Slavic and East European Languages
Master Class
Approaching the Nineteenth-Century Novel as Art Form, Enterprise, and Institution
Led by Williams Mills Todd III, Harvard UniversityAATSEEL will continue its innovative program of Master Classes, introduced this past year, at the 2011 conference in Pasadena. This program invites well-known scholars to provide AATSEEL members with an intensive introduction and overview of the Master Class leader’s area of expertise. The 2011 conference program will include a single Master Class, led by William Mills Todd III of Harvard University and devoted to “Approaching the Nineteenth-Century Novel as Art Form, Enterprise, and Institution.” The Master Class is limited to 15 participants, who must be current members of AATSEEL and preregistered for the 2011 conference. Registration for Professor Todd’s Master Class begins on September 15, 2010. Participants will receive a list of recommended readings (not to exceed 30 pages), as well as study questions, in mid November. The AATSEEL Executive Council will continue this exciting program at its next conference in January 2012, when Prof. Boris Gasparov of Columbia University will lead a Master Class on semiotics and its applications in the present day. The AATSEEL Executive Council welcomes suggestions for future topics and leaders. Suggestions or questions can be directed to Julie Cassiday.
Workshops
Tolstoy in the Classroom
Led by Irina Paperno, University of California, BerkeleyIn this workshop, Irina Paperno will speak (to a small group) about various strategies of presenting Tolstoy’s works in different undergraduate and graduate courses. Participants, faculty and graduate students, are welcome to share their teaching approaches and experiences.
Translation Workshop
Led by Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore CollegeAbstract: This year the Translation Workshop will concentrate on nearly-finished drafts of poetic translations. Join us to work through some drafts by distinguished translators at the most exciting phase of the translating process, to offer (or receive) suggestions and to watch the process in action. We hope to have translations from a variety of Slavic languages. Please contact the coordinator if you have questions or are interested in contributing a draft translation: Sibelan Forrester, (610) 328-8162.
Editing Video for Language Purposes
Led by Richard Robin, George Washington UniversityAbstract: In this workshop, participants will, as a group, shoot a one minute foreign language video and edit it for upload to a public site such as YouTube. Skills to be covered include: (1) assuring good sound and lighting; (2) language oriented subjects; (2) basic editing practices; (3) including material from the Internet; (4) optional captioning; (5) upload to Internet sites. In this workshop, we will be using Premiere Elements on the demo computer. But nearly all consumer video editing programs are similar. This is a group participation demonstration. Participants are welcome to bring laptops and cameras, but that equipment is not required for the actual workshop.
Between Learner and Text: Mapping out a Pedagogy of Reading at the Intermediate Level
Led by William Comer, University of KansasAbstract: What can a teacher do with reading in the intermediate classroom with learners who have already completed a basic language course, but who have a restricted vocabulary and a limited ability to process the target language syntax typical of organized written communication? How central a place should reading occupy in the curriculum at this level? What claim on classroom time should reading instruction make? What texts are “readable” at this level? What reading strategies do learners use in working through texts? What kinds of tasks and scaffolding can help learners process a text? What kinds of activities can push learners to incorporate aspects of the text’s language into their developing language system? What kind of activities can create an engaged classroom discussion following the reading of a text?
The presenter will argue for the centrality of reading to the curriculum and will layout materials for teaching reading with a range of texts (adapted, authentic, informational, artistic). The examples will mostly be drawn from Russian texts, but the approach can be used with any language.
Special Russian Poetry Events
Submissions are invited for the 2011 annual AATSEEL Russian poetry events. To stimulate conversation between poets, the academic community, and other attendees, events will include several poetry readings, followed by discussion that will be led by a commentator. Past panels have included themes such as "Russian Poets in America," "Poets of Several Cultures" and "Contemporary Poetry and the Visual Arts." There is limited space in the schedule, but the selection committee would like to showcase a wide variety of authors. Poets who would like to read their work are invited to submit three representative poems to Olga Livshin at afol@uaa.alaska.edu by August 15, 2010.
Departmental Chairs and Deans Meeting
5:00-7:00 pm, Friday January 7, 2011
Sponsored by Thomas Seifrid and Susan McReynolds
This meeting will enable chairs to share information and strategies on a wide variety of topics. Questions to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:
- How can chairs best advocate for students and faculty within our home institutions? What is the guiding role, if any, of chairs in the larger curricular revisions of the college or university, and how can Slavic departments—traditionally small, or merged with other national languages—make themselves most effectively felt?
- What forms of collaboration with other disciplines have proven fruitful? What forms have not? What, if any, are the qualifications we should look for in each party? How might such collaboration be fairly credited and assessed?
- How can chairs have an impact on the conditions of adjunct faculty?
Please contact the sponsors with suggestions for further topics. We look forward to seeing you in Pasadena.