Full-time Faculty

Svetlana V. Cheloukhina

PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto
MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto
BA and MA in Russian Language and Literature, Russian as a Foreign Language, and English Language and Literature, Southern Federal University, Russia

Queens Hall 330B
718-997-5992
svetlana.cheloukhina@qc.cuny.edu

Svetlana Cheloukhina is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Russian Program. Her research and teaching interests are wide-ranging, from Russian nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, particularly, its philosophical aspects, modernism, Russian and European avant-garde, and contemporary visual art, to ethno-cultural history of the North Caucasus. Prof. Cheloukhina’s publications include the book, The Poetic Universe of Nikolai Zabolotsky (2006), the articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entrees, edited volume and book reviews on OBERIU and Zabolotsky, Acmeism and the avant-garde, Mikhail Zenkevich and Vladimir Narbut, contemporary Christian studies and early Christian iconography, and Ballet Russes. She has given invited lectures and seminars, and presented papers at the conferences in the US, Canada, Europe (Germany, Finland), Russia, Kazakhstan, and Japan.

Her primary current project, a monograph entitled Mikhail Zenkevich: Acmeism and Beyond, is based on previously unpublished archival materials. This first book-length study of Zenkevich’s oeuvre will examine his poetry, prose, criticism, and translations created for over sixty years, his association with Acmeism and the avant-garde in St. Petersburg-Petrograd of the 1910s-1920s, his editorial work in Saratov and Moscow in the 1920s-1930s, his correspondence with Orville Wright and affiliation with prominent American and European poets, writers, and cultural activists during the 1930s-1960s. This book will thus reevaluate Zenkevich’s role and legacy in the twentieth-century literary process in Russia.

As a part of her further, most recent investigations in the field of arts and culture of
Karachay-Cherkessia, North Caucasus, Prof. Cheloukhina is analyzing and evaluating the paintings of Igor Kyianitsa, a contemporary adept of both academism and Expressionism, whose works she plans to introduce in the West for the first time at the upcoming 2020 ASEEES Annual Convention.

Prof. Cheloukhina’s interest in online pedagogy has resulted in her developing and teaching seven new online courses in Russian literature and culture. Before coming to Queens College in 2000, she taught at the Universities of Toronto, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Rostov, where she also supervised the Russian programs for international students and the US-Soviet student exchanges. She has received Mellon Foundation, Sloan, The Tahmysian Foundation, several PSC-CUNY, Queens College, and other grants and awards for her scholarship and teaching.

More about Prof. Cheloukhina’s scholarship: Academia.edu, Google Scholar, e-flux Journal

Courses Taught:

• All levels and aspects of the Russian language
• Keys to Russian Literature
• The Russian Silver Age and Avant-Garde
• Russian Culture and Thought
• Russian and East European Film
• Russian Short Stories
• Russian Fairy Tales
• Pushkin
• Tolstoy
• Dostoevsky
• Chekhov
• Studies in Slavic and East European Literatures: Nabokov
• Studies in Slavic and East European Literatures: Pasternak
• Survey of Russian Literature: The Nineteenth Century
• Survey of Russian Literature: The Twentieth Century

Adjunct Faculty

Olga Permitina

PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin-Madison
MA in Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
BA in English, Mount Holyoke College

Research interests: Language pedagogy and second language acquisition; 19th century European travel literature and urbanism; Slavic folklore; Polish women writers.

Queens Hall 205L
718-997-5984
olga.permitina@qc.cuny.edu

Aksana Pisetskaya

Queens Hall 205 L
718-997-5984
aksana.pisetskaya@qc.cuny.edu

Malika Ziyamova

MA in Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University
MA and PhD in Political Science, University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Research interests: Russian history, culture, literature, and language. Political, social, religious, and intellectual history of the imperial, Soviet and modern Russia.

Queens Hall 205L
718-997-5984
malika.ziyamova@qc.cuny.edu

Emeritus Faculty

Thomas E. Bird

Associate Professor Emeritus

During his fifty-plus-year career at Queens College, Thomas Bird has led the Slavic Department and the Russian Program, and served in multiple administrative positions both at the College and the university levels. With degrees from Syracuse University, Middlebury College, Princeton University, and Ukrainian Free University, Prof. Bird has taught undergraduate courses in Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish languages and literatures. He has published widely on the subjects of 19th- and 20th-century Russian and Belarusian literature and culture. He led the Spring Slavic Lecture Series, supervised the Russian Study Abroad Program in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev, and served as faculty in the field of Russian Studies for National Endowment in the Humanities-sponsored Summer Seminars. He has received the Presidential Teaching Award and other awards and honors from the Belarusian and Ukrainian governments.

Queens Hall 200
718-997-5980
thomas.bird@qc.cuny.edu