Author: russellv

Trusting Up to Thirty

Thirty is the number I have somewhat arbitrarily taken as my limit number for Introduction to Russian Culture for the coming semester: ten artifacts/episodes from “Old” Russian culture, ten artifacts/episodes from “imperial” Russian culture, and another ten from the (again rather arbitrarily designated) post-1917 to the present “period.” I say arbitrary, but there’s an organizational… Continue reading Trusting Up to Thirty

Squint Eye

I released a song on July 31, which seems to have pushed Ba.Ren.Chi above 14,000 plays on Jamendo. I still like that service because of how well curated it is, the simplicity of uploading and keeping track of content, and the fact that it’s free to anyone. SoundCloud shares some of these features, though it… Continue reading Squint Eye

Fulbright and Sea of Intimacy

I’ve been selected as a Fulbright Scholar to continue — to finish! — my book on the Adriatic. Watching the welcome videos from Donna Brazile and a senior official in the Department of State this morning, I couldn’t help feeling relieved that I did not receive this award during the presidency of the previous person… Continue reading Fulbright and Sea of Intimacy

Racializing Travel Narrative

Continuing my reading “around” the Adriatic, I picked up Jan Morris’s 1980 book The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage and read the parts that focus most on the Adriatic, skimming the other parts. The Venetian Empire in the period she’s interested in exploring included Cyprus, Crete, Constantinople for a brief moment in the 13th century,… Continue reading Racializing Travel Narrative

AI in Translation

As noted previously in these pages here and here, I’ve run a half-dozen experiments using ChatGPT for translation purposes, entering text passages of both prose and poetry from languages I know and trying different prompts. I’ve also introduced the software into my teaching, allowing student translators to use it for their translation projects provided that… Continue reading AI in Translation

Two Islands

A colleague in Dalmatia, whom I have written about before here, mentioned a pair of islands in the Kvarner Gulf, the idea of which has fascinated me since last summer. A couple of weeks ago I finally got there. The islands are paired in a distinctive sense: one, which is called Sveti Petar has the… Continue reading Two Islands

Prospero in the Adriatic

I’ve been reading “around” the Adriatic as a way of imagining it, or rather seeing how it has been imagined. In this spirit, I picked up Lawrence Durrell’s 1945 book Prospero’s Cell. Durrell does not refer much to the Adriatic in his account. His Corfu, or rather Corcyra — he begins using the Latin name… Continue reading Prospero in the Adriatic

M-Dash Spring 2023

This long-delayed 13th issue of M-Dash is finally live. This issue, which is devoted to Ukraine, features work by Alex Averbuch, Mariya Deykute, Olga Livshin, Oksana Maksymchuk, and Max Rosochinsky, and an interview by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Svetlana Lavochkina, and Grace Mahoney. Sincere thanks to all the contributors for their patience and care.

Chat GPT Translation Test No. 2

Since a reader questioned whether Chat GPT had perhaps filched my own translation of the Jergović text I tried out in my previous test, I am trying it with a text that hasn’t been translated into English yet to my knowledge (if anyone knows otherwise, please send word!). This time I just prompted it to… Continue reading Chat GPT Translation Test No. 2

Olga

The final film in our Slavic series came on the day after we completed the 4th annual Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference, so while I was able to attend and take some notes, I was too wiped out to write anything about it, hence the delay in this final review. It was a wonderful series,… Continue reading Olga