2025-05-06 - The annual Slavic talent show and awards ceremony on May 1 showcased a large number of awards won by Slavic language students, from national awards and honor society memberships to local scholarships and fellowships. ACTR National Post-Secondary Russian Essay ContestU of I students made a splash in the annual ACTR essay contest, with 2 Gold Medals, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze, 2 Honorable Mentions,...

2025-04-29 - Congratulations to Prof. Valleri Robinson (Theatre), who has received a 2025-2026 U.S. Scholar Fulbright to develop the book, “Directing in Context: Javor Gardev’s Theatre of Vulnerability, 1994-2024.” Gardev’s theoretically robust theatrical contributions began with his daring directorial experiments in 1994 in post-communist transitional Bulgaria, where he first thrived. Since then, his...

2025-02-25 - "The Hamlet Syndrome," an award winning documentary by Polish filmmakers Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski, was featured in a screening event on campus on February 6, sponsored by the Slavic Department and library's Slavic Reference Service, with discussion led by Professor Valleri Robinson of the Theatre department. You can learn more about the film and the event in a new story by Adelyn...

2024-12-02 - Congratulations to Professor Harriet Murav, who was awarded the 2024 Heldt Prize for best book introducing new, innovative, and/or underrepresented perspectives into any area of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies for her book, As The Dust of the Earth: The Literature of Abandonment in Revolutionary Russia and Ukraine (Indiana University Press, 2024). The award was...

2024-10-17 - Emeritus Professor Michael Finke has published Flights in the Cahier Series of Sylph Editions, which publishes "new explorations in writing, in translating, and in the areas linking these two activities." The beautifully produced small-form book brings together Finke's love of aviation and Russian literature. The publisher's description reads as follows: Deskbound and myopic,...

2024-07-09 - Congratulations to Professor Valeria Sobol, who was awarded a BRIDGE grant from the U of I for a collaborative project with the University of Birmingham entitled "Russophone Literary Diversity and Peripheries." Her co-PI from Birmingham is Prof. Natalya Rulyova and she is joined on the grant by Profs Cooper and Gasyna. The grant will support a conference at the University of Birmingham in...

2023-12-13 - The publication of Slavic Department Head David Cooper's The Czech Manuscripts was celebrated by the University of Illinois with a front-page story by Jodi Heckel on December 12. The full story can be found here (or by navigating to the University's homepage!) and more information about the monograph can be found...

2023-10-23 - Professor Harriet Murav appeared with Dr. Gennady Estraikh on The New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast with host Ari Barbalat to discuss their work Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering. As referenced by the podcast creators, Murav and Estraikh's 2019 Academic Studies Press title "discusses the participation of Jews as soldiers, journalists, and propagandists...

2023-10-16 - Slavic Department graduate student Sergei Motov was awarded “judge’s choice” in NYU Jordan Center’s Graduate Student Essay Competition. The competition called for essays in cultural criticism, public-facing treatments of scholarly work, political analysis, and book, film, or event reviews. Motov’s essay was entitled ...

2023-10-04 - Slavic Department Head David Cooper appeared on The Slavic Connexion podcast to discuss his recent book, The Czech Manuscripts: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth (Cornell, 2023). In a half-hour long program, Cooper and podcast host Cullan Bendig discuss a series of medieval-...

2023-08-17 - Professor Harriet Murav, with her collaborator Sasha Senderovich of the University of Washington, has won a prestigious NEH Scholarly Translations and Editions Award for their work on the volume In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union. Together they will prepare for publication an annotated translation into English of ten...

2023-07-21 - Professor Richard Tempest was interviewed by the Illinois News Bureau regarding the insurrection of Prigozhin's Wagner Group in Russia. Tempest provides background on the Wagner Group and Prigozhin. You can read the full interview with his analysis of the consequences here. 

2023-07-12 - Professor Peter Wright has been selected as a 2023-24 Fulbright Scholar for Croatia. He will conduct research there in the Fall semester for his book project, entitled The Business of Solidarity. Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. According to Fulbright,...

2023-03-17 - Congratulations to Professor Valeria Sobol, who has been designated as a recipient of both the campus and LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching! You can read the full announcement on the LAS website. Here is the citation for her award: Valeria Sobol...

2022-06-30 - Professor George Gasyna was interviewed again for the Polish Institute in New York's ongoing Encounters with Polish Literature series on the topic of the author Joseph Conrad. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the series has turned to exploring some of the many literary connections between Poland and Ukraine. As the Institute notes, "Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is often thought of as an...