Academics
I am a former graduate student and TA in the history department, where I studied Russian and Japanese cultural relations. I received my M.A. in March 2005. Much of the structure of MA programs in the US is to teach you general studies so that you can teach it when you are a professor. So while I had planned to study Russian and Japanese relations, I received my masters in "Modern European History", not particularly relevant but enlightening nonetheless. I also wound up TAing for several different classes: History 4A -- Ancient Western Civilization from before recorded history to the Fall of Rome, History 4C -- Modern European History from the French Revolution to the present, and I twice TAed for East Asian Civilization (3000BC to the present in China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan). TAing at UCSB is quite a lot of work -- each TA is responsible for all the grading for 54 students, and we create and lead three discussion sections a week. Getting 18 kids who don't know Qing Shi Huangdi from Karl Rove to have an active discussion on the governing style of Yi Dynasty Korea is not exactly a piece of cake. I learned a great deal in grad school, but one thing I learned was that I was not made out to be a professor. In any case, some more mundane details:
I graduated cum laude from Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT in 2001, where I double majored in history and Russian. My senior thesis for history was entitled: “Musical Dissidence in Soviet Culture: The Life of a Pseudo-Soviet Composer”. It was a discussion on how Dmitiri Shostakovich expressed his political views through his music. In the fall of 1999 I lived for four months in Yaroslavl’, Russia, and I studied at Yaroslavl’ State University. Beyond history and Russian, I took nine classes in the chemistry department, and two years of Japanese language. I am a member of the Dobro Slovo National Slavic Honor Society. I studied fourth year Russian and first year Japanese at the Middlebury Summer Language Programs and Organic Chemistry I and II at Yale University Summer Programs.
After Middlebury, I spent ten months from 2001-2002 studying on a Fulbright grant in Vladivostok, Russia. I wrote an article entitled: “Obshchestvennoye mneniye zhiteley Dal’nego Vostoka Rossii o Yaponii i yapontsakh v period Russko-Yaponskoy voyny” (Far Eastern Russians’ Opinions of Japan and the Japanese in the Period of the Russo-Japanese War) in the journal: “Rossiya i ATR” (Russia and the Pacific). It was published in October 2002, but the journal is in Vladivostok and it has a pretty small circulation.
My interests at UCSB were in the export of Orthodox Christianity to Japan in the Meiji Period. In particular (can you get more particular than this??), I studied Nikolai Kasatkin, an extremely influential figure in Russo-Japanese relations. He was a priest (later promoted all the way to archbishop) who lived in Japan for 50 years, was among the first to translate the New Testament into Japanese, and helped bring Russian literature to Japan. I am also intersted in Russian writers' views on Japan and Yellow Peril in general -- notably Soloviev, Blok, Bely, Briussov, Balmont and Kuprin. I would also like to take a long hard look at Futabatei Shimei.
I have a very strong command of both written and spoken Russian ("fluency" is not a term to be bandied about. Let's just say that I can fool the gypsy cab drivers in Russia into giving me the local rate about 40% of the time. Many Russians I speak to tell me that I sound as if I am from the Baltics somewhere). I am capable of academic translation from Russian to English. I have a good command of spoken Japanese, but my reading and writing skills need work. I probably have command over 400-500 kanji.
These days I am focusing on photography. I am off to Japan this fall to try to photograph some of the areas of interaction between the Russians and the Japanese. I will be based in Sapporo, but I definitely plan to head to Wakkanai, Hakodate and Nemuro.