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Organized Courses Taught in Previous Years
Teaching Experience Russian language and culture
While a student at Moscow State University, I took a course, Russian as a Foreign Language, with Prof. Bryzgunova. From 1986 to 1988, I worked as a tutor of English, and in 1989 I studied the intensive language instruction method with Prof. Kirsh. In 1991, I taught Conversational Russian for second- and third-year students at the University of Texas at Austin. Because the third year conversation course lacks updated textbooks, I prepared courses based on contemporary media and film. In the summer of 1992, I taught a proficiency-based course on Teaching Languages to high school teachers at the NEH-sponsored Russian Program at the University of Texas at Austin. The course was based on the Four Skills Approach to Teaching languages. At that time, I started to apply parts of Pierre Capretz Multipurpose Audio-Visual System of teaching in my classes. In 1993-1997, I applied this approach to teaching all levels of Russian grammar and conversation at Brigham Young University. I have also taught The Survey of Russian Culture (in English and in Russian) at BYU. Each session I introduced a situation from a certain period of Russian history, a set of relevant ideas, mind patterns and cultural norms, and discussed them with my students. In order to make my classes comprehensive and thought provoking, I used different teaching methods. I asked my students to put Russian political and cultural authorities on trial, create Russian political parties, and write drafts of Russian laws. I have published, with McGraw-Hill, in 1997 and 2001 (second revised edition), a book on cultural history of Russia. The book contains the essential cultural patterns and ideas and simultaneously presents a research of native Russians' way of thinking and stereotyping cultural realia. It is entitled ``Inside the Russian Soul: A Historical Survey of Russian Cultural Patterns." I used it as a text for my upper-level culture and area studies classes. Literature
From 1986 to 1987, I have taught Seventeenth-- through Nineteenth--Century Russian Literature to undergraduate students in the Department of Philology at Moscow State University. At that time I was also working as a volunteer literature teacher at the Talented and Gifted Program at Moscow High School # 57. From 1986 to 1988, I taught a series of seminars on Contemporary literature for writers organized by the Russian Humanities Fund. From 1987 to 1989, I ran a graduate seminar on contemporary Russian literature at Moscow State University. I ran another graduate seminar, on the Literary Analysis of Russian and Western Romantic Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin. From 1989 to 1992, I prepared a series of lectures on nineteenth-century and contemporary Russian literature in English which I have delivered at PEN-Club meetings and major Scandinavian universities. I have also given invited lectures at a number of universities in the USA. In 1994-98, I have taught honors and Russian courses on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Russian Literature in Translation, 19th, 20th Century and Contemporary Russian Literature at Brigham Young University. I was also supervising honors theses on Russian literature and culture. Creative writing
As a writer and a poet I have participated in creative writing courses and seminars. In 1985-88, I taught classes on Writing Poetry at the Russian Humanities Fund; in 1991-93, hosted a creative writing club in Austin, Texas; in 1993-98, advised BYU students on Writing Fiction (Writing Across Curriculum program). Drama
I have written two musical plays. The plays were staged in Sankt-Petersburg. I have been the Director of BYU Student Theater. For the theater, I have written and directed three plays, "Parents and Children of Cain or to Kill the Poet," "The Scarlet Flower," and "Master" in 1994, 1995 and 1996 respectively.
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