Congratulations to Dr. Dustin Condren, in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, on the publication of his new book An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell University Press, 2024). This volume received a prestigious First Book Subvention award from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Dr. Emily Johnson delivered the keynote address at the workshop "Narrating the Gulag" at Oxford University's University College in January 2025. Her talk was titled "The Narrative Impulse in Private Correspondence from the Soviet Gulag."
On Thursday, October 24, 2024, Dr. Maria Lvova of the U.S. Russia Foundation visited OU. While on campus, she met with students and faculty and delivered a talk titled "A Brief History of Cultural Ties between the United States and Russia--in the Best and Worst of Times." Dr. Lvova's career in U.S. Russia relations spans three decades and includes 22 years of service at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as well as editorial work for the Voice of America's Russian Service. Since 2020 she has overseen and managed civil society and expertise programs for the U.S. Russia Foundation in Washington, D.C. She has a Master's degree in linguistics and a Ph. D. in English literature.
On November 12, 2024, the Romanoff Center joined the Department of International & Area Studies in hosting a book launch for Dr. Hannah S. Chapman, the Theodore Romanoff Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at OU. Dr. Chapman's monograph, Dialogue with the Dictator: Authoritarian Legitimation and Information Management in Putin's Russia, was published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Eugene Huskey, Professor Emeritus of Stetson University, served as the discussant at the launch.
Chelsea Smith-Antonides, a senior financial analyst and payment card industry compliance administrator at OU and an OU alumna (BAs in Russian and History and an MA in Global Engagement), served as a Dr. TW Adams Professor for the Day for in September 2024. In this role, she spoke to OU humanities students about how their degrees can prepare them for careers in financial services, including specifically the payment card industry. She also offered targeted advice on the job search process. The Dr. TW Adams Distinguished Alumni Program aims to bring alumni who are exceling in their careers back to campus to build connections with current faculty and students.
Congratulations to Dr. Dustin Condren, Assistant Professor of Russian, for winning the 2024 Cecil W. Woods Teaching Award, the only faculty award given by OU's Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics. It is wonderful to see him recognized for his dedication to OU's Russian program and students.
Congratulations to Dr. Emily Johnson on her recent publication: From Pushkin to Popular Culture: Essays by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, edited by Emily D. Johnson, Irina Reyfman, and Carol R. Ueland (Academic Studies Press 2024). The volume honors a ground-breaking scholar who served as the first female director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute.
Congratulations to Dr. Boris Apanasov, in the department of Mathematics, on the publication of his new book Dynamics of Discrete Group Action (De Gruyter, 2024).
With the support of the Romanoff Center, OU's Russian club hosted an event focusing on Russian superstitions in October 2024. Dr. Elena Carmichael and Dr. Nathan Marks both spoke as part of the event, which took place in advance of Halloween.
OU Russian major Brennan Teutsch traveled to Macalaster College to participate in the April 2024 undergraduate research conference "Art and the State in Eastern Europe and Eurasia." He presented a version of his capstone paper on how treatments of the life of the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky have varied over time in both Russian and Western biographies. Brennan's travel to Macalaster College was funded by the Romanoff Center.
In March 2024 Ukrainian Film Director Sergei Loznitsa visited the University of Oklahoma to meet with students and faculty and screen his landmark film State Funeral (2019). While in Norman, Loznitsa also showed footage from a documentary he was currently making on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and met with a class on the History of the Documentary. The Romanoff Center screened three of Loznitsa's films in advance of his visit: Babi yar. Context, The Natural History of Destruction, and Donbass. Loznitsa's visit to OU was co-sponsored by the Romanoff Center for Russian Studies, the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, the Department of History, the Department of Film and Media Studies, the College of Journalism, and the Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies.
The Romanoff Center and OU's Russian Program joined forces in April 2024 to organize a spring celebration of student achievements. At the event, six new members of Dobro Slovo were inducted and 7 Romanoff Center Scholarship Recipients and 2 MLLL Scholarship Recipients were reognized. Students who participated in OU's Undergraduate Research Day or the Essay Contest organized by the American Council of Teachers of Russian were celebrated. We also congratulated graduating seniors in Russian and Russian and East European Studies.
OU Russian faculty Dr. Nathan Marks and Dr. Elena Carmichael worked with OU's Russian Club to organize a table for the Spring 2024 OU Language Fair. The decorations they designed, including the matrioshka cut-out designed by Dr. Carmichael helped promote OU's Russian program and class offerings in Russian studies. A number of OU Russian majors, including Katherine Orr and Nathan Miller, who are both depicted in the photo below, helped man the table.
On Tuesday, February 13, 12:00-1:15 p.m. OU's Romanoff Center and the College of International Studies hosted a Zoom talk by Dr. Cole Harvey, Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University.
Dr. Harvey earned his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. His research focuses on non-democratic politics, especially the causes and consequences of election manipulation. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Electoral Studies, Democratization, and many other venues.
In November 2023, Dr. Laurie Manchester (Associate Professor of history at ASU) delivered a talk titled "Russian Refugees and Displaced Persons: The Case of Harbin, China, Where an Alternative Russia Competed with the Soviet Union from 1917 to the 1950s." Dr. Manchester is the author of Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia, which won the 2009 Vucinich Prize from the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for the most important contribution to Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies in any field of the humanities or social sciences. This event was co-sponsored by the Romanoff Center and the OU Department of History.
On Wednesday, September 13, Herman Pirchner, the founding president of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), gave a talk titled "The Axis of Anxiety: Russia–China–North Korea–Iran." This event was cosponsored by the Department of International & Area Studies and the Romanoff Center.
Herman Pirchner directed the national security team advising Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign (2012) is the author of Reviving Greater Russia: The Future of Russia's Borders with Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Ukraine (2004) and Post Putin: Succession, Stability, and Russia's Future (2019). Before founding AFPC, Mr. Pirchner served in the US Senate as Director of Legislation for Senator Roger Jepsen (R-IA) and Legislative Assistant to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
Congratulations to Romanoff Center Associate Dr. Mara Sukholutskaya on receiving the 2023 Distinguished Service Award from the American Council of Teachers of Russian. Dr. Sukholutskaya is a long-time member of the ACTR Board of Directors and is also president of the Central Association of Russian Teachers of America.
Congratulations to Dr. Elena Doludenko Carmichael on Winning the Cecil W. Woods Memorial Award for excellence in the teaching of modern languages! This is the highest teaching award given by OU's Department of Modern languages, Literatures & Linguistics.
Dr. Emily Johnson and Dr. Melissa Stockdale are honored to have received the 2023 Gary B. Cohen Distinguished Faculty Award from OU's College of International Studies in recognition of their work on establishing the Romanoff Center for Russian Studies.
The Romanoff Center was honored to co-host Irina Flige, the Director of the Research and Information Center "Memorial" in St. Petersburg during her visit to OU in April 2023. Flige was on campus to receive the Clyde Snow Social Justice Award. During her visit, she delivered a lecture titled "History as a Battlefield in Putin's Russia," which has since been published in the July 2023 issue of World Literature Today. The online edition of this same issue contains an interview with Flige that was conducted by Dr. Emily Johnson.
Congratulations to Romanoff Center Associate Stephen Friot on the publication of his book Containing History: How Cold War History Explains US-Russia Relations (OU Press, 2023). This cross-disciplinary study offers a fascinating view of the ways in which the past continues to shape both public attitudes and foreign policy in both Russia and the United States.
The Romanoff Center congratulates OU undergraduates Nathan Miller, Katherine Orr, and Mohamed Zayid Asli on receiving the first Romanoff Center Scholarships. Nathan Miller and Katherine Orr ar pictured together below.
On April 6 the Romanoff Center joined the Clyde Snow Award Committee and the OU Center for Social Justice in co-sponsoring a screening of the 2018 film Women of the Gulag, which was directed by Marianna Yarovskaya. This film was made with the support of the Russian human rights organization "Memorial" and contains interviews with six of the last survivors of Stalin's labor camp system.
In April 2023, OU's Gaylord College of Journalism sponsored and hosted "Ukrainian Grit and Hope," a photo exhibit by Vitalii Nosach. This exhibit gave OU students and faculty as well as members of the community a chance to learn more about the war in Ukraine and to see some of the work of a leading Ukrainian photo journalist.
On March 30 (1:30-2:45 p.m. CST), the Romanoff Center and OU's Department of International and Area Studies hosted a Zoom presentation by Bradley Jardine, the managing director of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and former editor of The Moscow Times. The talk focused on Sino-Soviet relations in Central Asia amid the war in Ukraine. This event was be moderated by Dr. Hannah Chapman and can be viewed online here.
Two OU Russian majors, Alyssa McGlamery and Heather Utt, joined OU faculty members Dr. Emily Johnson, Dr. Katerina Tsetsura, Dr. Elena Carmichael, and Dr. Nathan Marks at the 25th annual conference of the Central Association of Russian Teachers of America in Oklahoma City and gave presentations on their research. Heather Utt read her paper "The Language of Suffering: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya." Alyssa McGlamery presented an excerpt from her capstone paper: "The Memory of World War I: Russian Great War Poetry."
On Thursday, March 9, The Romanoff Center for Russian Studies and OU’s Department of International and Area Studies hosted a Zoom conversation with Dr. Volodymyr Dubovyk, Associate Professor, Dept. of International Relations and Director, Center for International Studies, Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University, Ukraine. Dr. Dubovyk commented on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the implications of this war for post-Soviet Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, and the world order as a whole. A recording of this event, which was hosted by Dr. Hannah Chapman, is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw9dP2vapYk.
On March 1 at 11:00 a.m. CST (12:00 p.m. EST) the Romanoff Center co-hosted (along with Columbia University's Harriman Institute, the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Russian and East European Studies, and the magazine World Literature Today) a Zoom launch for the March/April 2023 issue of World Literature Today, which focuses on the Russophone Literature of Resistance. Speakers included the writers Maria Stepanova, Mikhail Shishkin, and Ruthie Jenrbekova as well as the scholars Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia) and Kevin M. F. Platt (University of Pennsylvania). A recording of this event can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qk88Yj_cT8.
On February 16, 2023, the Romanoff Center hosted the Zoom Panel "Ukrainian Women and the War," featuring four invited scholars: Cynthia Buckley (University of Illinois), Marta Havryshko (fellow, Basel University), Oksana Kis (visiting professor, New School), Jessica Zychowicz (director, Fulbright, Ukraine), as well as OU faculty Melissa Stockdale and Rebecca Cruise. To view a recording of this event, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOwpJT8g3m0.
On February 14, 2023, Dr. Jade McGlynn (Department of War Studies at King's College London) delivered a talk on Russian Memory Politics in the light of the current war in Ukraine. The talk considered how the Russian government’s preoccupation with manipulating memory and rectifying past injustices has fueled its aggression around the world and its brutal war on Ukraine. Dr. McGlynn is a specialist in Russian media, memory, and foreign policy. She is the author of the forthcoming Russia’s War and Memory Makers and the editor of two volumes on memory and periodization. To view the recording of this event, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q0lpUHi-Zg.
Congratulations to Melissa K. Stockdale on the publication of the volume she co-edited with Adele Lindenmyer, Women and Gender in Russia's Great War and Revolution, 1914-1924 (Slavica, 2022).
Congratulations to Dr. Emily Johnson on the publication of a Russian-language translation of her monograph: How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie. (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
