June 6th is Pushkin Day. 219 years ago, the great writer and poet, whose compositions are considered to be classics of international literature, was born. On the occasion of this day, Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Head of the SUSU Department of Russian Language and Literature, Elena Ponomareva, told us about the unique features of philology students’ training.
— Does the Department have any traditions related to the celebration of historical figures of Russian language and literature?
— The end of spring and the beginning of summer is a time of celebration for philology, which begins May 24th with the Day of Slavic Writing and Culture, includes Philologist Day on May 25th, and ends with Pushkin Day. These are significant holidays, and the Department does not miss a single one of them. Sometimes we organize entertaining events or participate in regional celebrations. We have a tradition of holding ‘Philology Games’ at the Department. The birthday of Pushkin, as a rule, includes readings, conferences, and roundtable discussions dedicated to the issues of conceptualization of Russian literary culture. This is a time for meetings with colleagues. Teachers and postgraduates of the Department participate in scientific conferences with the traditional partner of the Department – the Pushkin Leningrad State University, the literary studies school of which has similar-to-ours research areas.
— What research projects are students of the Department working on?
— We bring up bold issues which have never been brought up anywhere. This is done at all levels of education in our university. Master’s students are studying rock poetry, Russian literary noir, online texts, modern drama – topics that can only be taken on by the bravest researchers. Our graduate students recently defended their papers on modern South Ural region poetry and on books and cycles from Mikhail Veller. Young researchers are working, combining the format of literary studies and critique, because they are writing about things which are being created in the laboratory of writers right now, although this is a mission of critics. Bachelor’s students also have innovative projects. For example, graduation projects about occasional medical vocabulary based on materials obtained from emergency services and psychiatric clinics. This is a topic, research on which should be continued and defended as candidate’s dissertation. But it should be noted that we combine the principles which make such research scientifically valuable: on the one hand, there is some courage in selecting these materials, on the other hand, this kind of scientific bravery is only possible when we are standing on very clear, objective theoretical positions.
— Which popular conferences do students of the Department participate in?
— Recently, some of our philologists took part in an international student conference entitled “Absurdism in Literature, Art, and Film”, which was organized by the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). We were pleased that SUSU was chosen as a conference co-organizer, we participated equally in forming the program and in the online stream thanks to equipment from SUSU which surpasses that of the university in Zurich. Our master’s students presented seven aticles dedicated to absurdism in literature, which is a great number. International research contacts, conferences of this level, and serious international partners are all important for the education of philologists, because master’s students are able to get used to working in this format from their first steps.
— What are the unique features of the master’s programs at the Department of Russian Language and Literature?
— Our master’s program is called “Creation, analysis, and evaluation of text”. Students who enroll in our program are not only graduates with a bachelor’s degree in philology – others who wish to learn to work with various kinds of texts also come to us. In our traditional academic plan, there are many interesting things: film critiques, theatrical critiques, and texts are studied as an object of evaluation, become material for literary study, for linguistic analysis, and for translation. We teach them to see the micro- and macrolevels of texts. This allows them to fine-tune their skills and become universal specialists in whatever field they wish to enter.
— What new things can students expect in the coming academic year?
— Beginning this year, SUSU master’s students will have the chance to get a high-level of education within project work. This means that the group of master’s students which will be chosen for the coming year will be able to implement a unique project entitled “Virtual museum of writers of the South Ural region”, which is an order from the Ministry of Culture of the Chelyabinsk region. Master’s degree students of each year of study are going to make two museum rooms: in 2018, this will be virtual museums dedicated to a famous poet of South Ural, our friend and mentor, Yanis Grants, and to representative of the older generation of Chelyabinsk authors – poet Nikolay Godina, whose compositions were used by our bachelor’s students a few years ago as part of their final graduation project, a book about the writer. This academic format does not involve passively sitting at desks, but rather intensive, individual and group work on projects with a certain useful result.
— How will students work on these projects?
— It is not easy to create such a project. It is necessary to correctly digitize texts, systematize them, analyze them, create a design layout, and create a digital platform which allows website visitors to feel as if they are present in the creative workshop of our compatriots. To create the project, we are planning on bringing in students of other institutes: designers and programmers; we are going to ask Yanis Grants and Nikolay Godina how they imagine their virtual museum apartments, and we will make sure that their virtual space will be very similar to reality. Completing such projects, students learn to work in groups. By gaining practical skills, people achieve many things.
— How will these projects be used in the future?
— If the project gains support from the university, we will sign an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and will work on filling in the empty ‘cells’ of this large platform. In Yekaterinburg, there is a real Museum of Ural Writers. It’s possible that one day the materials from this museum will be digitized as well. There is no such museum in the Chelyabinsk region; it is expensive so the region is not ready to support such a needed project yet. We have decided to work on this, because we have the opportunity to begin with a digital twin of the museum. We have a good school of literary studies, practical resources, and materials with which we can work. And most importantly – we have the desire to make a miracle!