Graduate Student Updates
Jay Hadfield, PhD candidate
Now that I've passed candidacy, I have spent the last few months focused on my research (namely my work on queer narrative forms in Andrey Bely's novel Petersburg). I'm hoping to have a finished article draft sent out soon, and I'll be presenting my work this October for the CSEEES Graduate Student Lecture. This project has been a long time in the making (coming up on three years now), so I'm thrilled to finally have something to share. Alongside my research, I'm teaching Russian 2104 this semester with a small group of excellent and dedicated students. We have also continued the Russian Language Peer Mentorship Program that I launched last year, which brings together dozens of our beginner and veteran Russian language students in a friendly, supportive learning community. I'm looking forward to the ASEEES convention this November where I'll be presenting some new work for a panel I organized on Tolstoy. I'm honored, and admittedly a tad nervous, to be presenting alongside so many brilliant and respected scholars from our field. Even though there's a lot to juggle this semester, I'm glad to be spending my time on the things I care about most: teaching, learning, reading and writing.
Michelle Verbitskaya, PhD candidate
Two years ago, I took my first Ukrainian class at OSU, and today I am Pani Verbitskaya, teaching UKR1101. It still feels surreal how many cool experiences came out of joining Ukrainian studies: I went to Tbilisi, Georgia, to study intensive Ukrainian, co-organized Ukrainian language day and started co-authoring a Ukrainian language textbook. Next up, I'm heading to Michigan to present part of my dissertation chapter on feminitives in Ukrainian media at the Shevchenko Workshop. On the books for this year is organizing a Midwest Ukrainian Olympiada to bring together students from Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan for a day of celebrating Ukrainian studies. I can’t escape a cliché here: dyakuju to my instructor and colleague, Dr. Mykyta Tyshchenko, who taught me everything I know and made it possible for me to be where I am today, and, of course, to SEEELC for trusting me to carry Ukrainian studies forward.
