Manic Bookstore Cafe

It's back to school season in the U.S. Elementary and high school students in my part of the country have been in the classroom for a month now, and most colleges have started their fall term as well. But in the late summer I began encouraging people to ask me when I head back to the classroom -- because the answer is so satisfying. "August, 2017," I say. Sabbaticals are a perk of academic life, and a real treat. The idea is two-fold. Originally, I imagine, a sabbatical was granted in order that faculty members would have a chance to relax and recharge. The wording is not accidental. At most institutions, faculty are eligible for sabbaticals every seven years, which someone must have decided was the stretch of time after which renewal was required. We do work hard (though perhaps not harder than other people!), and especially when a professor has been teaching the same courses term after term, a chance to step away from the classroom, to read up on new developments...

Death is funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, as we used to say when I was a kid, but funny odd, strange. I spend a lot of time thinking about death. That seems like a fairly obvious statement. After all, I teach Russian literature. When my now-sister-in-law heard that her brother was dating a Russian lit specialist, she famously asked: "Is she deep, or just depressed?" The answer is: neither. But even so, death is a big part of my life. Felix Lembersky, "Dusk: Matryona's House" Staraya Ladoga 1960-63 Writing my final exam bonus questions for my intro "Masterpieces of Russian Lit" course this spring -- questions about works we hadn't gotten to in class, but which I'd encouraged students to read anyway -- I began to wonder about my syllabus and the readings I choose. Here are the questions. Extra credit points:     1.      How and why does Mitya die in the story “Mitya’s Love”? (1+2)   2.      How and why does Matryona die in ...

Thinking about the relevance of the work that I do is an ongoing endeavor. At today's American university, we feel that literature and culture somehow have to justify themselves, and in today's economy, students (and their parents) worry about the applicability of their major. Recently a student who had been abroad needed my signature for his transfer credits. We started talking. Turns out that last year he studied in Moscow for a semester, but then scored an internship with a global company and worked all summer with Russian co-workers, and was going back again this summer. "You should be a Russian major," I told him. "Nah," he replied. "I am a business major, and I don't have time for more Russian courses." So he is learning the language, and learning the country through hands-on experience, but he won't be a double major. Not practical. In my student days people also said "A Russian major? What are you going to do with that?...