The Kalbouss Innovative Approaches to Slavic Cultural Studies Lecture was establised in the spring of 2019 through the generosity of Associate Professor Emeritus George Kalbouss. Dr. Kalbouss taught in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures (now Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures [SEELC]) from 1973 to 2001 and his contributions are far too many to enumerate here. An outstanding educator with a commitment to supporting Slavic studies in the state of Ohio, in 1967 Dr. Kalbouss created an Introduction to Russian Culture course which was the first of its kind. Having written and published the Russian culture textbook, he taught over 15,000 students through this course during his academic career at Ohio State University. Before his time at SEELC, Dr. Kalbouss had been an assistant professor of Russian at Dartmouth College from 1967-73, and an Instructor of Russian at Purdue University from 1966-67. Dr. Kalbouss received his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages from New York University in 1968, and his M.A. and B.A. degrees from Columbia University. Beginning in 1961, Dr. Kalbouss served in the United States Army Reserves’ Military Intelligence branch, retiring as Lieutenant Colonel in 1999.
Throughout his career and since retirement, Dr. Kalbouss has also been an active supporter of the humanities and all things Slavic in Ohio. In 1992, he endowed the Russian Culture Fund at Ohio State, and from 1997-2007 worked with the Ohio Governor's Cultural Office under the administrations of Governors Voinovich and Taft. Dr. Kalbous also initiated the endowed Francis M. Buzek Award in memory of one of his favorite students during his tenure in the Slavic Department at Ohio State. Dr. Kalbouss’s other commitments and contributions include positions on the boards of the Ohio Humanities Council, the Cleveland Ukrainian Museum-Archives as an adviser, and the OSU Arts and Sciences Alumni Society. He currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.
2023
"Russian Literary Canon(s) and Teaching Russian Literature"
Dr. Tatiana Smorodinska | Middlebury College
For many decades, until the fall of the Soviet Union, several versions of the Russian literary canon co-existed in the West and in the USSR, and often had few overlaps. Now, we are at the same separation point again. The “canon wars” and calls for decolonization of the curriculum in the US have no support in contemporary Russia. On the contrary, we observe the return of a prescribed national canon, and enhanced ideological control over the school curriculum, and cultural paradigm in general. Should we pay attention to the new emerging literary canon in Russia? What do we want our students to know? Why do we choose one text over another? Which factors should influence our decisions?
2022
"Mikhail Zenkevich’s 'Voice of Matter': Poetry and Paleontology in the Era of Russian Modernism"
Dr. Colleen McQuillen | University of Southern California
This talk examines the paleontologically- and geologically-themed poems in Mikhail Zenkevich’s collection Дикая порфира (1912) in the context of key scientific discoveries at the turn of the last century. While linked to the poetic circles Acmeism and Adamism, Zenkevich penned speculative portraits of life on earth before humans that expand the parameters of realism and primitivism characterizing those modernist movements. Through a careful analysis of his “geopoems,” the talk suggests that Zenkevich’s modernist sense of linear temporal progression is a hallmark of a modern worldview and thus critical for understanding Russian modernist culture.
2019
“The Uses of Blackness in Yugoslavia: Dimensions and Legacies of an Idea”
Dr. Sunnie Rucker-Chang | University of Cincinnati
In this talk Dr. Rucker-Chang explores the uses and meanings of "Blackness" in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992) and its successor states of Serbia and Montenegro. To reflect on the mechanisms of cultural and social incorporation of “Blacks” in Yugoslavia, she highlights how, in defiance to Yugoslav narratives of ethnic and racial inclusion, post-Yugoslav identity has adopted a normative ethnic value of "whiteness" as an inalienable, exclusive feature of belonging.