Multilingual Academic Corpus of Assignments for Russian Language Classrooms

MACAWS (Multilingual Academic Corpus of Assignments – Writing and Speech) is looking for teachers interested in implementing their corpus-based activities in their Russian language classrooms.

Eligible participants:* Are teaching Russian in 2024

* Are interested in implementing corpus-based activities, especially spoken corpus activities

* Are available for an introductory workshop prior to implementing activities

If you join our research, we are pleased to offer a $25 gift card to participating instructors and $5 gift cards to their students. If interested, please contact Shelley Staples (slstaples@arizona.edu) or Valentina Vinokurova (vvinokurova@arizona.edu) to learn more.

What is MACAWS?

MACAWS (Multilingual Academic Corpus of Assignments – Writing and Speech) is a corpus of learner texts from two foreign language programs, Portuguese and Russian, built at the University of Arizona. Currently, we have 1539 Russian texts (219,515 words), and our corpus is growing!

Where can I find MACAWS?

MACAWS can be accessed via an online interface. To view the corpus, you will need to request a login and password on the interface webpage free of charge.

How can I use MACAWS in my classroom?

MACAWS has a variety of applications in the classroom, such as:

  • noticing activities to help students recognize grammatical or lexical patterns
  • awareness raising to help students understand features of spoken Russian such as fillers, discourse markers, and active listening strategies
  • building confidence through exposure to authentic texts produced by other learners

For detailed information on how to use MACAWS in the classroom, please visit our website.

CUNY REEES Workshop: “Marrying Sun Yat-senism and Turanism. Leveraging Ancestral Nationalism in Interwar Sino-Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy”

Event Date: March 22, 2024 | Online

Historian Mátyás Mervay, “Marrying Sun Yat-senism and Turanism. Leveraging Ancestral Nationalism in Interwar Sino-Hungarian Cultural Diplomacy,” on Friday, March 22nd at 12:30 pm via Zoom.

Zoom registration link: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pceGgqj4uHtDR04bjwgK-vncMtvAeEeZz#/registration

Papers for the workshops will be circulated one week prior to the event date and a reminder email will be sent at that time. We will meet once per month throughout the semester. March, April and May dates will be announced shortly. We look forward to seeing you!

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Call For Proposals: 2025 International Research Workshops (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Deadline: April 1, 2024

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies invites proposals from individuals and institutions to co-organize international research workshops in conjunction with the Mandel Center in 2025. Proposals are due Monday, April 1, 2024.

The Mandel Center’s Division of International Academic Programs promotes the vitality of research in the field of Holocaust studies around the world through the Moskowitz/Rafalowicz International Research Workshop and the Jacob and Yetta Gelman International Research Workshop. Our workshops seed research networks and produce new scholarship. We welcome proposals for workshop themes from scholars at universities and research institutions in all relevant disciplines, including (but not limited to) history, political science, literature, Jewish studies, Romani studies, philosophy, religion, anthropology, sociology, genocide studies, and law.

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Resource: Black Feminist Internationalism and Eurasian Borderlands

The website of my digital project, “The Archive Revisited: Black Feminist Internationalism and Eurasian Borderlands,” and the first artifact – the Gazette. You can find the Gazette either here https://thearchiverevisited.com/ OR here https://publuu.com/flip-book/361412/825142/page/1


Each contribution serves as a testament to the enduring impact of Eurasia on Black feminist internationalism in shaping and influencing intellectual and cultural landscapes. Thinking about Black-Eurasian connections also compels us to ponder how to forge links beyond borders and differences informed by different imperial formations.

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Resource: Research help from the Slavic Reference Service

Are you in the early stages of dissertation research and unsure of where to begin? Do you need help with locating items,?conducting a literature review, or identifying collections of materials for your research? Do you need additional support for a manuscript or as you begin the publishing process? The Slavic Reference Service is here to help. Our services are free and open to all scholars, regardless of institutional affiliation.

We handle requests in all disciplines including Gender and Women’s Studies, History, Literature, Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, and more. 

We can help with citations and sources from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus, and Central Asia.

Our services include:Answering?bibliographic and reference queries.  Verifying and correcting citations.   Helping you locate difficult–to–find sources. Offering access through our website to extensive research resources organized by country.  Offering one-on-one consultations. Providing support through the publishing process.

More information about our services can be found on our website https://www.library.illinois.edu/ias/spx/srs/

All questions can be sent to our email: srscite@library.illinois.edu 

Research Grants Program and Resources (Princeton University Library)

The latest grant cycle for the Princeton University Library (PUL) Research Grants program, funded by the Friends of PUL, is now open and accepting proposals.

PUL collections of potential interest to SEEES scholars include but are not limited to the following:

Osip Mandel’shtam Papers

Georges Florovsky Papers

Print Ephemera from Ukraine

Children’s Books from Russia and Eastern Europe

Anatoly Naiman Papers

Kees Verheul Letters from Nadezhda Mandel’shtam

Clarence Brown Papers

Samizdat Editions of Works by Osip Mandel’shtam

Cold War Archival Collections in the Mudd Manuscript Library

Russian and East European Posters

LGBTQIA Print Ephemera and Gray Literature from Russia

Russian Zines

Rare Books and Periodicals from Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia

For digitized selections from the collections, please visit: https://dpul.princeton.edu/slavic

Please write to me with any questions about the collections. Collections about the grants themselves can be directed to pulgrant@princeton.edu.

Summer Research Laboratory (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Deadline: March 1, 2024

The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center and the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are pleased to announce a call for applications to the Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) program. The program will take place June 10 – August 2, 2024. Funded in part by the U.S. Department of State’s Title VIII Program, the SRL program provides research support for graduate and post-graduate level research on Central and East Europe and the Independent States of the former Soviet Union.

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Online Courses in Russian Creative Writing and Advanced Reading

How to Write a Strong Text? Advanced Russian through Creative Writing

This experimental course is designed for heritage speakers and advanced learners of Russian who are interested in enhancing their writing skills. 

Throughout the course, we will explore how to effectively translate emotions into artistic imagery, as well as how to transform personal experiences into works of fiction. In addition to literary analysis, we will engage in various writing exercises and produce numerous short texts during class sessions.

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Teaching and Learning Languages in the US Podcast Series

Teaching & Learning Languages in the United States (TELL-US) podcast series is now fully released. The interviews in this professional learning resource for novice LCTL teachers focus on two broad categories: language pedagogy and school culture. The content is designed for professionals who find themselves teaching in a culture and education system that is different from the one they experienced growing up. This year’s series centers on Designing and Delivering Proficiency-Focused Target-Language Input and is hosted by Nicole Naditz (2015 ACTFL Teacher of the Year).

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Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (University of Wisconsin)

Deadline: February 1, 2024

Greetings from UW-Madison’s Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI)! We are excited to announce that applications for CESSI 2024 are now open! CESSI typically offers courses in Kazakh, Tajik, Uyghur, and Uzbek. Additional Central Eurasian languages (such as Azerbaijani or Kyrgyz) may be added with sufficient student interest.

Several funding opportunities exist for students of any type. Graduate students (including incoming students), post-baccalaureate researchers, and professionals who are U.S. citizens are especially encouraged to apply for the Title VIII Fellowship*, which covers full tuition plus a stipend of $2,500 for the summer. Note: This is a great opportunity for incoming MA and PhD students to develop language skills before embarking on fieldwork. *TVIII funding is provided by the United States government. Funding is conditional on final approval from U.S. State Department.

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