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David J. Birnbaum, Chair
Nancy Condee
Helena Goscilo
Jane Gary Harris

Vladimir Padunov
Oscar Swan
Martin Votruba
Kateryna Dowbenko
Lenka Pankova

David J. Birnbaum
Department Chair
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Degree: Ph.D., Harvard University

Specialties: Humanities computing, particularly the computer processing of medieval Slavic manuscripts. Slavic linguistics, particularly diachronic and synchronic phonology and morphology. Medieval Slavic texts.

Representative Publications: 

  • The Povest' vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis (2003, assoc. ed.)
  • "Computer-Assisted Analysis and Study of the Structure of Mixed-Content Miscellanies" (2003)
  • Computational Approaches to the Study of Early and Modern Slavic Languages and Texts (2002, ed. with Anisava Miltenova and Sarah Slevinski)
  • "The Relationship Between General and Specific DTDs: Criticizing TEI Critical Editions" (2001)
  • "Designing a Russian Fairy Tales Course" (2001, with Suzanne Daly, Helena Goscilo, Julia Sagaidak Houkom, John Kachur, Gerald McCausland, Alexander Prokhorov, Petre Petrov, Irina Reyn, Dawn Seckler, and Benjamin Sutcliffe)
  • Medieval Slavic Manuscripts and SGML: Problems and Perspectives (2000, ed. with Anisava Miltenova)
  • "A TEI-Compatible Edition of the Rus' Primary Chronicle" (2000)
  • Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Processing of Medieval Slavic Manuscripts (1995, ed., with Andrej Bojadziev, Milena Dobreva, and Anisava Miltenova)
  • "The Problem of Anomalous Data" (1999, with David Mundie)
  • "Using the TEI Writing System Declaration (WSD)" (1999, with Mavis Cournane and Peter Flynn).

Courses Regularly Taught: Russian Fairy Tales, Medieval Rus'.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5712

E-mail Address: djbpitt@pitt.edu

Home page: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/

 

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Nancy Condee
Director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies (1995-2006)
Director of Graduate Studies
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Degree: Ph.D., Yale University

Specialties: Contemporary Russian culture and cultural politics; Soviet cultural politics; late Soviet and post-Soviet cinema; imperial and postcolonial theory; popular culture.

Representative Publications: 

  • Articles in The Nation, October, New Left Review, Washington Post, Framework, Sight and Sound, New Formations
  • Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (2008, ed. with Terry Smith and Okwui Enwezor)
  • "From Emigration to E-migration: Contemporaneity and the Former Second World."  Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. 
  • "When Bakunin Moved in with Turgenev: Philiterature in the Empire." Boundary 2, 34: 1 (Spring 2007): 173-95
  • "Eurasia and Imperialism."  Debate participants include Gayatri Spivak and Harsha Ram.  PMLA 122:1 (January 2007): 360-61
  • "The Anti-Imperialist Empire and After: In Dialogue with Gayatri Spivak's 'Are You Postcolonial?'"  PMLA 120:3 (May 2006): 829-31.  Introduction by Gayatri Spivak
  • "Drowning or Waving? Some Remarks on Russian Cultural Studies."  Slavic and East European Journal, Special Issue: Fiftieth Anniversary.  50.1 (Spring 2006): 203-09
  • "Vicarious Catastrophe: The Empire Watches Death of the Empire." Pro et Contra (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace/ Carnegie Moscow Center), hard copy 4 (33) 2006: 29-37; online 10: 4 (September 2006): 29-37 at http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/procontra/vol10num4-full.pdf
  • "Learnings of Borat for Make Benefit Cultural Studies."  Review of Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12 November 2006: H-6.
  • "As Much Happiness as Unhappiness."  Essay-review of Sergei Ursuliak, dir.  Dolgoe proshchanie (Long Farewell).  Kinokultura  (October 2005), online at http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura/  
  • "Russkoe kino za rubezhom."  Seans [Seance] 19-20 (2005): 194
  • "Muratova's Well-Tempered Scam."  Essay-review of Kira Muratova, dir.  Nastroishchik (The Tuner).  Kinokul'tura  (January 2005) online at http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura/
  • "Obrazovanie v antropologii i sotsial'nykh naukakh."  Antropologicheskii Forum St. Petersburg 3 (2005): 70-79
  • "Imperialism Ectoplasm."  Kinokultura 6 (October 2004): electronic journal (http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura/)
  • Kondi, Nensi.  "Putenitsa sovremennosti: imperiia i natsiia."  Kul'tura Post.  Voronezh: Voronezh State University, 2004
  • September 11th, A Year On: Research Symposium. Special Issue of Critical Quarterly. Vol. 45, Number 3 (2003, ed. with Colin MacCabe)
  • "Otstuplenie o geroe."  Iskusstvo kino 10 (2003): 72-73
  • "Subtropical Cinema: Kinotavr, Collective Heroes and the Small Screen."  Kinokul'tura (June 2003): http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura/ (with Vladimir Padunov)
  • Kino ottepeli.  CD-rom database on Soviet Thaw cinema (Executive Producer, 2002)
  • Endquote: Literary Sots-Art and Soviet Grand Style (2000, ed. with Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko)
  • "The Death of Russian Cinema, or Sochi: Russia's Last Resort."  Russia at the End of the Twentieth Century: Culture and Its Horizons in Politics and Society.  Comp and ed. Gregory Freidin.  Stanford University, 2000.  www.stanford.edu/group/Russia20/volume/
  • "Uncles, Deviance, and Ritual Combat: The Cultural Codes of Khrushchev's Thaw.  The Khrushchev Era: A Reappraisal. Ed. William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason (2000): 160-76.  Russian version "Kul'turnye kody 'Ottepeli.'"  Tr. N. Mikhailova.  Russkaia literatura XX veka: napravleniia i techeniia.  Vypusk 3 (Ekaterinburg 1996): 167-182
  • "No Glory, No Majesty, or Honor: The Russian Idea and Inverse Value." Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema. Ed. Birgit Beumers (1999): 25-33
  • "Body Graphics: Tattooing the Fall of Communism."  Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev.  Ed. Adele Barker (1999)  339-61.  German version "Körperzeichnungen: Der Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus." Berliner Debatte Initial 13: 1 (2002): 71-88.  Russian version "Grafika na tele: tatuirovki i krakh kommunizma."  Tr. N. S. Vnuchenko.  Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 39 (1999): 101-18
  • "Why Cultural Studies Matters." Carnegie Mellon University Series: Lectures on Demand. 24 October 1998. Streaming audio file: http://lectures.eserver.org/1002
  • "Les cinemas russe et sovietique." Cinemas d'Europe du Nord: de Fritz Lang à von Trier. Ed. Lucy Lean (1998): 247-55
  • "Konets stoletiia? konets chernukhi?" Iskusstvo kino 3-4 (1998): 169-70
  • "The Second Mother Fantasy, or All Baths are Women's Baths."  Russia * Women * Culture: From Bathhouse to Ballroom.  Ed. Helena Goscilo and Beth Holmgren (1996).  Russian version Vse bani-zhenskie bani." Iskusstvo kino 5 (1997): 76-81
  • "Desiat' zametok s 'Kinotavra.'"  Iskusstvo kino 10 (1996): 98-100
  • "The Relentless Cult of Novelty, or How to Wreck the Century: Rethinking Soviet Studies." Beyond Soviet Studies. Ed. Daniel Orlovsky (1995): 289-304
  • Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late 20th Century Russia (1994, ed) 
  • "The ABC of Russian Consumer Culture: Readings, Ratings, and Real Estate." Soviet Hieroglyphics (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "Pair-a-Dice Lost: The Socialist Gamble, Market Determinism, and Compulsory Postmodernism."  New Formations 22 (Spring 1994).  Special issue entitled Postcommunism: Rethinking the Second World.  72-94 (with Vladimir Padunov).  Russian version "Proigrannyi rai: Ruletka sotsializma, rynochnyi determinizm i postmodernizm po obiazatel'oi programme." Iskusstvo kino 9 (1992): 72-81.  Reprinted in Novaia volna: russkaia kul'tura i subkul'tury na rubezhe 80-90 godov.  Ed. Nadezhda Azhgikhina (1994): 4-19

  • "Perestroika Suicide: Not By Bred Alone." The Harriman Institute Forum 5.5 (January 1992) (with Vladimir Padunov).  Reprinted in Stanford Slavic Studies.  Russian Culture in Transition: Selected Papers of the Working Group for the Study of Contemporary Russian Culture 1990-1991.  Ed. Gregory Freidin.  Vol. 7 (1993): 91-122.  Russian version "Samoubiistvo perestroiki: ne bredom edinym."  Tr. I. Chabanov.  Znamia 1 (1992): 209-12

  • "Makulakul'tura: Reprocessing Culture."  October 57 (Summer 1991): 79-103.  Reprinted in Stanford Slavonic Studies: 53-80 (with Vladimir Padunov).  Russian version "Makulakul'tura ili vtorichnaia pererabotka kul'tury." Tr. F. and O. Urnovy. Voprosy literatury 1 (1991): 101-26

  • "The Cultural Combat Zone: Where is the DMZ?" Soviet Union/Union Sovietique 15.2-3 (1988): 167-185 (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "Frontiers of Soviet Culture: Reaching the Limits?" The Harriman Institute Forum 1.5 (1988): 1-8 (with Vladimir Padunov).  Reprinted in The Soviet Union 1988: Essays from the Harriman Institute Forum.  Ed. Paul Lerner (1989)

  • "'New' Soviet Cinema: Once Again the Most Important Art."  San Francisco International Film Festival Catalogue (1988): 32-37 (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "The Outposts of Official Art: Recharting Soviet Cultural History."   Framework 34 (1987): 59‑106 (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "Spring Cleaning in Moscow's House of Cinema."  Lead article in Forty-First International Edinburgh Film Festival Catalogue (1987): 6‑9 (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "Reforming Soviet Culture: Retrieving Soviet History."  The Nation 13 June 1987: 815‑820 (with Vladimir Padunov)

  • "Soviet Cultural Politics and Cultural Production." IREX Occasional Papers 2 (1987): 1-21 (with Vladimir Padunov)

Courses Regularly Taught: Empire and Nation; Stalin Cinema; Russian Culture.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5706

E-mail Address: condee@pitt.edu

 

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Helena Goscilo
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Degree: Ph.D., Indiana University

Specialties: Contemporary Russian culture; Russian and Polish women's literature; early nineteenth-century narrative fiction; gender; nineteenth-century novel; Bakhtin; folklore.

Representative Publications: 

  • Lermontov's Vadim (1984, tr.)
  • Russian and Polish Women's Fiction (1985, tr. & ed.)
  • Nagibin's Peak of Success and Other Stories (1986, tr. & ed.)
  • Balancing Acts (1989, tr. & ed.)
  • Glasnost': New Soviet Prose (1990, co-ed and tr.)
  • Wild Beach (1992, co-ed and tr.)
  • Skirted Issues: The Discreteness and Indiscretions of Russian Women's Prose (1992, ed.) 
  • Fruits of her Plume (1994, ed.)
  • Lives in Transit (1995, tr. & ed.)
  • Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood Before and After Glasnost (1996);
  • Russia*Women*Culture (1996, with Beth Holmgren)
  • M. Kharitonov’s Lines of Fate (1996, tr. & ed.)
  • TNT: The Explosive World of Tatyana Tolstaya's Fiction (1996)
  • A. Verbitskaya's Keys to Happiness (trans. and intro., with Beth Holmgren, 1999)
  • Russian Culture of the 1990s (special issue of STCL) (2000)
  • Shamara and Other Writings by Svetlana Vasilenko, ed. (2000)
  • Studies in Slavic Cultures, Vol. 1-3 (2000-2002)
  • "Big-Buck Books: Pulp Fiction in Postsoviet Russia," The Harriman Review, Vol. 12, 2-3 (Winter 1999/2000): 6-24
  • "Novye chleny i organy: politika pornografii," Zhenshchina i vizual’nye znaki, ed. Anna Al’chuk (2000): 107-43 
  • Vzryvoopasnyi mir Tat'iany N. Tolstoi (2000)
  • "Perestroika and Postsoviet Prose: From Dazzle to Dispersal," A History of Women’s Writing, eds. A. Barker & J. Gheith (2002): 297-312
  • "Playing Dead: the Operatics of Celebrity Funerals, or the Ultimate Silent Part," Intimations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, eds. Louise McReynolds & Joan Neuberger (2002): 283-319
  • "Casting and Recasting the Caucasian Captive," Pushkin in the 20th Century, eds. Joe Andrew & Robert Reid (2002): 195-208
  • "Modeling the Paradoxes of Wisdom’s Ways," The Novel/Il Romanzo, ed. Franco Morett (2002): 533-39
  • "Zhivopisua gender: sovremennoe zhenskoe iskusstvo," Iskusstvo zhenskogo roda/femme art (Tretyakov Gallery, 2002): 144-70 (with Elena Kornetchuk)
  • "Rozhdenie novykh russkikh: kartinki s vystavki," O muzhe(N)stvennosti, ed. S. Ushakin(2002): 504-32 (with Nadezhda Azhgikhina)
  • "Cosmetics—or Dying to Overcome Nature in an Age of Art and Artifice," Women and Gender in 18th-Century Russia, ed. Wendy Rosslyn (2003): 73-104
  • "The Italics Are Hers: Matrophobia and the Family Romance in Elena Bonner’s Mothers and Daughters," The Russian Memoir: History and Literature, ed. Beth Holmgren (2003): 53-69
  • Politicizing Magic: An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales (2005) (with Marina Balina & Mark Lipovetsky)
  • Stalinka http://images.library.pitt.edu/s/stalinka (2005) (with Susan Corbesero & Petre Petrov)
  • Gender and National Identity in 20th-Century Russian Culture (2006) (with Andrea Lanoux)

Courses Regularly Taught: Graduate: The Novel; Bakhtin; Feminism and Contemporary Russian Women's Culture; Sentimentalism and Romanticism. Undergraduate: Vampire: Blood and Empire; Sci-fi; Russian Fairy Tales; 20th-Century Russian Art.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5908

E-mail Address: goscilo@pitt.edu

 

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Jane Gary Harris
Undergraduate Advisor
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Degree: Ph.D., Columbia University

Specialties: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian poetry; non-fictional prose (autobiography, the essay, the journal, and women's journalism); Acmeism; autobiography; poetics; Mandel'shtam; Lydia Ginzburg.

Representative Publications: 

  • Osip Mandelstam: The Complete Critical Prose and Letters (1979, 1991 ed. and tr.)
  • Osip Mandelstam (1988)
  • American Contributions to the 10th International Congress of Slavists (1988, ed.)
  • Autobiographical Statements in 20th Century Russian Literature (1990, ed)
  • Lydia Ginzburg: In Memoriam [Festschrift] (1994, ed.)
  • Scholar, Writer, and Witness: Selected Writings of Lydia Ginzburg (ed. and tr.)
  • New project: Women's Discourse and the Russian Pre-Revolutionary Periodical Press.

Courses Regularly Taught: Silver Age; 19th and 20th century Russian literature; Russian poetry; Russian language.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5708

E-mail Address: jgharris@pitt.edu

 

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Vladimir Padunov
Associate Director, Film Studies Program

Degree: Ph.D., Cornell University

Specialties: Russian cultural and intellectual history; 19th- and 20th-century novel and novel theory; Dostoevsky; literary and critical theory; 20th-century drama; Russian visual and popular culture; history of Russo-Soviet film.

Representative Publications: 

  • Star Above Almaty: Kazakh Cinema Between 1998 and 2003 KinoKultura 1 (2004)
  • On the Benefits of Cine-Lingualism Iskusstvo kino 11 (1998)
  • Views of the Present As Visions of the Past Iskusstvo kino 10 (1996)
  • 'Large Loose Baggy Monsters': The Poetics of Excess in Contemporary Russian Culture Iskusstvo kino 7 (1996)

Courses Regularly Taught: contemporary Russian culture; history of Russo-Soviet film; Dostoevsky; Tolstoy; proseminar.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5713

E-mail Address: padunov@pitt.edu

 

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Oscar Swan
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Degree: Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley

Specialties: Polish and Russian linguistics; Old Church Slavic; syntactic and semantic theory; language pedagogy; materials development; Polish literature and culture.

Major Book-Length Publications 

  • Holy Week by Jerzy Andrzejewski. A translation from the Polish, forthcoming, Ohio University Press, 2006
  • Tales of My Wife. A Polish glossed reader, forthcoming. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2006
  • Russian Sounds and Inflections. Columbus, Ohio: Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, forthcoming, 2006
  • Grammar of Contemporary Polish. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 2002. Awarded best work in Slavic Linguistics by AATSEEL, 2004
  • W labiryncie (Labyrinth of Life), with Wieslaw Oleksy. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1993
  • Beginning Slovak. with Silvia Galova-Lorinc. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1990
  • Intermediate Polish. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1986
  • A Private War by Buno Shatyn. A translation from the Polish. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1985
  • First Year Polish. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980 

Recent Article: "Andrzej Wajda's Film Holy Week: What is its Problem?" The Polish Review, vol L, no. 3, 2005,  343-353.

Courses Regularly Taught: Polish; Polish Short Story; Polish Literature and Culture; Old Church Slavic; Structure of Russian; Russian morphology, Polish Through Film, Polish over the World Wide Web 

Awards: Best work in Slavic Linguistics, 2004 (for A Grammar of Contemporary Polish). Awarded by American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.
Amicus Poloniae award by Poland magazine for Intermediate Polish, 1986.  

 Website: The Polish Language Website http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu is devoted to the teaching of the Polish language worldwide. Access to it is free. It contains an on-line Polish dictionary, a reference grammar, a first-year Polish course, computer-graded language quizzes, a collection of Polish short stories, a Polish songbook, and downloadable installments of the Polish soap opera "W labiryncie".

Office Telephone: 412-624-5707

E-mail Address: swan@pitt.edu

 

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Martin Votruba
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Degrees: Ph.D. and PhDr., Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia; D.E.S., University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Specialties: Slovak studies -- language, history, literature, culture; Slovak and West Slavic linguistics; Communism and its collapse in Central Europe.

Representative Publications: "Trends in 20th Century Slovak Filmmaking," Slovakia Vol. 37; "Linguistic Minorities in Slovakia" (1998) in: Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe; A Slovak-English Contrastive Grammar (1976; revised edition 2000).

Courses Regularly Taught: A Cultural History of Slovakia; Slovak and Czech Cinema; A Survey of Slovak Literature and Culture; Slovak language.

Office Telephone: 412-624-5705

E-mail Address: votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

Slovak Website: http://www.pitt.edu/~slavic/slovak.html

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Kateryna Dowbenko

Courses Regularly Taught: Ukrainian language

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Lenka Pankova
Photograph 1 | Photograph 2

Abbreviated Resume

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