News

In Their Own Words: From Hurt to Love, with Nothing Lost in Translation
In Their Own Words: From Hurt to Love, with Nothing Lost in Translation

In this series of four stories, we are highlighting students whose “Why I Learn Languages” essays have been selected as winners of the Trinity Language Council’s 2024 Best Essay competition. Sarah Gorbatov is a junior majoring in Biology and Russian, with a minor in Computer Science, who reconnected with her native Russian through her time at Duke. Read and let Gorbatov tell you, in her own words, how learning languages gave her the tools to reconcile a language of hurt with a language of love.   … read more »

woman with curly hair, glasses, in brown shirt, background blurred
Carol Apollonio Awarded as Richard Sites Senior Scholar

Please join us in congratulating Carol Apollonio who was presented with the Richard Sites Senior Scholar Award at the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies which took place from February 27-March 1, 2025. Established in 1962 the conference annually recognizes individuals for their scholarly contributions to Slavic Studies. Congratulations Carol!!!   Source: https://southernconferenceonslavicstudies.com/  read more »

photo of woman in purple shirt, short hair, with scarf
February 24 Talk

Please join us for the talk "Thinking Like A Planet: Geological Time and the Soviet Cultural Imaginary" to be presented by Dr. Mieka Erley. This talk will take place on February 24, 2025 in 359 Gravatt - Perkins Library at 4:00pm.   read more »

People looking at a screen
February 12 Talk

Slavic and Eurasian Studies has  invited a wonderful speaker, Zachary Hicks (University of California, Berkeley) and we invite you all to come! Talk title: “Soviet Cinema after Growth: Objective Form and Economic Downturn in Gleb Panfilov’s «Прошу Слова» (I Wish to Speak)”Time: Feb 12, 4:00Place: 249 Carpenter - Perkins read more »

monument to sorokin
February 3 Talk

Please join us for the talk "Performative Publishing: Ad Marginem and the (Un-)Making of a Post-Societ Canon" to be presented by Dr. Fabrizio Fenghi. This talk will take place on February 3, 2025 in 349 Breedlove - Perkins Library at 4:00pm.  read more »

Jennifer Flaherty smiles at the camera
Jennifer Flaherty and the Long Game of Understanding Russian Culture

A teenage Jennifer Flaherty loved ideas so much that among her criteria for the perfect college was an idyllic setting where she could sit under a tree and read history and philosophy.  “That was really my vision when I went to college,” Flaherty recalled. “Who knew you could make a career out of it?” She must have had at least an inkling, because Flaherty is now doing just that. She is a new assistant professor of the practice in Duke’s Slavic and Eurasian Studies department, teaching courses in Russian folklore… read more »

woman in glasses sitting in a chair with arms crossed in front of a bookcase
Welcome Liubov Kartashova

Please join us in welcoming our newest Instructor, Liubov Kartashova! Originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Liubov Kartashova received her bachelor’s degree from LCC International University in Lithuania, Klaipeda, in 2016. After receiving her undergraduate degree, she worked as an instructor of the English language and Literature at Lezha Academic Center in Albania and then in her hometown. She earned her MA in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina in 2020, where she also pursued her PhD,… read more »

graduation caps in the air.
Congratulations 2024 Graduates!

Manon FuchsAfter Duke, Manon will pursue a Master of Science in Foreign Service with a certificate in Eurasian, Russian, and Eastern European Studies at Georgetown University. As a Rangel fellow, she is on a fast track to a career in the foreign service, which she will begin once she receives her degree and completes two summer internships on Capital Hill and at a US embassy of her choosing. Manon hopes to focus her career as an FSO on Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where… read more »

photo of a man in a light blue suit shirt and tie
The Mediated Navalny

Please join us in Rubenstein 153 on April 3 at 4pm for the talk:  The Mediated Navalny: A Rhetorical Analysis of Russia's First Digitally Networked Politician Presented by Michael Gorham       Michael Gorham is a Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Florida and currently Archie K. Davis Fellow at the National Humanities Center. He received his PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University and served for 12 years as Associate Editor in charge of… read more »

Spring 2024 Special Events

The Dept of Slavic and Eurasian studies is excited to announce that we will be hosting three very special events during the Spring Semester. We are honored to bring the following guests to campus:   MARCH 19 Please join us on March 19 at 4pm in Rubenstein 349 for the Lecture “From Russian Studies to Donkey Rescue: Survival in Times of Extinction” to be presented by Dr. Robin Bisha. During this presentation, Bisha will discuss how she followed a creative career path that wove in and out of… read more »

photo of a woman
Book Talk: I Love Russia, Reporting from a Lost Country

Join us for the Book Talk: I Love Russia, Reporting from a Lost Country to be given by Elena Kostyuchenko on March 20 at 4pm in 249 Rubenstein.   Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years, she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta untill the newspaper was shut down under the pressure of Russian authorities in March 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, human rights, and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to prove the presence of Russian troops in… read more »

photo of woman holding a cat
From Russian Studies to Donkey Rescue: Survival in Times of Extinction

Please join us on March 19 at 4pm in Rubenstein 349 for the Lecture entitled “From Russian Studies to Donkey Rescue: Survival in Times of Extinction” to be presented by Dr. Robin Bisha. During this presentation, Dr. Bisha will explore how her career path in one of the premier Russian Studies programs in the United States formed how she responded to momentous shifts in global political and cultural history of the last three decades. Navigating the ups and downs of the field of Russian Studies, Bisha followed a… read more »

Charting the Landscape of Jewish Modernism
Charting the Landscape of Jewish Modernism

Edith London, In Flight, 1995. Mixed media, 13 x 16 inches (33 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Museum purchase and partial gift of Lee Hansley Gallery; 1997.25.1. Courtesy Nasher Museum of Art “It’s fulfilling to have a collaborative public outcome born from a course,” Saskia Ziolkowski, associate professor in Romance Studies, admits. She’s referencing Mapping Jewish Modernism, an exhibit currently on view through August at the Rubenstein… read more »

African American man standing at a podium in Russia
Spring 2024 Course Announcement

African Americans and the Soviet Experience Russ 490S ("Special Topics") Spring 2024 Mondays & Wednesdays 1:25-2:40 Prof. JoAnne Van Tuyl jvtuyl@duke.edu   Learn, talk about write about: • African-Americans moving to the USSR in the 1930's • A Soviet film project about American race relations that included Langston Hughes as script consultant • African Americans influencing Soviet… read more »

Book Cover Image
One Great Book

New Spring 2024 Course Offering The Brothers Karamazov Russian 335 Fyodor Dostoevsky TTh 4:40-5:55 ICS 339; LIT 335 Taught in English; Russian readers welcome questions? carol.apollonio@duke.edu read more »

photo of a woman with arms crossed
Welcome Jennifer Flaherty!

Please join us in welcoming our newest Professor, Jennifer Flaherty! Jennifer Flaherty received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from University of California, Berkeley in 2019. She's held academic appointments at the College of William & Mary, UC Berkeley, and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Flaherty's current book project, 'The Unsocial Society: Peasants and the Making of Russian Literary Modernity,' studies the role of class conflict in shaping nineteenth-century Russian literature. The project… read more »

Congratulations to our Graduating Seniors

Captain Nicholas Bruno, US Army, will be graduating with an MA in Russian Culture and Certificate in Slavic and Eurasian Studies. His thesis “Russian Diaspora Policy and the Near Abroad: An Indicator and Warning for Intervention” addresses the future ways and means of Russian foreign policy in Eurasia. After graduation, Captain Bruno will move to Garmisch, Germany as a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) Trainee and attend the Eurasian Foreign Area Officer Training Program at the George C.… read more »

Vital but Invisible: How Women Drive the Care Economy in the United States
Vital but Invisible: How Women Drive the Care Economy in the United States

Jennifer Nash, Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, minces no words summing up how care as a product is viewed in the United States.   “I think care isn’t valued because it's women's work. Anything that women do is devalued.”   From birth to death, everyone receives care at some point in their life. And the “care economy” is the economic activity generated by the provision of care services like childcare, elder care and health care. This includes both paid and… read more »