FALL 2022

Shakespeare: Homecoming. Hunter Students Translate Shakespeare back into English. With Claudia Serea and Vasily Lvov. 
September 22, Thursday, 6:30 pm

Living Pictures. A poetry reading and book talk by Polina Barskova
September 23, Friday, 6 pm 

Nikolay Mitrokhin. "A Social History of the Soviet Apparatchiks (1953–1985)"
​October 24, Monday, 6 pm

Volodymyr Rafeyenko. "Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death" 
​November 1, Tuesday, 6 pm

Practical Tips for a Successful Career as a Language Provider
November 10, Thursday, 6 pm

"Report from Kyiv." Opening of a photo exhibit 
November 17, Thursday, 7 pm

Irina Mashinski. The Naked World and Giornata 
​December 1, Thursday, 6 pm
Shakespeare: Homecoming. Hunter Students Translate Shakespeare back into English. Organized and curated by Vasily Lvov, with the participation of Claudia Serea. September 22, Thursday, 6:30 - 8 pm. Room 1337 Hunter West. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required.  

Please join us to celebrate the 10th anniversary of National Translation Month with its editor-in-chief, poet and translator Claudia Serea, and the alumni of the Fall 2021 Russian-English Literary Translation course, whose experimental translations of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 87 back into the English language from seven Russian translations are being published this month by NTM. Discussion open to the public. 

There is not a person however faintly familiar with the business of translation who does not know that something is unavoidably lost in it. “Lost” is a word that evokes Odyssean nostalgia—a dream of homecoming as a response to inevitable separation. Among the most archetypical examples are Milton’s Paradise Lost and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. In similar vein, Walter Benjamin writes in his scandalous and messianic “The Task of the Translator” that any expression in a national language, such as English or Russian, takes place after the original sin, the perfect babel, of “alien tongues” and that the only antidote is the return to “pure language”—an aspiration also reflected in Milton’s and Proust’s new testaments: Paradise Regain’d and Time Regained. 
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To test Benjamin’s theory, the graduate students of Russian-English Literary Translation course, subtitled “From Russian with Love” and taught by Vasily Lvov at Hunter College in the fall of 2021, undertook the homecoming of Shakespeare back into English from the Russian of his translators: Nikolai Gerbel, Modest Tchaikovsky, Samuil Marshak, Alexander Finkel, Igor Fradkin, and Vladimir Gandelsman. Some of them struggled with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87 in the nineteenth century, like Nikolai Gerbel and Modest Tchaikovsky (the brother of the great composer), others in the twentieth, while Gandelsman, one of the finest living Russian poets, in the twenty-first. 

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor and then the elevator to the 13th floor. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Living Pictures. A poetry reading and book talk by Polina Barskova. September 23, Friday, 6 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. Co-hosted by the REVERIE Poetry Series (CUNY Graduate Center). 

Living Pictures refers to the parlor game of tableaux vivants, in which people dress up in costume to bring scenes from history back to life. It’s a game about survival, in a sense, and what it means to be a survivor is the question that Polina Barskova explores in the scintillating literary amalgam of Living Pictures. Barskova, one of the most admired and controversial figures in a new generation of Russian writers, first made her name as a poet; she is also known as a scholar of the catastrophic siege of Leningrad in World War II. In Living Pictures, Barskova writes with caustic humor and wild invention about traumas past and present, historical and autobiographical, exploring how we cope with experiences that defy comprehension. She writes about her relationships with her adoptive father and her birth father; about sex, wanted and unwanted; about the death of a lover; about Turner and Picasso; and, in the final piece, she mines the historical record in a chamber drama about two lovers sheltering in the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad who slowly, operatically, hopelessly, stage their own deaths. -- The New York Review of Books 

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Nikolay MItrokhin. "A Social History of the Soviet Apparatchiks (1953–1985): Mobilization and Demobilization of a Soviet Political Class." October 24, Monday, 6 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. 

Nikolay Mitrokhin is an historian, sociologist of religion, and political analyst. He is a fellow at the Research Center for East European Studies of Bremen University (Germany). He is the author of more than 100 articles on ethnic and religious problems in the former Soviet Union and the CIS from 1953 through the present, as well as several books in Russian, including The Economic Activity of the Russian Orthodox Church (2000), The Russian Party: Russian Nationalist Movement in the USSR, 1953-1985 (2003, German edition in 2015), The Russian Orthodox Church: Contemporary Condition and Problems (2004, 2006). His monograph Essays on Soviet economic policy (1965-1989) is forthcoming in 2023. In 2007-2017, Mitrokhin studied the Central Committee of the Communist Party and interviewed many of its former staff members, a project that resulted in his book on the collective biography of the soviet apparatchik. 

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Volodymyr Rafeyenko. Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death. A bilingual reading and book talk. November 1, Tuesday, 6 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. 

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is a prize-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, and literary critic from Donetsk, who was forced to leave his city in 2014 and became a “temporarily displaced person.” Four years later he wrote and published Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death — a powerful novel about a person uprooted and transplanted to a new place as a result of the war. This novel examines the psychological fractures this trauma causes, everyday difficulties of such an abrupt change, the sustained shock from the loss of home, and the longing for what’s left behind.
 
Mondegreen: Songs about Love and Death, translated into English by Mark Andryczyk, is the first novel Rafeyenko wrote in Ukrainian, the language he learned as a response to russia’s occupation of his hometown. His previous novel about russia’s occupation of Donbas was written in russian. It will be published in English later this year in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature. Volodymyr was living in Bucha when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened. He spent a month under the russian occupation, an experience that made him further re-examine his relationship with his native language. He is currently working on his next novel. (*The spelling of “russia” and “russian” has been modified above at the author’s request.)  

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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"Practical Tips for a Successful Career as a Language Provider." A panel on translation and interpretation with Translingua Associates, Inc. November 10, Thursday, 6 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. C0-hosted by MATI @ Hunter College. 

Join us for a panel presented by Nicole Michel-Deshagette & Ilaria Migliardi, owners of Translingua Associates, Inc., with the participation of translator and publishing consultant Alta Price, as well as interpreters, translators and voice-over talents QinQin McCarthy and Emigdio Marabotto! 

TransLingua was founded and incorporated in 1984. At the beginning, we were a language school offering foreign language and English classes to individuals, private businesses and government agencies. Over the years, TransLingua has expanded, and today we are a certified WBE (Woman Business Enterprise) with 10 permanent staff covering offices in New York City and Boulder, CO. TransLingua has a vast network of professional linguists in the United States and all over the world.  All our linguists are certified and/or members of the American Translators Association (ATA) or locally the New York Circle of Translators (NYCT) with years of experience providing top quality translation, localization, proofreading/editing, desktop publishing, transcription, interpretation, and other language services in over 100 languages and dialects.

Ilaria Migliardi, COO. Born in Italy, Ilaria graduated cum laude from the Asian Languages Department of the University of Venice in Italy, after studies conducted both at SOAS (London) and Fudan University (Shanghai). She worked in Asia for several years, both in PRC as the assistant general manager for an Italian-Chinese joint venture, and in Hong Kong and Taiwan as a consultant to Italian companies conducting business in the area, and as a free-lance translator for several international clients. In the late 1990s she moved to New York and joined TransLingua as a project manager in 2000. In 2005 she became co-owner and COO of the company. She oversees all operations, project management as well as hiring, onboarding and training of all new resources and staff. In addition to Italian, she is fluent in English, Spanish, Chinese, French and Russian.
Nicole Michel-Deshagette, CEO. A native of Berne, Switzerland, Nicole was brought up in a multicultural environment and speaks several languages, including French, German, Spanish and Creole. She holds a BA in Translation from the Zürich School of Translation and Interpretation, Switzerland. In 1992 Nicole joined TransLingua as a project manager, and in 2000 she and two of her co-workers took over the company from the previous owners. She has dedicated her life and career to promoting diversity and multicultural communication. Together with her business partners she achieved WBE certification, has been awarded DiversityBusiness.com’s Top Diversity Business Award for five consecutive years, as well as the 2018, 2019 & 2020 Readers Awards for Top Language Service Provider by the New York and New Jersey Law Journals. Nicole is an active member of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce and Supporting Member of fiaf French Institute Alliance Française.

Alta L. Price runs a publishing consultancy specialized in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, design, and culture. Alta holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Hunter College. Recipient of the Gutekunst Prize, Alta’s translations from German and Italian have appeared on BBC Radio 4, Trafika Europe, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Of the more than forty books Alta has translated, the latest ones are Juli Zeh’s novel New Year — finalist for the 2022 PEN America Translation Prize as well as the Helen & Kurt Wolff Prize — and Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti.

Emigdio Marabotto. EN<>ES Interpreter. "I was born and raised in Mexico City, where I studied languages, physics, philosophy & music.  As a child I lived in Pennsylvania where my father got a job with a steel company.  At 29, I moved permanently to NYC, where I have lived and worked as an EN<>ES interpreter, translator and voice-over talent ever since. My experience as an interpreter includes legal depositions, court hearings, business meetings and conferences, patient medical appointments, UN conferences, events at educational institutions and other organizations. I’ve also traveled overseas to help clients communicate with local communities in different countries. Current and previous clients I have served include TV/Radio stations (e.g. CBS 60 Minutes), online platforms (e.g. Rekt Global, Infinite Reality), NGOs (e.g. Catholic Charities), countless law firms, community-based entities (e.g. Innovation QNS, Fresh Air Fund), the United Nations, educational institutions (e.g. Spence School, Zeta Schools, Brearley School), clinics & hospitals (e.g. Montefiore), government agencies (e.g. NYC Dept. of City Planning), focus groups (e.g. NYC Keep Kids Safe), and religious institutions (e.g. The Episcopal Diocese of Long Island) .  In Mexico City I studied French at the Alliance Française, Italian at the Dante Alighieri Institute, German at the Goethe-Institut, and professional interpretation & translation courses at the Instituto Superior de Intérpretes y Traductores. Once in the U.S., I joined the New York Circle of Translators (NYCT) and the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters & Translators (NAJIT)." 

QinQin McCarthy. Interpreter. QinQin McCarthy has been a translator and interpreter since 2006. She has experience in a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from politics, economics, law, insurance, medical and pharmaceuticals to education, media, architecture, and the creative arts. She has interpreted for numerous heads of governments, global business leaders and prominent academics, serving public and private institutions such as multinational Fortune 500 companies(e.g. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan), international organizations (e.g. the United Nations), government agencies (e.g. the Federal Reserve), universities (e.g. Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Princeton, Wharton, West Point and Yale), event organizers and NGOs (e.g. Asia Society, The Aspen Institute, Bloomberg Philanthropies) across the United States, Europe and China. QinQin graduated from the School of Foreign Languages of Nanjing University and the University of California, Berkeley, she has also received advanced interpreting training from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations (UNESCAP). QinQin is a member of American Translators Association (ATA), National Association of Judiciary Interpreters & Translators (NAJIT), and New York Circle of Translators (NYCT).

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Report from Kyiv. Photos from Russian War in Ukraine (by Olena Shovkoplias). Photo exhibition from the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War (Kyiv), with comments by Prof. Susan Smith-Peter, Maria Genkin (Razom for Ukraine), and Hunter College students. November 17, Thursday, 7 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. Co-sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Razom for Ukraine, and the Ukrainian History and Education Center.

Hunter College Library will host an exhibit from the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, located in Kyiv. This exhibit consists of photos taken on March 8, 2022, and builds on their earlier work documenting the Russian-Ukrainian war in the Donbas region, which began in 2014. The posters show the inhuman grip of the Russian invasion and how the boundaries between war and peaceful life were erased. It shows both the destruction of the war and the resilience of the Ukrainian people, who stood up as a whole to defend their state and culture.

Born and raised in Lviv, Maria Genkin attended the Lvivska Polytechnica. In the summer of 1994, she received a scholarship from the Ukrainian American Business and Professionals Association to attend the summer school at HURI (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute). The following summer, Maria came back to the United States on a scholarship from Cornell University. Maria started her professional career at Goldman Sachs. After her son, Aaron, was born in 2004, she left Goldman Sachs and since pursued a variety of projects in education and culture. Maria has been deeply involved with Razom since 2017 and has been on the board since 2020. She currently leads Razom Donations and Grants Teams and continues to serve on the board.

Susan Smith-Peter is Professor of History and Director of the Public History program at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. For more than 20 years, she has studied the history of Russian journalism and civil society.  Since the invasion, she has dedicated herself to helping the public understand the origins of Putin’s genocidal war in Ukraine.  Working with the World War Two Museum and ThoughtMatter, a leading design firm in NYC, she oversaw the creation of the posters in the exhibit.

My name is Ren Chalpin, I’m 25 years old, born and raised in Switzerland. I’m a senior student at Hunter College, majoring in psychology and history. I’ll be talking about my experiences as an NGO humanitarian volunteer in Ukraine from mid-April to beginning of June, and from beginning of July to mi-August. I’ll speak about my connection to Ukraine, the process of going to Ukraine, who I worked with, where we were based, what we did, who we met, where we traveled, the struggles/difficulties we were faced with, and some marking moments I witnessed.

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Irina Mashinski. The Naked World and Giornata. A reading and Q&A. December 1, Thursday, 6 pm. Hunter College, Elizabeth Hemmerdinger Center, Room 706, Hunter East Bldg. In-person, with proof of vaccination. RSVP required. 

Irina Mashinski is the author The Naked World (MadHat Press, 2022) and of eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian. She is co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015) and of Cardinal Points, the journal of Brown University’s Slavic Department, and co-translator of Lev Ozerov’s Portraits without Frames (NYRB, 2018). Her second English book, Giornata (Červená Barva Press), is forthcoming in the fall of 2022.

“The Naked World is a magical book, a story of four generations of one family, told through poems and cut through with accounts of Stalin’s Great Terror of the Thirties, wide-ranging meditations, and flashes of childhood memories from the Thaw of the Sixties and the post-Thaw Seventies. … We explore the ‘tessellating pattern’ of a life – of movement across borders, of the myths that carry us along, of grief transformed into resilience, of déjà vu. … I love the tenderness of details in this book, the whirlwind of details in time. But I also love its hard-earned knowledge that “to be alone takes skill.” -- Ilya Kaminsky, from the Preface 

“Mashinski seeks liberating oblivion in a space that neither cares about nor notices her presence. The ‘A-merica’ of Mashinski’s experience, with the negating ‘A-,’ is ‘neither this, not that, nor the other, but a trying of the otherness,’ a laboratory of creative dissection and reassembly of the self. … Mashinski’s book is a virtuosic gift that amply rewards repeated reading — and listening.” -- The Los Angeles Review of Books

Directions: At the reception desk of the Hunter West Building, please present your ID and proof of vaccination to get a pass. From there, take the escalator to the 3rd floor, turn right and walk across the sky bridge to the Hunter East Building, then take the elevator to the 7th floor. Hemmerdinger Center is at the end of the hallway past the turnstiles. CUNY policy states that to enter the campus, visitors are required to show proof of either full vaccination or a negative PCR test within seven days of their intended visit date. Everyone MUST complete the Cleared4 Access Process, where they will be asked to upload a photo of their vaccination card or a negative test result. The Cleared4 Access Process can be accessed here. We recommend that you complete this process prior to your visit in order to avoid a delay in entering the campus. 
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Hunter College, CUNY
Russian and Slavic Studies Program
695 Park Avenue, Suite 1425 HW
New York, NY 10065
Email: russhunter@hunter.cuny.edu