GTA Available for SEEJ Editorial Assistant

[baron chivrin]

If you folks insisting on sending your personal messages to all of us, could you
 at
least spice them up a bit?

bc

James L. Rice wrote:

> Dear Steve,                                     May 29, 98
>
> Greetings to you and Irina.  Just checked my email and saw your GTA
> announcement, a SEEJ ed assistantship for 3 years to work in a program of
> English/Comp Lit.  I just alerted our student Christopher Syrnyk by voice
> mail.  It seems to have his name written on it.  He is our BA, has been in
> our Russian MA program since '93, passed his generals in Russian literature
> two weeks ago, is writing an MA thesis on dogs in Russian literature (a
> segment of which, on Siniavsky, was presented at the San Diego AATSEEL a few
> years back). Early in our acquaintance, 8 to 10 yrs ago -- can it be? --
> when he was in 1st quarter of 1st-year Russian (a section demolished by the
> instructor, a very erudite Pole with excellent Russian and English, who
> eventually got a Complit PhD here, but was totally incapable of giving THE
> RIGHT answer to students' questions, furnishing instead 6 or 8 skew answers
> in the form of a grammatical disquisition, all in English just a touch TOO
> good for a lot of the troups -- I found out, auditing in the third week, too
> late!), Chris described himself as "a former world-class altar-boy," from
> which he has many an amusing anecdote.
>
> Actually that topic, dogs, began with me as a party game or parody when I
> was an undergrad, but I tossed it out to Christ (stick-like) years ago, and
> he "ran with it" -- but has yet to bring it back to lay at my feet!
>
> He's a Portlander, grew up without his parents' Ukrainian, and is
> essentially a Russianist, though for better or worse with benefit of ALL the
> Slavic linguistics courses, including OCS, given by my colleague emeritus
> John Fred Beebe, a walking encyclopedia of linguistics, world ethnography,
> comparative religion, geographical topoi and toponyms of now and yore, etc
> etc (see, with Jakobson, the book prepared by Beebe from ROJ's kartoteka,
> PALEO-SIBERIAN LANGUAGES & PEOPLES: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, a tome also
> set by Beebe on the line-o-type.)
>
> Chris Syrnyk emerged from Beebe's orbit, as so many of us from hither or
> thither, as no Slavic linguist, but in the idiom -- "he's been there."
> He also took some courses with our new linguist Cynthia Vakareliyska (student
> of Lunt and Yokoyama & auditor of innumerable Chomsky mystifications down
> the river, tenured with us last spring) -- and she too was not his cup of tea.
>
> But he also began writing poetry long ago, and is deeply involved with
> English and American Poetry, esp many moderns and contemporaries.  He was my
> research assistant paving the way for a Brodsky 3-week mini-course on the
> poetry of Hardy, Frost, and Auden that was to be given at UO (one of JB's
> dozens of cancelled engagements in the early '90's).   Also worked as GTF
> step-n-fetchit for Siniavsky when he was he for a term, and more recently
> for Losev (helping out with a Brodsky memorial on May 26, 1996, late JB's
> birthday, with Ufliand, young Ustinov, and others participating -- esp a
> great ace from Jerusalem whose name escapes (then at Stanford): they all
> stayed in Losev's rented mansion, and it was a great circus. Ufliand has
> been a good Keenan friend since 1959, -- many anecdotes.).
>
> In other words, Syrnyk already IS complit (as I keep telling our benighted
> folks in COMPLIT, now COLT for short, previously -- when dear Irving
> Wohlfarth ran it for a decade -- CLIT: "ALL lit is compl lit." <and esp, one
> might add, Russian lit, which wears its CLIT on its sleeve.  It is, in any
> case, an axiom well known to Syrnyk, who also practices it.)
>
> About five years ago Carol Emerson went all out trying to get Chris a 5-year
> deal at Princeton. He went on a pilgrimage there, she took him with some of
> her students to see Shostakovich's Ledi Makbet at the Met <for which she
> wrote the program notes) etc.  The psychopathology of everyday life
> intervened, in the form of an existential crisis: Syrnyk somehow neglected
> to go around and take the required GRE exam, so it all fell through. (Of
> course the 5-year package would have had to be won by indian-wrestling with
> other yoonits). That year Chris (whose father died at 30, probably the
> Freudian crux of things at that time, '93 or so) was engaged to 3 women
> <serially and legitimately, I hasten to add>, married the third after
> wriggling off two hooks. (#1 was an affluent exec with Mobility
> International, #2 was a high-powered divorced grad student in complit, #3
> was and is a delightfully lovely and alert teenage checkout girl at Safeway,
> whose dad is a biker.  So you see, Syrnyk is not a complete fool.)
>
> At the moment Chris Syrnyk has applied to the Wisconsin Madison PhD program
> in Slavic, having traveled there with wife (Kelly) for their AATSEEL chapter
> conference last month.  But as soon as I read your announcement it seemed to
> me that that the kind of work (for SEEJ) and the scope of a comp lit program
> (with people like you -- and Irina? -- around) is much more the kind of
> thing, and environment, for him.  Also, that he might just prove to your
> liking as well.
>
> He reads French and/or German -- I forget exactly which.  (ONE of these is a
> requirement for our MA in Russian, but I think he has both.)
>
> Another wonderful topic he's been working on for several years is the
> concept of SMEKH in literature -- first, in PRESTUPLENIE I NAKAZANIE.  Not
> only humor, the comic, etc., but also more specifically SMEKH as action, as
> communication, as characterization.  You probably know that lately the
> psychology labs have been coming up with interesting observations about
> function of laughter across cultures, sexual boundaries, etc. But his
> interest long antedates those reports,
> I have tried to persuade him that this is a great topic for the Back Burner
 (PhD
> diss).  He's been all too impatient with his own stuff that seems an already
> projdennoe mesto, has had trouble focusing and progressing (be it dogs,
> laughter, or whatever) -- all basically the existential low-grade depressive
> anxiety, that is, common garden-variety thesis-retention.
>
> Getting him in to take his MA generals was a masterly maneuver by me, as his
> advisor.  He wanted to dangle and brood, perhaps on and on.  (I'd urged him
> to take them with some more advanced MA candidates four years ago, since
> he'd taken about all the courses we have on the books.  But he wouldn't.)
> But now he is in motion, and I think it's clear that what you describe is
> more suited to his interests, more flexible, than a traditional or
> latter-day Slavic PhD program AT THIS POINT (though that needn't be ruled
> out for later).
>
> Amidst my drafting this, he returned my call and I told him about the job
> announcement, gave him your address (not locating your phone number).  He
> will try to phone you after a day or so, we hope -- to give this letter time
> to reach you first.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jim
>
> PS Marcus Levitt's Russian Porn fest was a great thing (May 22-24),
> unbuttoned but on the highest professional level (for such filth).  I'll
> send you a copy of the program.  Kasinec was in great form, also the Kansas
> historian John Alexander (on Catherine as sex queen).  There were two
> excellent young folklorists from the Inst of World Lit, Moscow -- Andrei
> Toporkov (editor of the R. EROT. FOL'klor anthology in which "my" Kirsha
> bawdy song appeared unexpurgated as "No 1", and Vladimir Kliaus, who gave a
> preview of a planned erotic motif index of Russian folk songs.  He showed a
> great video of a village wedding near the Mongolian border.  These guys are
> not just Levi Straussian parlor ethnographers. As I was getting a van to the
> airport, Kliaus gave me a copy of his 1997 book, a motif- and
> motif-situation index (400+ pp) of East and South Slavic zagovory --
> inscribed (as I read on the plane to San Francisco) "s ogromnym uvazheniem".
> It's nice to have some respect somewhere. You'd never know it to look at my
> paycheck.
>
> Did I see your name on a list for the Dostoevsky symposium at Columbia late
> July to August 2nd?  I'm now definitely going, staying w my dear sister in
> Somers (Westchester).  She's just taken another new job as THE
> computer-records chief of TIAA-CREF, there regarded as an Inspector General
> whose enquiries into the jumbled data bases may result in execs being
> transferred - saints preserve us -- to the Aspen office!  (= Siberia) I told
> her my very modest account from years ago (Harvard '65) could stand to be
> mightily enhanced by, say, moving a decimal point one place to the right.
> Chuckling (her normal mode) she allowed it would be "child's play."  Of
> course it is out of the question, but... food for thought.
>
> Finally, about dogs, did you notice a wacky little paperback (Moskva
> "Gnozis" 1996) by Sergei Zimovets, MOLCHANIE GERASIMA. PSIKHOANALITICHESKIE
> I FILOSOFSKIE ESSE O RUSSKOI KUL'TURE -- ? -- such topics as
> "sobakochelovek", "mumufikatsiia"
> (< Mumu), Pavlov, Laika i pr.  I rushed it to Syrnyk's data base.
>
> ,At 09:41 PM 5/28/98 EDT, you wrote:
> >PLEASE BRING THE FOLLOWING GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIP POSITION
> >TO THE ATTENTION OF ANY QUALIFIED STUDENTS. Thanks.
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >The Department of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
> >State University has agreed to assign a GTA to
> >+Slavic and East European Journal+, which will move to Virginia
> >Tech for three years during the 1998-99 academic year.
> >
> >As of the moment, the Department does not have any students
> >in their program with background in Russian language and literature.
> >If anyone knows of an excellent student with this background who
> >may still be considering an M.A. program in English and Comparative
> >Literature beginning in the 1998-99 academic year and who
> >might be interested in and qualified for this GTA,
> >please ask him or her to contact the Director of Graduate Studies
> >in the English Dept. as soon as possible:
> >Prof. Peter Graham, Department of English, Virginia Tech,
> >Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112. E-mail: pegraham at vt.edu
> >The Department has two specialists in Slavic literatures and a number
> >of other specialists in comparative literature and literary theory,
> >in addition to specialists in all periods of English literature.
> >
> >The GTA is a twelve-month position and requires 20 hours of work on SEEJ
> >per week. It will pay slightly more than $900 per month plus a tuition waiver
> >during the academic year and a $2,400 stipend for the summer.
> >For additional information on the Editorial Assistant position, please
> >contact Prof. Stephen Baehr at the address below. For additional
> >information on the English Dept., please contact Prof. Graham directly.
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Stephen L. Baehr (slbaehr at vtvm1.cc.vt.edu OR slbaehr at vt.edu>
> >Professor of Russian
> >Editor-Elect, +Slavic and East European Journal+
> >Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
> >Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
> >Blacksburg, VA 24061-0225
> >Telephone: (540)-231-8323; FAX (540) 231-4812
> >
> >