Marina Rojavin - I was born in Ukraine. A journalist by college education, I worked as an editor in the USSR. I received my Ph.D. in Russian Linguistics at the A. Potebnia Institute for Linguistics, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine. I taught the Russian language at Temple University (Philadelphia) and at Swarthmore College. I have also developed and taught a literary seminar The Many Faces of Russian Literary Anecdote at Swarthmore. This academic year I started teaching Russian to heritage students of Russian.

Together with my colleague, Professor Allan Reid of the University of New Brunswick, we have published A Guide to Russian Words and Expressions That Cause Difficulties (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). It focuses on semantic analyses of troublesome Russian words and expressions and on the comparative study of similar categories in English. Dr. Reid and I are currently working on the textbook for advanced students of Russian.

My main interests are various aspects of gender category in modern Russian, including stereotypes in Russian and Ukrainian regarding the problems of feminism and sexism in both languages, bilingualism, heritage language pedagogy, origin, development, and transformation of the Russian literary and historical anecdote.

I love grammar and try to convince my students that grammar is an appealing thing, sharing with them funny stories about punctuation marks, some particles and parts of sentences, lyrical poems about grammatical cases and prepositions.

In addition to grammar, I like music: hard rock and classical. I like Russian and Ukrainian cuisine and collect stories related to food in literature. I like tongue-twisters, proverbs, and fairy tales – we practice them in class with students who usually pronounce tongue-twisters better than I do.

I enjoy trips: hiking with backpacks and tents or traveling by car through Alaska or the Apennine Mountains or the Alps.

My Home Page

www.rojavin.com