that samizdat was not simply a tool of opposition to a defunct regime, but a platform for developing informal communities of knowledge. In this way, samizdat foreshadowed the various ways in which alternative perspectives are expressed to challenge the authority of institutions around the world today. Ann Komaromi is a Professor within the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Acting Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Her interests include alternative publishing, underground networks and nonconformist literature and art, especially in the Soviet Union after Stalin. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network