CREEES Professional Resources Forum
Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin
Virtual Experiences Abroad
A new generation of digital learning content provided at your fingertips. VEXA provides students of all kinds and means with engaging and memorable experiences abroad
What is VEXA
Vexa is a secure, user-friendly platform that hosts and displays content and combines aspects of social media with a learning management system to drive engagement.
Continue reading “Study Abroad Online: VEXA”Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs (TVL) is now accepting applications for our Fall 2021 TVL Practicum class. If you would like to learn more about this unique course and our other programs, please attend one of our upcoming info sessions.
The TVL Practicum is a cross-campus elective course that teaches graduate students how to work and consult with startups. Multi-disciplinary teams of grad students work through a project-driven curriculum that immerses them in research, teaches about business strategy and terminology, and provides a framework for strategically thinking through business problems to directly deliver positive outcomes for Texas-based startups. These startup companies are from our TVL Accelerator and engage with the students as “consulting clients”, so this is real-world, hands-on experience for course credit!
Continue reading “Course: Fall 2021 Texas Venture Labs Practicum”First Meeting: March 2, 2021
Borderlines Open School for Advanced Cross-Cultural Studies, an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural teaching and research organization, presents its first Spring course:
Dmitri Shostakovich: The Man, The Music, The Myth
Instructor: Harlow Robinson – expert in Soviet and Russian cultural history (Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, Northeastern University)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was not only one of the greatest composers of the modern era but also a reluctant political figure.
Born in Tsarist Russia, Shostakovich witnessed many of the defining events of his times: the creation of the USSR, the long nightmare of Stalinist terror, Hitler’s invasion, the Cold War, Khrushchev’s “Thaw,” Brezhnev’s era of stagnation. All these experiences were inscribed in his music that provoked subjective responses and widely divergent political and psychological interpretations.
From the triumphant premiere of his First Symphony in Leningrad in 1926 until his death, Shostakovich remained one of the most prominent representatives of Soviet culture. He received numerous honors from the Communist Party to which he belonged, and yet the extent of his personal and creative loyalty to the Soviet regime remains a hotly debated issue.
For all Russian language learners: Master Class in Russian pronunciation is being offered this spring. Our mission: to learn to sound authentically Russian! It is a free six-session class held via Zoom.
Appropriate for:
all students and teachers of Russian
beginners who know the alphabet
students with experience (a little or a lot!)
adult professional non-native speakers who want to improve their pronunciation
Russian teachers who want to expand their repertoire for teaching pronunciation
Level of instruction is aimed at:
college students
grad students
adult professionals
advanced high school students age 16+
Envisioning Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL)
February 1 – March 8, 2021
Registration deadline: January 28, 2021
Envisioning Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL) is designed as a 5-week open-enrollment course for language educators beginning to learn about Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL). Successful learners will be able to describe essential features of high quality PBLL and to generate high-quality ideas for projects using the Product Square. Registration and the content for this MOOC (massive open online course) is FREE. However, if you wish to earn the optional digital badge for completion afterwards, you will need to meet the badge criteria and pay a nominal fee ($25) to have your submitted materials evaluated by NFLRC staff.
Continue reading “Envisioning Project-Based Language Learning Course”New non-profit initiative called Borderlines Open School for Advanced Cross-Cultural Studies. The school offers online, seminar-style courses open to all adults. Part of Borderlines Open School mission is to make classes affordable for all students and to bring them to marginalized communities, as well as to ethically pay and support instructors, recognizing their intellectual and pedagogical labor as valuable work that matters.
Science Fiction with Deep Philosophical Issues (from Eastern Europe and Russia)
January 10–31, 2021
Instructor: Sibelan Forrester
https://borderlinesopenschool.org/courses/p/sf
Poetry Translation Masterclass: Theory, Problems, Practice
January 15–February 5, 2021
Instructor: Rebecca Ruth Gould
https://borderlinesopenschool.org/courses/p/translation
Queer Reawakening in Russian Literature
February 2–23, 2021
Instructor: Vitaly Chernetsky
https://borderlinesopenschool.org/courses/p/queerreawakening
Reading the Russian Classics with SRAS
Join SRAS for a new look at the Russian classics. Each course will look at a major work from five of Russia’s most famous authors. We will present the author’s biography and the history of the book’s creation, and then over the course of four meetings reference excerpts to discuss plot, character, and important themes to the work. We will also take a virtual excursion to a location in Russia of relevance to the work, its author, and its history to learn still more.
Educators: If you are teaching a Russian literature course this spring, contact us about participating in the virtual excursion components of these courses.
Perspectives on Ukrainian Identity
Perspectives on Ukrainian Identity is a multidimensional look at the people and events which have shaped Ukrainian identity. Starting from a broad introduction to Ukrainian history, we then move to four focused events – both tragic and heroic – that have had an outsized influence on modern Ukrainian identity. We will come to understand the geography, history, politics, and geopolitics of this large and fascinating country. We combine lecture, “live” visits to sites of relevance, and panel discussions with Ukrainian students as they reflect on their own history and identity.
Apply the full cost of this course to study abroad in Kyiv in 2021!
Continue reading “Online Courses and Workshops: Russian Classics, Ukrainian Identity, Language (SRAS)”The Summer Language Institute (www.sli.pitt.edu) at the University of Pittsburgh is proud to announce that we are accepting applications for summer 2021. At this time, we are planning to hold 2021 programming on-campus in Pittsburgh, but we are also excited to accommodate prospective students who elect to participate online, synchronously.
Arabic (Beginning and Intermediate)
Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and 4th-year)
Bulgarian (Beginning)
Czech (Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced)
Hungarian (Beginning)
Polish (Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and 4th-year)
Russian (Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and 4th-year)
Slovak (Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced)
Turkish (Beginning)
Ukrainian (Beginning)
For specific on program offerings, dates, and links to our applications, visit: www.sli.pitt.edu
Continue reading “SLI Summer 2021 Intensive Language Programs (University of Pittsburgh)”There will be three full days of translation workshops, and day four will be devoted to professional and networking sessions and includes discussion panels with editors and publishers and a practical talk on how to write a reader’s report. A highlight will be a presentation of Comma Press’s translation book list and business model, together with a translation competition offer. The winning entrant(s) will be offered a publication opportunity with Comma.
Directors Amanda Hopkinson & Ros Schwartz plus stellar line-up of tutors.
11 languages: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.
Keynote talk by George Szirtes, a translation competition run by Comma Press and panel sessions with publishers and editors.
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/sml/translation-studies/bristol-translates
online courses being offered by a new nonprofit initiative, Borderlines Open School for Advanced Cross-Cultural Studies. These courses are open to anyone with interest in the topic, including the general public, undergraduate/graduate students, and teachers and professors.
Below are just a few of the online courses offered in Winter/Spring 2021 that may be of particular interest to members of SEELANGS. Most courses are seminar-style, and are capped at 20 students.
Science Fiction with Deep Philosophical Issues (from Eastern Europe and Russia)
Instructor: Sibelan Forrester
Sundays 3–5pm ET, January 10–31, 2021
https://borderlinesopenschool.org/courses/p/sf
Poetry Translation Masterclass: Theory, Problems, Practice
Instructor: Rebecca Ruth Gould
Fridays 5–7pm ET, January 15–February 5, 2021
https://borderlinesopenschool.org/courses/p/translation
Continue reading “Courses at Borderlines Open School for Advanced Cross-Cultural Studies”