response to Mr. Bobick

[Benjamin Rifkin]

I understand Mr. Bobick's point and agree with him in many ways.  However,
I disagree about the idea that Russian language enrollments exceed the
country's need for speakers of Russian.  (See Brecht et al.'s report, for
instance, or the classified ads in magazines like the Economist or the
newspaper Moscow Times.)  Our students of Russian get jobs ... they get
numerous job offers.  Our responsibility is to track this better so we can
attract students who will fill these jobs.

I also want to make it clear that while I heartily support the teaching of
all the languages and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, many of us in
AATSEEL are faculty members in Slavic Departments in which the bulk of
appointments are in Russian language and literature.  We may, in time,
change this state by training and hiring tenure track faculty in other
Slavic languages and cultures, but as presently configured, many of the
departments are simply not prepared to teach full programs in some of the
languages.  Our own department offers Serbo-Croatian and Polish and Czech,
but offerings are limited on both the undergraduate and graduate level
because each of these languages/cultures is represented by one (Polish and
Czech) or two (Serbo-Croatian) faculty members who teach a variety of
courses beyond the language itself.  Given the current state of funding for
higher education, we are not likely going to be allowed to hire another
faculty member in Polish (even though our Polish enrollments are robust)
anytime soon.  (The film program, for instance, has 300 majors, but the
same number of full time teaching employees:  the program has been
requesting additional hires for years, but the budget has not allowed this.
Our program, with declining enrollments, is in no position to ask for more
positions.)

My argument is simply that we MUST work together, all of us, Russianists
and non-Russianists, to increase enrollments in our field.

Ben Rifkin


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Benjamin Rifkin
Assistant Professor of Russian,
Coordinator of Russian-Language Instruction & Teacher Training
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706

e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu
telephone:  608/262-1623, 608/262-3498
fax:  608/265-2814