last few years, Mark Lanfranca (MA, 2008) and Shay Wood (PhD student in History). After the retirement of Mübeccel Taneri in spring 2008, the Department welcomes a new Turkish lecturer, Abbas Karakaya, who is completing his dissertation in Turkish literature at Indiana University. The Department also welcomes to its tenure-track faculty Renee Perelmutter, whose 2008 PhD at UC Berkeley is in Slavic linguistics. Renee’s teaching assignment is in the Jewish Studies Program, where she offers courses in Jewish Secular Culture, Jewish Folkore, and Yiddish language. A heritage speaker of Yiddish, and native speaker of Russian and Hebrew, Renee’s research focuses on Yiddish and Slavic morphosyntax and pragmatics, general and Jewish folklore, and Jewish culture.
CHAIR’S CORNER
The new academic year marks a number of changes in the Slavic Department, all happy ones. This year after a decade as director of the Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center, which he built from a small tape-based standard language lab to an up-to-date multi-media center, Bill Comer returns full-time to SLL. Bill’s energies are needed in the Slavic Department, where he has been an able leader in language pedagogy not just at KU, but in the Slavic field. He leaves EGARC in the able hands of our own alumnus, Jonathan Perkins (PhD with honors, 2005). Bill’s return could not have come at a more felicitous moment, as Putin’s resurgent Russia has again drawn attention to Russia, evidently attracting more students to enroll in Russian language courses. Edith Clowes has moved into the position of Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, leaving a vacancy in SLL’s Director of Graduate Studies position, now ably filled by Maria Carlson. The doyen of our department, and the record-holder for tenure as department chair (14 years of his 41 years of service to KU!), Stephen Parker now shares his formidable editing skills, honed on his longtime editorship of The Nabokovian, with our Lawrencian Chronicle. All these changes reflect the impressive record of service and leadership that characterizes the Slavic Department faculty. The Slavic Department’s commitment to lesscommonly-taught languages (LCTLs) continues with a number of achievements. Despite the elimination of the Missouri reciprocal agreement, which had benefited non-Russian enrollments in Slavic languages for many years, enrollments in BCS and Polish remain robust, thanks to the enthusiasm and dedication of our pedagogues Stephen Dickey, Marta Pirnat-Greenberg (BCS), and Svetlana Vassileva- Karagyozova (Polish). We have new and innovative study-abroad programs in Zadar, Croatia and Warsaw, Poland. KU also continues to be the only U.S. university to offer beginning to advanced instruction in Slovene, with two advanced students having completed study abroad in Ljubljana in the
To Alumni and Friends The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures is increasingly dependent on direct private support. Non-restricted donations to the department are particularly helpful. Recently such donations have aided the purchase of materials for the Parker Library, the funding of student awards, and invitations to guest speakers. Contributions to the Joseph L. Conrad Memorial Fund have assisted our students by supporting their travel to conferences and their entry into our study abroad programs. The Czech Opportunity Fund supports the future hire of a Czech lecturer. Donations may be sent to the Slavic Department, c/o the Chair, with the check made out to “KUEA - Slavic Dept.” accompanied by a memo stating to which of the uses the money should be put.