SPRING 2020

February 6, Thursday. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (Room 706, Hunter East). 6 pm
Lev Rubinstein. Poetry reading (in Russian, with ENG translation)

Date & Time TBA. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (Room 706, Hunter East).  7 pm
PSOETRY: bilingual concert and conversation with Psoy Korolenko

March 5, Thursday. B126 (Chanin Language Center). 5:30 pm
Tamizdat Project Lab 3. The prose fiction of Yuli Daniel (aka. Nikolai Arzhak)

March 13, Friday. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (Room 706, Hunter East). 6 pm
Polina Barskova and Valzhyna Mort. Poetry reading (in Russian with ENG translation)

March 17, Tuesday. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (Room 706, Hunter East). 6 pm
Philip Ewell. "Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Politics and Poetry in Contemporary Russian Rap"
Lev Rubinstein. Poetry reading (in Russian, with ENG translation). February 6, Thursday, 6 pm. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (706 HE). C0-hosted by Ugly Duckling Presse.

Born in 1947, Lev Rubinstein was a major figure of Moscow Conceptualism and the unofficial Soviet art scene of the 1970s and 1980s. While working as a librarian, he began using catalogue cards to write sequential texts. He described his “note-card poems” as a “hybrid genre” that “slides along the edges of genres and, like a small mirror, fleetingly reflects each of them, without identifying with any of them.” His work was circulated through samizdat and underground readings in the “unofficial” art scene of the sixties and seventies, finding wide publication only after the late 1980s. Now among Russia’s most well-known living poets, Rubinstein lives in Moscow and writes cultural criticism for independent media. His books in English translation include Here I Am (Glas, 2001), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (UDP, 2004), Thirty-Five New Pages (UDP, 2011), and Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (UDP, 2014), in which his note-card poems appear in their entirety.

Lev Rubinstein will be joined by the poet, translator and publisher Matvei Yankelevich, who will read the English translations. Yankelevich was born in Moscow and moved to the United States at age four. He is author of several books of poetry and prose, as well as translations from Russian into English, including Boris by the Sea (2009), Writing in the Margin (2001), The Present Work (2006), Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms (2007). His translations have also appeared in Oberiu: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (2006), Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (2008), and Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (2013). Yankelevich is a cofounder and co-executive director of Ugly Duckling Presse, where he edits books and curates the Eastern European Poets Series. He has taught courses in translation, publishing, and Russian literature at Columbia University, Colorado College, Hunter College, Wesleyan University, and Bard College. He lives in Brooklyn.
​Back to Top
Psoy Korolenko. PSOETRY: A Bilingual Concert and Conversation. Date & Time TBA. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (706 HE). Co-hosted by the Center for Jewish Studies at Hunter College.

The bilingual book PSOETRY contains original Russian lyrics by Psoy Korolenko with parallel English versions by Daniel Kahn, Mike Lion, J. Martin Daughtry and Stuart Goldberg. It also features Psoy Korolenko’s own Russian versions of songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Daniel Kahn and John Boutté, along with the English originals.

Psoy Korolenko (Pavel Lion) is a singer and songwriter, translator, columnist, and scholar with a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Moscow State University. On stage since 1997. In the course of this time, he has released more than 20 albums, solo and in collaboration, as well as several books of essays, lyrics, and translations. He is the author of a unique type of folk-cabaret, which integrates styles and traditions of various cultures through multilingualism, translation and “tradaptation” (Soviet popular music and Russian folk singing, French chanson, Klezmer, Tropicalia, etc.). A former artist in residence at Trinity College (Hartford), University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and Dickinson College (Carlisle), Psoy Korolenko is one of the organizers of the Russian-American JetLAG Festival, which sees its mission in bridging languages, cultures, generations and tastes. He has participated in several international projects, including “Brothers Nazaroff,” “Defesa,” and “Yiddish Glory”. In 2019, “Yiddish Glory’’ was nominated to Grammy and became the Fiddler On the Roof Awardee from the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia as a cultural event of the year.
Picture
Photo by Anya Roz
​Back to Top
Tamizdat Project Lab 3. The Prose Fiction of Yuli Daniel (aka. Nikolai Arzhak). March 5, Thursday. B16 (Chanin Language Center), 5:30 pm.

Tamizdat Project is a virtual environment that explores to the patters of circulation, first publications and reception of contraband literary manuscripts from the USSR in the West during the Cold War. It is an online archive of documents that deals with how and why masterpieces of Russian literature first appeared abroad long before they could see the light of day in Russia, already during or after Perestroika. Although its subject matter is historically finite, Tamizdat Project is an ever growing undertaking as the website is constantly populated with new content, including previously unpublished archival materials.

This Tamizdat Project Lab will be devoted to the prose fiction of Yuli Daniel, whose writings appeared abroad since 1962 under the pseudonym Nikolai Arzhak. In September, 1965, Daniel was arrested in Moscow together with his fellow writer Andrei Sinyavsky (aka. Abram Terts) and soon sentenced to 5 years of hard labor for publishing his "slanderous" works in tamizdat. His prose, including the novellas This Is Moscow Speaking, Hands, Redemption, and A Man from MINAP, combines description of everyday life in post-Stalin Russia with elements of the fantastic, A book of his verses written in prison was published in Amsterdam in 1971.

Tamizdat Project Lab is limited to 25 participants. It is designed as a hands-on workshop, so please bring your own laptop. We will be working with both archival and print sources on Daniel's oeuvre, typing and translating them into English or Russian, and thus collectively contributing to Tamizdat Project. Please RSVP below and let us know what languages you can work with (NB: knowledge of Russian is NOT required). If you are unable to attend but would still like to volunteer for Tamizdat Project, please click here (or email yakov.klots@hunter.cuny.edu). Looking forward to seeing you!
​Back to Top
Polina Barskova. Air Raid. Poetry reading (in Russian with English translations by Valzhyna Mort). March 13, Friday. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (706 HE), 6 pm.

Polina Barskova began writing poetry at the age of eight and published her first book in 1991. She left Russia at twenty to pursue a Ph.D. in Russian Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, having already earned a degree and become an accomplished poet in her native St. Petersburg. Three books of Barskova’s poetry have been translated into English (This Lamentable City, Tupelo Press, 2010), The Zoo in Winter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 2011), and Relocations (Zephyr Press, 2015). A professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College, Barskova works on the cultural representation of the Siege of Leningrad and is the author of Besieged Leningrad: Aesthetic Responses to Urban Disaster (Northern Illinois UP, 2017). She has also edited Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016), an anthology of verses written during the siege that remained unknown for decades. Barskova lives in Amherst, MA, and teaches at Hampshire College. In 2015, she received Andrey Bely Prize for her book of prose Living Pictures. Her play under the same title has been staged at Moscow Theatre of Nations. She is now working with Valzhyna Mort on a new book of her poetry in English, Air Raid.

Poet and translator Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus, and made her American debut in 2008 with Factory of Tears, followed in 2011 by Collected Body. She is the editor of two poetry anthologies and the recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship, the Bess Hokins Prize from Poetry, the Amy Clamitt Fellowship, the Gulf Coast Journal Prize in Translation, as well as a number of European fellowships and prizes. Her third book of poetry, Music for the Dead and Resurrected, is coming out in 2020 from FSG. For her work on Polina Barskova's collection, Air Raid, Mort has been recently awarded a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Ithaca, NY, and teaches at Cornell University.
​Back to Top
Philip Ewell. "Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Politics and Poetry in Contemporary Russian Rap." March 17, Tuesday. Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center (706 HE). 6 pm. 

The spoken word has always held a special place in the hearts of Russians. From Alexander Pushkin’s revolutionary writings, which inspired generations of Russian playwrights and librettists, to poetry recitations by Evgeny Evtushenko, to Russian bards like Vladimir Vysotsky, Russians love oral literary forms. This vibrant tradition lives today in the genre of Russian rap.  Artists such as Husky, Noize MC, Oxxxymiron, Timati, and Vasya Oblomov are skilled wordsmiths who advance not just the literary form of poetry, but also political and cultural messages. In this talk I explore this genre from its beginnings to contemporary forms, and I discuss issues of censorship in the current oppressive Russian political climate in which an artist’s career can hinge on taking a friendly or antagonistic stance toward government.

Philip Ewell is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His specialties include Russian music and music theory, Russian opera, critical-race studies, and rap and hiphop music. He has writings published in various academic music journals, which can be accessed at his website, philipewell.com. He is also active as a cellist specializing in contemporary and non-classical music.
​Back to Top
Hunter College, CUNY
Russian and Slavic Studies Program
695 Park Avenue, Suite 1425 HW
New York, NY 10065
Email: russhunter@hunter.cuny.edu