Raymond De Luca: Student to Faculty
Before I started teaching at the Kathryn Wasserman Davis School of Russian, I was a student there!
I spent four transformative summers at Middlebury, and it was the single best thing I ever did to finally get my Russian on its feet. Where else could a twenty-five-year-old American star in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull?
After graduating, I promised myself I’d return someday to help give the next generation of Russian-language students all the care and confidence that had made such a difference for me.
As a non-native speaker of Russian (who still makes plenty of mistakes!), I “hear” my students thinking in English and, with some quick fixes and patience, can provide them the right tools to express themselves more authentically. Being part of this eccentric, sophisticated, and generous community of teachers and students is one of the joys of my life and career.
Raymond is currently an Assistant Professor of Russian Studies in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures (REALC) at Emory University. He specializes in Soviet and Russian cinema, with complementary interests in animal studies, philosophy, intellectual history, political theory, ethics, and ecology. He graduated with his Master’s in Russian from Middlebury Language Schools in 2018.