We are proud to share with you some of the best student projects that have crystallized from our courses in Russian and Slavic Studies at Hunter! At the end of each term, 2-3 projects per course are nominated by the professors to our faculty jury. The authors then work with their instructors and peers to prepare their projects for publication. All projects are evaluated on the basis of originality and academic/artistic merit. They may include, but are not limited to, essays, research papers, creative writing, visual arts and performance, literary translations, etc. We are looking forward to seeing you among our authors!
My name is Nicole Gonik. I am a Macaulay Honors student at Hunter College, double-majoring in Russian Language & Culture and Political Science, and minoring in International Relations. I am interested in studying the ways in which Russian literature and culture interact with politics, and I hope to eventually pursue a PhD in Russian Studies. I was born here in New York City, but my parents immigrated from Ukraine and Moldova, so I grew up surrounded by Russian books, movies, and traditions. I am thrilled that college gave me the opportunity to put this interest into practice and write about what I love, including Lermontov’s work.

Course: "Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature," taught by Prof. Yasha Klots (Fall 2021)

Project: "Borders in Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and 'The Demon'” 
My name is Nissan Mushiev. I was born and raised in Israel until I was 8 years old. My parents are Russian, and I have always been interested in Russian culture. I am a registered nurse completing my Bachelor’s degree, with hopes of working in the emergency room eventually. I chose to write a play based on two Russian novels, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya, both of which are set during Stalin’s terror. However, while Sofia Petrovna tells the story from outside the barbed wire, Ivan Denisovich is written from the insider’s perspective. The two visions – and ideologies – clash during the short encounter between the eponymous characters in my screenplay. It is said that the eyes are windows to the soul, and the souls of the Great Terror project a familiar face. 

Course: "Contemporary Russian Culture," taught by Prof. Yasha Klots (Fall 2021)

Project: "Familiar Faces." A Play 
I am a Comparative Literature major at Hunter College, graduating in Spring 2022. I am interested in the representations of distance through literary chronography and deictic relationships, the exile experience and immigrant narrative, linguistic socialization in New York City. I am fascinated by thresholds and absolutely entertained by the dash.

Course: "Russian Women Writers," taught by Prof. Yasha Klots (Fall 2020)
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Project: "Marina Tsvetaeva's Dash: "Readers of Newspapers'"
I have lived with cats for as long as I remember myself. One of my longest-term fur friends is Misus’, a male American Shorthair named after one of Chekhov’s female protagonists, which gave me an idea for OMI. During March and April of 2020 my mom “exiled” me to my boyfriend’s dacha in the Catskills, while she ended up with Covid-19. The grueling unrest of that condition along with scary uncertainty in the new pandemic reality, and the later cathartic flattening of the NYC curve along with my mom’s recuperation, all got reflected in the little piece where the narrative comes from those who become the most vulnerable in times of the human crisis. Some of the plays we read in Professor Klots’s “Russian Theater” class during the Spring semester of 2020 made their subtle appearances in OMI, particularly Vampilov’s “Duck Hunting” and Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters.”

Course: "Russian Theater," taught by Prof. Yasha Klots (Spring 2020)

Project: OMI (One Act Play) 
Garrick Wheeler is an undergraduate Hunter student in the Class of 2021, with  a Film major. He studied Russian as his foreign language requirement with the interest of learning a language that his father knows fluently. "Finding out that the final project for Russian 202 was to make a short film of all of us talking in Russian was exciting as I got to practice screenwriting in a different language. The title "I Have Nothing Left" basically tells you that we went a bit overboard with the story."
Sara Rabinovich is a Psychology major and an Economics minor at Hunter college in the class of 2019. She speaks Russian at home, but took RUSS 202 to learn how to write.
Yosip Kelemen is a Biology major at Hunter College in the class of 2020. He is interested in birds, fitness, and wants to pursue a career in medicine. Yosip took RUSS 202 because he wants to add a valuable skill to his resume and to better understand the culture of the Soviet Union, where his parents grew up.
Course: "Intermediate Russian II (Russ 202)," taught by Prof. Vasiliy Arkanov (Spring 2019)

Project: I Have Nothing Left 
Sasha White is a senior in the CUNY BA interdisciplinary program, majoring in Law & Literature, with a concentration in Russian literature. Her home college is Hunter. Her academic interests include feminism, theology, and Marxism. In addition to Vladimir Nabokov, she studies Dostoevsky and other Russian authors, as well English and ancient Greek literature. She is currently working on her senior thesis project on the topic of women and law in Dostoevsky.

Course: "Russian Urban Novel," taught by Prof. Yasha Klots (Fall 2017)

Project: “The Bright Labyrinth of Memory”: Nabokov’s Nostalgic Realm"