12TH ANNUAL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH CONFERENCE ON SLAVIC AND EAST/CENTRAL EUROPEAN STUDIES
MAY 2, 2009
UCLA
08:30am – 09:00am Coffee and Refreshments
09:00am – 09:10am Opening Remarks
Prof. Roman Koropeckyj, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA
09:15am – 10:30am Session 1
Panel 1A: HISTORICAL RUSSIA (Humanities A 65)
Chair: Avram Lyon
Eric Draper, UCLA “Beards and Boyars: A Reformation of the Russian Nobility”
Susan Freese, UCLA “Russian Identity: The Historical Role of Westerners and Slavophiles and Current Political Implications”
Alice Lu, UCI “Citizen Manipulation of the Stalinist Purges”
Kenneth Martinez, UCSB “Merit and Mobility in Russia and the Former Soviet Union”
Panel 1B: RUSSIAN MUSIC (Humanities A 68)
Chair: Mariyetta Arutyunyan
Brent Woo, UCLA “Letters of Sergei Rachmaninoff: Between Symphonic Failure and Concerto Success”
Rachel Casselman, UCLA “Shostakovich and Soviet Censorship”
Zachary Murphy King, UCSB “Dissident Tones: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Political Music”
Daria Thomas, Pasadena City College “Russian Cultural Influence on American Culture”
10:30am – 10:40am BREAK
10:40am – 11:40am Session 2
Panel 2A: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA (Humanities A 65)
Chair: Xin Zhang
Alyssa Haerle, UCLA “Filling the Vacuum: Explaining the Persistence of the Large Informal Economy in Post-Communist Russia”
Morgan Z. Menzies, UCSB “Anna Politkovskaya: A Case Study of Russian Suppression of Freedom of Speech”
Panel 2B: TOPICS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE (Humanities A 68)
Chair: Sean Griffin
Brandy Deminna, UCSB “The Relationship of the Creditor and Debtor in Crime and Punishment Analyzed through Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodore Reik”
Teodora Nikolova, UCSB “The Transformation of Russian Literature via Translation”
11:40am – 12:40pm LUNCH
12:40pm – 01:40pm Session 3
Panel 3A: TOPICS IN EASTERN EUROPEAN STUDIES (Humanities A 65)
Chair: Naomi Caffee
Elena Kokhanovski, UCSB “The Many Facades of the Matryoshka Doll”
Mariya Bunenko, UCLA “The Dysfunctional Structure of the Ukrainian Government”
Krystyna V. Shamova, UCLA “Chernobyl: World’s Most Tragic Nuclear Disaster”
Panel 3B: TOPICS IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE (Humanities A 68)
Chair: Naya Lekht
Zane Michael Johnston, UCSD “Doubling” and Abstraction of Rational Reality: Shakespeare, Gogol, and the Fate of the Soul”
Jonathan Tram, UCSD “Bridging Gogol and Faulkner: An Analysis of Narrative Technique”
Tom Holloman, UCI “Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard: The Tragedy of Writing Comedy”
01:40pm – 01:50pm BREAK
01:50pm – 03:05pm Session 4
Panel 4A: LANGUAGE (Humanities A 65)
Chair: Jennifer Ford
Igor Hiller, UCSB “Russian Anecdotes – Not Just a Laughing Matter”
Erin Hutchinson, ASU “Russian in Transition: Language Policy, Education, and Practice in Armenia”
Maryia Kryvaruchka, UCLA “Russian Accent in America: Linguistics, Stigma, and Pride”
Fiona Hay, UCLA “Learning Russian as a Second Language: Common Difficulties and Teaching Strategies”
Panel 4B: SLAVS AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY (Humanities A 68)
Chair: Sasha Razor
Clara Popov, UCLA “Bronislaw Pilsudski and His Groundbreaking Study on the Indigenous Ainu Culture of Japan”
Alex Wang, UCSB “Bilateral Cultural and Economic Relations between the Czech Republic and Taiwan”
Olga Dubrovskaya, UCSB “Mendeleev and the Legacy of Russian Science”
Yevgenia Volfson, UCSB “Russian-American Marriages: An Exploration of the Factors Which Attract American Men to a Slavic Beauty”
03:05pm Closing Remarks & Presentation of Awards
Elena Furman, Lecturer, Department of Literature, UCSD