Putin’s Kiss focuses on the young, charismatic Masha, a 19-year-old spokeswoman for Nashi, a government-friendly Russian youth organization that promotes strong nationalistic ideals. Since she was fifteen, Masha was highly-involved in Nashi and the organization’s aim to rid Russia of its “enemies.” Through her involvement and loyalty, Masha received tons of benefits from Nashi and was frequently noted as “the girl who kissed Putin.” However, as Masha grows and begins to befriend critical journalists, her beliefs are challenged.

Professor Wesche researches in the 17th through the 21st Centuries and is particularly interested in poetics and rhetoric, drama, and myth. The author of two monographs (Der Vers im Drama. Studien zur Theorie und Verwendung im deutschsprachigen Sprechtheater des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. [2009] and Literarische Diversität. Abweichungen, Lizenzen und Spielräume in der deutschen Poesie und Poetik der Barockzeit. [2004]) and editor of another four volumes and numerous articles, Professor Wesche will present his recent research on literature, biology, and the transfer of knowledge.

Is there such a thing as Jewish horror? Looking at examples of what has frightened Jews over three millennia of literary history, we'll venture some conclusions.

From the earliest stages of language processing, people use prosodic information in word recognition and to predict and construct the syntactic structure of an utterance in their native language (L1) (e.g., Eckstein & Friederici, 2006; Friederich et al., 2004; Isel et al., 2005; Pauker et al., 2011; Steinhauer, 2003; see also Cutler et al., 1997; Wagner & Watson, 2010, for two reviews).

Viachaslau Yarashevich, Fulbright Scholar, Belarus State University
Grigory Ioffe, Professor of Geography, Radford University
David Marples, Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta
Olga Klimova, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Olga Kuchinskaya, Professor, Department of Communication

An International Conference at the University of Pittsburgh

Thursday, March 29
Welcoming Reception: 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Session I: Revolutionary Dynamics (6:00pm - 8:00pm)
Asef Bayat (University of Illinois): "Revolution without Movement, Movement without Revolution -- Again"
Samer Shehata (Georgetown University): "Too Little, Too Late: The Mubarak Regime's Response to Dynamic Protest"
Mohammed Bamyeh (University of Pittsburgh): "On Spontaneity and Organization"

Friday, March 30
Breakfast: 9:00am - 10:00am

The Sixth Annual Margaret Morrison Distinguished Lecture in Women's History.

Anna Krylova is the author of "Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front" (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her book was awarded the 2011 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association.

Katie Trumpener, Emily Sanford Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of graduate studies in comparative literature at Yale University

This graduate seminar is in English and open to all graduate students.

Biography – the story of a person’s life – is one of the most popular types of literature today. Yet biography also holds an important place in scholarship. Biographies invite us to consider what effect, if any, an individual may have on the larger course of events. Biographies of creative personalities bring up the further question of whether connections exist between a life and times and an individual’s music, art, or literary works and if so, what those connections might be.