Recent webinars (2023- 2024)

Roundtable: Diverse Voices From the Field
Friday, May 10, 2024, 5:30-7:00 EST

Colleagues from countries other than Russia will each present a Russian-language teaching activity or resources offering an insider’s view, followed by a Q&A and discussion. The framing idea is to offer models of well-grounded teaching activities for  instructors of Russian with less in-country familiarity or experience.

Roundtable participants:

• Belarus: Olga Klimova, University of Pittsburgh; Jenya Mironova, Harvard University
• Kazakhstan: Aselle Almuratova, University of Wisconsin
• Moldova: Doina Grecu, University of Georgia

Roundtable: Student Study Abroad Experiences After 2020
Thursday, April 25, 2024, 5:30-7:00 EST

In the wake of the Covid pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the study abroad landscape for Russian has been radically altered. Please join us for a roundtable in which a diverse group of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students will share their experiences of studying Russian abroad after 2020.   

Roundtable participants’ comments will be prompted by the following questions:

• Where did you study and what was it like to speak Russian there in your host family and around the city? 
• To what degree did you feel immersed in the local culture? What did you or the program do to help you to learn about the local country and/or meet locals? Did you feel culturally prepared for your study abroad experience?  If not, what might have helped?
• What aspect of your study abroad experience had the greatest positive impact on you? What growth did you experience? Did you feel your worldview challenged or reshaped in any way?
• Has study abroad played a role in building your commitment to study Russian and/or in promoting interest in the country where you have studied? If so, how?
• What challenges did you experience during study abroad? How did you manage these challenges?
• What do you wish someone had told you before you went? What advice would you give to those preparing students to study Russian abroad in post-Soviet space?

Maya Williams, Friends School of Baltimore 
University of Wisconsin’s Pushkin Summer Institute Abroad NSLI-Y program in Daugavpils, Latvia (summer 2023)
Friends School's SRAS Spring Break Program in Kyrgyzstan (spring 2024)

The Use of Generative AI in the Russian Language Classroom
Thursday, March 14, 5:30-7:00 EST

This webinar will outline strategies and best practices for incorporating generative AI into the Russian language classroom. Presenters will share resources and activities that draw on the affordances of AI to enhance students’ classroom experience. They will also consider the efficacy of using AI chatbots to provide students with task-based conversation practice outside the classroom. The presentation will include samples of student work alongside students’ reflections on their experience using AI to complete Russian assignments. In addition to exploring the benefits of incorporating generative AI into language instruction, presenters will discuss potential risks and drawbacks of AI usage, as well as tips for encouraging students to engage responsibly, ethically, and effectively with AI as they progress in their language learning. Specific topics to be covered include prompt engineering, AI as a tool for providing feedback and assessment, the ethics of AI usage, and the impact of AI on students’ experience and perceptions of language learning.

Kit Pribble
Kit Pribble is an Assistant Professor of Russian at Wake Forest University. Her areas of research are second language acquisition with an emphasis on digital learning technologies, as well as the development of Romantic prose forms in Russia in the 1830s and 40s. Dr. Pribble has published and presented widely on topics within 19th-century Russian literature, Romanticism, and L2 pedagogy, including projects on using Slavic folklore and digital social reading in the L2 classroom. She teaches Russian at the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels alongside courses on literature and culture. 

Doina Grecu
​Doina Grecu is a PhD candidate studying TESOL and World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her research interests focus on teacher language ideologies and their influence on classroom practices, as well as the decolonization of the Russian as a Foreign Language classroom. She is currently teaching Russian at the intermediate level and has previously worked with students at the elementary, intermediate and advanced levels as part of the Russian Flagship Program at UGA.

An Interdisciplinary Partnership: Teaching Russian during the War through Songs and Visual Arts
Friday, February 23, 5:30-7:00 EST

This webinar will outline the methodology, share resources, and present pedagogical strategies for integrating into Russian language instruction products of Russian popular culture created in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Through the analysis of anti-war visual arts and propaganda-serving, pro-war shanson music, presenters aim to equip language instructors with critical lenses and explicit strategies to teach media literacy. The objective is to expand students’ cultural perspectives by heightening awareness of wartime culture, developing their ability to interpret images and song lyrics, and sparking interest in civic and social justice. Presenters will share activities designed to enhance language competencies through scaffolded assignments, which allow students to interpret popular culture in the classroom setting while exploring anonymous anti-war street graffiti, stickers, street art, conceptual art, installations, song lyrics, and videos in a variety of formats.

Julia Denne
Julia Kriventsova Denne is an independent instructor and owner of the “By the Onion Sea” program (www.bytheonionsea.com). She teaches Russian classes for both high-school students, including heritage and bilingual students, and adults in the Chicago area and online. She has also been conducting adult seminars on Russian and world literature, art, history, and culture at the Newberry Library in Chicago for over 15 years.

Anastasia Gordienko
Anastasia Gordienko is Assistant Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona. Her interests lie in the intersection of Russian and Ukrainian history, culture, and identity. Her monograph Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) explores a paradoxical quid pro quo synergy among Russian criminal music, the shanson, and Putin’s politics. Gordienko has taught a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses at UA, covering subjects such as Ukraine, fairy tales, criminal culture, and the Russian language.