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As another eventful academic year comes to an end, let’s take pause to congratulate our stellar majors and minors who finish their degrees this spring. One major, Julia Zuercher (featured below) walked in May, and a dozen or so others (some featured in photos below) successfully completed the Russian minor. Natalia Sletova, Ph.D., has already departed for Tbilisi, Georgia, where she will be serving as faculty advisor to 11 study-abroad students. These lucky souls will be in great hands with colleagues at our Tbilisi host institution, the Nova Mova Language School. We are grateful for this fabulous alternative while travel to Russia is still sadly infeasible.
Russian Studies faculty continue to inspire in the literature and culture classroom, and at all levels of language learning. Professor Frank Goodwin’s “Reading Russian Literature” class was packed with students ranging from Intermediate to heritage learners, thirsty for first-time encounters with Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov and other classics in the original. And, contrary to rumors in the mainstream media that college students can’t or don’t read anymore, Professor Ingrid Kleespies’s “War and Peace” in translation drew a couple dozen extremely engaged undergrads from across campus, who by midterm would be arguing heatedly about the book even before she stepped foot in class.
Beyond the walls of UF, I had the opportunity to conduct a live webinar on the topic of my forthcoming book, “Networking Putinism: The Rhetoric of Power in the Digital Age,” Cornell University Press, for more than 800 K-12 teachers nationwide as a part of the National Humanities Center’s “Humanities in Class Webinar Series,” and later in the spring hosted an invited workshop at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, presenting on a draft chapter from the manuscript.
On the publishing front, Professor Galina Rylkova came out with an article on Vladimir Nabokov (“Failure to Acknowledge the Other in Nabokov’s ‘Despair’”, The Nabokov Online Journal) and Sletova had an article on Second Language Acquisition (“Task Modality and Working Memory: Oral Accuracy Improvement Through a Text-Reconstruction Task Across Various Proficiency Levels in L2”) accepted for publication at The International Review of Applied Linguistics.
Despite the challenges from the horrific war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year and no end in sight, I receive some solace and inspiration from the outstanding students populating our classes and the alumni who have paved the way for them. Below you’ll learn about Julia Zuercher (’25), now freshly commissioned into the U.S. Air Force after completing her ROTC training and her double major in Russian and international studies. You’ll read Cheyenne Stonick (‘21) reflecting on how her focus on three languages at UF paved her post-graduate path through Washington, D.C. and Madrid on her way to Oxford, U.K. And you’ll find excerpts from my interview with Mikhail Mikhaylov (’25) and Grace Wright (’25) talking about the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative — a remarkable student-conceived and realized non-profit designed to foster partnerships with Ukrainian citizens from the city of Nizhyn across a range of project-based areas, from civil engineering to cultural exchange. (Dr. Kleespies has played a key role as faculty adviser to the group.) It’s thanks to profiles and stories like these that my colleagues and I remain driven and purposeful in troubling times, and hopeful for brighter days ahead.
Best wishes for a relaxing summer and, as always, do take a moment to let us know what you’re up to!
Yours truly,
Michael Gorham
Professor, Russian Studies
Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of Florida
P.O. Box 115565 // Gainesville, FL 32611–5565 // 352-273-3786
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