Alumni

• Join the KU SLL Alumni Facebook page

Doctor of Philosophy

George Jerkovich

Appollon Grigor'ev as a Literary Critic. Defended 1970 (Chair: Heinrich Stammler). Curator of the Slavic Collection KU Watson Library. Deceased. (04/09)

Walter Kolonosky

Andrej Sinjavskij as a Literary Critic. Defended 1972. (Chair: Joseph L. Conrad). Formerly Professor of Russian, Department of Modern Languages, Kansas State University; Director of KSU Study Abroad. Died 18 August 2009. (10/09)

Valentina Golondzowska Brougher

Vsevolod Ivanov's Mystery of Mysteries. Defended 1973 (Chair: Joseph L. Conrad). Professor and past Chairperson of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Georgetown University. Retired. (04/09) She has been busy publishing articles as she says "Georgetown emphasizes the 'scholar-teacher' mode." Her husband serves as Director of Russian and Independent States Division for the U.S. Department of Commerce and she has a son. (6/00)

Peter A. Kersten

Nominal Accidence in Two Letters attributed to Ivan IV; Exposition and Analysis. Defended 1973 (Chair: Heinrich Stammler). private business; formerly at the University of Missouri - Columbia.

Thomas R. Beyer, Jr.

Andrej Belyj's Real'nyj Criticism: Precursor of Russian Formalism. Defended 1974 (Chair: Stephen J. Parker) C.V. Starr Professor of Russian, Chair of Russian, Dean of the Russian School at Middlebury College. Author of fifteen books including 501 Russian Verbs and 501 English Verbs. Professor Beyer continues to follow the popularity of the second edition of his book, 501 Russian Verbs. He also recently published his translation into English with notes and commentary of Andrej Belyj's Glossolalie -Poema über den Laut/Glossolalia: A Poem about Sound. (Trilingual edition, German and English translations, and Russian original edited by Taja Gut. Dornach: Pforte Verlag, 2003).
Professor Beyer presented a paper on using the Internet in basic and advanced Russian classes at the Tenth International Congress of Russian Teachers held this past summer in St. Petersburg. The paper can be downloaded here. (8/03)

Daniel Gallagher

The Surrealist Mode in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature. Defended 1974 (Chair: Stephen J. Parker). Senior Soviet/CIS Affairs Analyst, National Security Agency. (1/01)

David Bethea

The Wingless Genius: Irony in the Poetry of Vladislav Xodasevic. Defended 1977 (Chairs: Stephen J. Parker and Gerald E. Mikkelson). Vilas Distinguished Professor of Slavic Languages, and past Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (1/01)

Joel Wilkinson

The Development of the Ballad in Russian Literature by Mixail Ju. Lermontov (1814-1841). Defended 1977 (Chair: Joseph L. Conrad). Assistant Professor of Russian, Wooster College. Deceased. (04/09)

Halina Filipowicz

The Theatre of Tadeusz Rozewicz. Defended 1979 (Chair: Jadwiga Maurer). Professor of Polish, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recently she has been appointed to the editorial board of Slavic and East European Journal. She is also serving on the AAASS/Orbis Book Prize Committee of the AAASS and on the Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Committee of the Assoc. of Women in Slavic Studies. She edited a forum entitled "Rethinking Slavic Drama, Theater, Performace," which was published in the spring 1999 issue of Slavic and East European Journal Her most recent publication is "Performing Bodies, Performing Mickiewicz: Dramaas Problem in Performace Studies in Slavic and East European Journal 43.1 (1999): 1-18. (6/00)

Slava Yastremski

Myth in Russian Drama of the Twentieth Century: Anenskij, Ivanov, Blok, Khlebnikov, Majakovskij, Leonov, Visnevskij, and Arbuzov. Defended 1981 (Chair: ) Associate Professor of Russian and Chair of Modern Languages and Literatures at Bucknell University; formerly Assistant Professor at Yale University. (11/03)

Alexander Boguslawski

The Vitae of St. Nicholas and his Hagiographical Icons in Russia. Defended 1980 (Chair: Heinrich Stammler). Professor of Russian Studies at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and Chair of the Department of Foreign Language Teaching. He teaches Russian prose of 19th and 20th centuries; Russian history; Russian folklore, Russian culture, Russian language, and Russia through the Internet; Russia through the movies. His Web pages are Russian painting at http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/ruspaint.html and http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/Lubok/lubok.html. Tom is married to Kay Davidson-Bond, Professor of Humanities at Valencia Community College in Orlando and has two daughters, Julia and Tonia. (6/00)

Robert Mann

Oral Composition in the Slovo o Polku Igoreve. Defended 1984 (Chair: Joseph L. Conrad). Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Florida, Gainsville; independent scholar. (04/09)

Leonard Stanton

Optina Pustyn' in Russian Secular Literature: Backgrounds, Sources, and Legacy. Defended 1984 (Chair: Stephen J. Parker). Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. (1/01)

Michael E. Biggins

A South Russian Dialect in Oregon: The "Turkish" Old Believers. Defended 1985 (Chair: Herbert Galton). Head Slavic Librarian, University of Washington, Seattle; formerly Slavic Librarian, University of Kansas Assistant Professor of Russian, Knox College, Illinois. (1/01)

Maia Kipp

The Dramaturgy of Edvard Radzinskii. Defended 1985 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Lecturer, Department of Theatre and Drama, University of Kansas; Assistant Professor of Russian and German, Miami University, Ohio and University of Kansas. Retired. E-mail (5/03)

Timothy Pogacar

The Journal IuNOST in Soviet Russian Literature, 1955-1965. Defended 1985 (Chair: Stephen J. Parker). Associate Professor of Russian and Chair, Department of German, Russian and East Asian Langs, Bowling Green University, Bowling Green, Ohio. (12/02)

Anatoly Vishevsky

Irony in Comtemporary Russian Literary Culture: 1960s-1970s. Defended 1985 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Associate Professor and Chair of Russian Department at Grinnell College; formerly Assistant Professor of Russian, Washington University, St. Louis. E-mail (11/03)

Chol-Kun Kwon

Siberian Mythology, Folklore, and Tradition in Valentin Rasputin's Novellas. Defended 1986 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Associate Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Seoul National University in Korea. (1/01)

Miluse Saskova-Pierce

A Reanalysis of the Concept of Colloquial Czech and its use in the Prague Linguistic Circle Language Model. Defended 1986 (Chair: Herbert Galton). Associate Professor of Russian and Czech, Modern Languages Department, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. E-mail (11/03)

David Gordon Wilson

Fantasy in the Fiction of Sergei Zalygin. Defended 1988 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Formerly Assistant Professor of Russian, Memphis State University. (1/01)

Kurt C. Shaw

Chasing the Red Balloon: Psychological Separation in the Early Fiction of Andrej Bitov, 1958-1962. Defended 1988 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Associate Professor of Russian at Wake Forest University. (1/01)

Hyun-Taek Kim

Three Soviet Writers and the New Testament: Iurii Bombrovskii, Vladimir Tendriakov and Chingiz Aitmatov. Defended 1990 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Assistant Professor in the Russian Language Department, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. E-mail (1/01)

Gisela Zimmerman

The Revolutionary and the Superfluous Man: Soviet Russian Images of Faust. Defended 1992 (Chair: Jadwiga Maurer). Formerly Assistant Professor of Russian, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Since 2009 teaching at the American University, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where she offers courses in European Literature, Intercultural Communications, and Research Methods. (11/09)

Anesa Miller-Pogacar

Transculture and Culturology: Post-Structuralist Theory in Late and Post-Soviet Russia. Defended 1993 (Co-Chairs: Maria Carlson and Stephen J. Parker). Formerly Assistant Professor of Russian, Bowling Green University, Ohio; freelance translator and writer. (04/09)

Laura Wilhelm

The Fate of the Fable in Modern Russian Literature. Defended 1994 (Chair: Joseph L. Conrad). Instructor, advanced ESL for Russian and other emigrants at LA ORT; private language tutor, inter-cultural consultant. She currently works for the City of West Hollywood with Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. She was named Employee of the Quarter for January-March 1997 and in July 1999 the City Council gave her a commendation in recognition of her work with the emigre community and the organizations Women for Women (centered upon relief efforts in former Yugoslavia) and SERRV International. She is now recording secretary for the Russian Advisory Board of West Hollywood Municipal Employees, where she has been employed since 1996. She has recently published "Pornography and the Politics of Oppression in Russian Aesopian Tradition" in Eros and Pornography in Russian Literature (Moscow: Ladomir, 1999). Her husband, Chris, is working towards his Ph.D. at UCLA Indo-European Studies program. (12/01)

Mark Richard Lauersdorf

The Question of "Cultural Language" and Interdialectal Norm in 16th Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts. Defended 1995 (Chair: Marc L. Greenberg). Director of Language Learning Technology and Associate Professor, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, University of Kentucky. E-mail (9/05) Mark teaches courses in both general and language-specific linguistics, and is the director of technology-based projects for the departrments of Modern and Classical Languages and Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. His current research interests are in historical and contemporary dialectology and sociolinguistics, especially language standardization, language planning and linguistic legislation - in both West Slavic (Polish, Czech, Slovak) and broader European (French, German, Norwegian) settings. He also works on issues of implementing academic technology in language pedagogy, as well as in research computing for the humanities.

He is actively involved in numerous professional organizations for linguistics, Slavic studies and academic technology, and is webmaster and listowner for the Slovak Studies Association.

Yelaina Khripkov

The Borrowed Lyre: Vasilii Zhukovskii as one of the Founders of Russian Art of Poetic Translation. Defended 1996 (Chair: Maria M. Carlson). Senior Instructor, Department of Russian, University of Oregon. (4/09)

Gary D. Roy

The Characterization of Women in the Works of Jurij Trifonov. Defended 1996 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Teaches languages at Thornton Academy in Saco, ME. (11/09)

William Griffiths

The indeterminate-personal clause in Russian: A systemic functional analysis. Defended 1996 (Chair: Jane F. Hacking) resident of Lawrence, Kansas. (9/00)

Howard Solomon

Religion and Philosophy in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: Roots in the Silver Age and Pavel Florenskii's Writings. Defended 1997 (Chair: Maria M. Carlson). 2007-09 served as Senior Political Officer and then Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Russian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Since April 2009, Director for Russia, National Security Council. E-mail (10/09)

Tatiana Spektor

The Christian Subtext in Iurii Trifonov's Moscow Stories. Defended 1997 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Formerly Assistant Professor, Iowa State University (Ames); independent scholar. (6/03)

Viktor Leier

From the "City of K." to the Funeral Red Square: Evgenij Popov's Prose of the 1960's-1980s . Defended 1998 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Freelance translator, residing in Germany.

Jason Merrill

Russian Symbolist mythopoesis: The Neomythological Dramas of Fedor Sologub. Defended 1998 (Co-chairs: Maria M. Carlson and Stephen J. Parker). Associate Professor of Russian, Michigan State University. (10/07)

Joachim Faust

The Metaphysics of Grammar in Aleksandr Blok’s Poetry. Defended 1999 (Co-chairs: Marc L. Greenberg and Maria M. Carlson). Lecturer and Freshman Advisor, Washington University, St. Louis. (11/03)

Grant H. Lundberg

Problems in the Description and Historical Phonology of the Slovene Dialect of Haloze. Defended 1999 (Chair: Marc L. Greenberg). Associate Professor, Department of German and Slavic Languages, Brigham Young University. E-mail (11/03) Historical Slavic linguistics, South Slavic dialectology, accentology; Russian, Croatian and Slovene. Received NSEP and Fulbright Fellowships as well as a grant from the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Slovenia for dissertation work in the Republic of Slovenia 1997-98. His dissertation on the historical phonology and accentuation of the Slovene dialect of Haloze was successfully defended in August 1999 and he is currently Associate Professor of Russian in the at Department of German and Slavic, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. In January 2001, he was awarded the prestigious Kenneth Naylor Prize, administered by Ohio State University, for an outstanding graduate student paper in South Slavic linguistics. In addition to receiving the $500 award, his paper was published in the journal Balkanistica. He has two sons and two daughters. He is assistant to the editors of the journal Slovenski jezik/Slovene Linguistic Studies.

Karen Bapst

Archetypal Patterns in Pushkin's Narrative and Dramatic Works. Defended, 2000 (Chair: Gerald E. Mikkelson). Adjutant of American-Ukrainian Veterans Post 40, Florida. (4/09)

Matthew E. Feeney

Problems in the Reconstruction of Pre-Migration Slavic Dialects: The Case of Alleged Neo-Acute Retraction. Defended 2003 (Chair: Marc L. Greenberg). E-mail (11/03)

Meghan Murphy-Lee

A Description and Analysis of the Interlanguage of Second-Year Students of Russian: Evidence from Electronic Dialogue Journals. Defended 2003 (Chair: William J. Comer). Assistant Professor of Russian, United States Military Academy, West Point. (11/03)

Leann Keefe

The Place and Pedagogy of Reading in the Russian Language Curriculum. Defended 2004 (Chair: William J. Comer). Language specialist, federal government, Washington, D.C. (1/06)

Eugenia K. Amditis

Women, Conformity, Society, and Power in Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Defended 2006 (Co-chairs: Maria Carlson and Stephen J. Parker).

Jonathan Perkins

Redefining the Russian Fantastic Tale (1825-1842): An Analysis of Mikhail Zagoskin’s Evening on the Khopyor. Defended 2006 (Co-chairs: Maria Carlson and Stephen J. Parker). Director, Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center, KU. (03/09)

Adrienne M. Harris

The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture. Defended 2008 (Chair: Edith Clowes). Assistant Professor of Russian, Baylor University.

Michael D. Johnson

On the Paths of the Soul: Stanislaw Przybyszewski and the Russian Stage. The Cases of Vera Komissarzhevskaia and Vsevolod Meierkhol'd (1900-1910). Defended 2008 (Chair: Edith Clowes). Currently works for the Perry-Lecompton High School. (11/2012)

Jason H. Christensen 2011

Russian and Polish Delimitatives and Distributives in PO- in a Cognitive Grammar Framework. Russian and Polish Delimitatives and Distributives in PO- in a Cognitive Grammar Framework. Defended 2011. Jason Has founded and currently runs "Interdisciplination Language Services" in the Greater Denver area. (11/2012)

Sidney E. Dement 2011

Textual Dimensions of Urban Space in M.A. Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. Defended 2011 (Chair: Maria Carlson). Sidney is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of German and Russian Studies at Binghamton University, and starting in Fall 2013, he will move into a tenure-track assistant professorship at the Binghamton. He is currently working on a book project exploring the Moscow Pushkin monument in the novel Master and Margargita (11/2012).