Slavic Languages & Literatures
2022–2023
Rachael Neidinger
My capstone project was to answer a question that a student once asked me: “How can you use non-binary language in Russian?” My research showed me that there is no single answer to this question, so I decided to create a series of handouts meant for students and instructors to help provide the linguistic, cultural, and gender theory background they would need to understand the possible answers. My project starts with Russian, but I hope this project continues to develop with language-specific handouts since each Slavic culture is unique.
2020–2021
Raymond DeLuca
For my capstone project, I made a “how-to-guide,” a series of (seven) handouts, for graduate students, especially incoming ones, on navigating the department and professional field as young scholars. Though this information is tailored to Harvard’s Slavic program specifically, it can be easily retooled for another department. The information covered in these documents includes conferences, teaching assignments, funding, publishing, fellowships, a departmental timeline, general exams, and Bok Center resources. The advice here is meant neither to be exhaustive nor fully authoritative but a useful starting point in acquainting new graduate students with the professional field.
2019–2020
Giulia Dossi
My capstone project is a timeline that will hopefully serve as the basis to create a structured pedagogy course in Slavic. I suggest starting by introducing four workshops a year: focusing on teaching in the Fall, professional development in the Spring. Additionally, I started a G2 shadowing program. The idea is to introduce G2s to teaching more gradually, providing them with a space to ask questions and get more information about what to expect in the Fall, and giving them the opportunity to observe some language classes and literature sections taught by their colleagues who are G3s and up.