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Bowdoin College Spring Semester in St. Petersburg
See also photos.
OVERVIEW
The Bowdoin College Study Abroad program in St. Petersburg was inaugurated in the Spring Semester of 2003 (Above see Arwyn, Sarah, Angel and Heather in front of the Neva River and beyond it the Hermitage.) This program offers entering and continuing students an opportunity to live for a semester in the beautiful and historic “Imperial Capital” of Russia,
exploring the city’s great monuments, its turbulent history, and its rich cultural life, while studying the Russian language. No prior study or knowledge of Russian is required. In 2003, St. Petersburg will be celebrating its three-hundredth anniversary since Peter the Great commissioned that it be built, and, therefore, it will be especially exciting to visit the city of the Bronze Horseman! For a wonderful celebration of this anniversary, see Alexander Sokurov's new film Russian Ark (2002),
already released in the States and to be released in Russia in May, 2003.
The program beginning on January 20 and running until May 30, 2003 will be administered jointly by Bowdoin and the Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture (our partner institution in St. Petersburg). It will combine intensive language study with lecture-seminars on Russian literature, history, and the arts taught in English by Bowdoin faculty and guest lecturers. These will be supplemented by frequent excursions around the city and suburbs related to the topic of the weekly lectures. Thus St. Petersburg will become a living laboratory for
students to develop their language skills and explore hands on the history and culture of Imperial Russia. See a shot of the famous Alexander Monastery to the left.
In addition, students will get a better understanding of contemporary Russian society by doing weekly internships in Russian organizations and institutions of their choice (decided upon in advance). To further their immersion in Russian life, throughout the period of their study in St. Petersburg, students will live in homestays with pre-screened Russian families. All arrangements are being made by the Bowdoin Russian Department and the Study Away office together with Marina I. Dibrova, the Director of the International Department at the Nevsky Institute.
About Nevsky Institute
The Nevsky Institute for Languages and Cultures opened its doors six years ago and has attracted some of the brightest Doctoral graduates from the Literature and Language Department of the former LGU, the Leningrad State University, now Petersburg University (see list of faculty and guest lecturers below). While Bowdoin students will be enrolled in the International Department of Russian as a Second language, they make take a course in another department, such as other foreign language/culture departments, (for example, Spanish, German, and even Japanese), sociology, psychology, political science, history, economics (where some courses are offered in English), and translation. They may also enroll in the Theater and Arts Program. Recently, a new Gender Studies Program has been added offering courses in the study of the problems of gender and women. The Theater and Art Departments often puts on interesting cultural events in which Bowdoin students may participate. For all these classes a group of Russian students as tutors are available and can help with class notes and lectures. A full list of courses and department will be listed below at a later date.
With respect to medical services, The Nevsky Institute houses its own doctor and medical facilities. Students may also go to a nearby Western clinic that will recognize student insurance policies.
One of the liveliest spots at The Nevsky Institute is the student dining hall, where the chef, "Victor", prepares a great meal and prides himself in the many special food events (birthdays, weddings, and other parties) to which he has devoted many a colorful spread fitting the occasion.
Classes for foreign students are conducted M T TH F while Wednesday is a day of cultural excursions, i.e., a "living" laboratory day. As the semester proceeds, Wednesday may also be used for internships.
COURSES
Two courses to be taught in English by a Bowdoin College professor (Dr. Michael Pesenson in Spring of 2003), will offer students a unique opportunity to learn about Russian culture by studying the history, literature, music, and art that was created in and inspired by this grand imperial capital. The first course:Petersburg-Leningrad-Petersburg: A City of Dreams and Dreamers explores the unique vision that formed St. Petersburg. Professor Pesenson examines the special role that the city has continued to play in Russian history and culture ever since Peter the Great founded it in 1703.
Through the literary works of Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Bely, Brodsky, and others students will examine the profound importance and meaning of the city in the Russian national psyche. Through readings of historical and literary works, diaries, and memoirs they will explore the turbulent and sometimes violent history of St. Petersburg and Leningrad. The course will be supplemented by watching films by classic Soviet and contemporary Russian film makers and visiting historic sites, including the palaces of the Romanovs, prison cells of political prisoners under the tsars and the Soviets, Revolutionary sites, WWII memorials and ancient monasteries in the nearby region.
The second course:St. Petersburg: Mecca of the Arts examines the city as a place where politics and art have often merged and sometimes clashed. It explores how the city became a funnel for Western artistic ideas and tastes, and how it developed into a center for artistic experimentation – from the time of Alexander Pushkin to the “Silver Age” to Perestroika and beyond. The students will learn about the history of St. Petersburg’s cultural institutions and the current roles of those institutions in the lives of the city’s people. They will explore the music, theater, film, art, and architecture produced in the city. They will attend concerts, operas, ballets, and drama at the Kirov Theater, the Philharmonic Hall, and other famous venues; take walking tours of the city’s historic streets; visit the Hermitage Museum, the Russian Museum, and other galleries; and investigate the latest in the St. Petersburg artistic scene.
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE COURSES
All students in the program will study the Russian language; instruction will be offered every morning at different levels, according to whether each student has studied the language before and to what extent. All language classes will be given at the Nevsky Institute by instructors who have considerable experience teaching Russian and American students.
TRAVEL
The Bowdoin faculty will lead many excursions to sites and cultural events in and around St. Petersburg, including royal palaces and artists’ retreats on the outskirts of the city. They will also conduct a few day and weekend trips to more distant places, including the medieval city of Novogrod and Moscow.
FEES AND CREDITS
All expenses, including travel to and from St. Petersburg and program-related field trips, are covered by regular Bowdoin comprehensive fees. Students bring money for personal expenses, entertainment, gifts, and independent travel. Four Bowdoin credits will be given to the students upon the successful completion of the program.
Homestays
All homestays are in what is known as the old part of St. Petersburg,
that is, the historical area in the center of the former Imperial capital.
This area of town is now under zealous rennovation by order of President Vladimir Putin so that the city will have a beautiful new face for the celebration of its 300th anniversary this year (2003). Incidentally, according to a report in New York Times (March 12, 2000, p. 1, Section H), a portrait of Peter the Great now hangs in the President's office. President Putin takes great pride in his hometown city. The area of Vasilievsky Island (see photograph to the left), where his mother lives today, has been given particular attention.
For example, at the Vasilievsky Metro, "The Seventh Line" Street has been turned into a prestigious pedestrian zone with outdoor cafes and many new interesting (often very expensive) shops (see photo to the right). This pedistrian zone runs from the metro station to the main street of the island and is not only beautiful but very safe. This is one of the region where students will have their home stays.
One homestay will be in the apartment of Natalya Karpova, her son "Zigg" (a young surgeon) and their family cat "Chip"
(see photo to the right). Natalya, like many of the host family mothers, is a musician. All the host families belong to the intellectual, well educated, highly-cultured class in St. Petersburg. This is located not far away on street "Line 11" Street. (See the photograph to the left.)
During the reign of Peter the Great these streets were originally dug out as canals at the time the city was built but were later filled and are now lined with trees.
Here is one sample room in the apartment building building shown in which a student will live (a student who is not allergic to cats). It is only 20 minutes from the apartment (see example of a student's room to the left) by tram to the Nevsky Institute and five minutes by foot to Vasilievsky Island Metrostation. For your extra pleasure it is located near a Russian bath house (banya).
Another important area for homestays is "the Dostoevsky region" near Haymarket Square and Griboedov Canal.
Here total reconstruction of the square itself and an uplift of all the beautiful old apartment buildings in that area where Raskolnikov lived and walked make this an extremely vibrant and beautiful area (see photograph to the right). Ludmila, pictured left,
is the host mother in a family of this area: she is a highly accomplished musician and often performs on the piano in concert halls .
A third area for homestays is known as the Central District. Not too far away from Nevsky Prospect (the most important and central street in the city), brightly lit with many new restaurants and sidewalk cafes (see below in photograph to the far right).
Here students will find many historical buildings and streets, such as the prestigious Liteiny Street on the corner of which (of Liteiny and Pestel Streets) is the enormous house where the Nobel Poet Joseph Brodsky lived. This house was built by a Greek architect at the beginning of the century in a very different style that caused quite an uproar (see photo below).
Brodsky lived on the second floor down Pestel Street, sharing the apartment with his parents in what he called "a room and half".
Other students will live in the Petrogradsky District near the Peter-Paul Fortress.
It is precisely this area where, before his exile to the West, poet Brodsky often spent time talking with friends on top of the Peter Paul Fortress where, in his words, he would not be overheard (see photo to left to right taken in June 1968 with Jane Knox-Voina, then Knox).
Cultural Program
1. Group Bus Tour around the City
2. Program for Petersburg-Leningrad-Petersburg: A city of Dreams and Dreamers (all with lectures or comments in English)
Imperial Petersburg: Winter Palace and Hermitage, Menshikov Palace, Peter and Paul Fortress, Kunstkamera, Nevsky Lavra and St. Isaac's Cathedral.
Four Walking tours: Petersburg of Peter the Great, Petersburg of Catherine the Great, Imperial Russial and Avant-Garde Petersburg
Revolutionary St. Petersburg: Yusupov Palace, Aurora, Smolnyi Institute
Literary Petersburg of the 19th Century: Visit to the Haymarket area, Dostoevsky tour, visit to Dostoevsky Museum
Visits to Pushkin House-Museum, National Library
Literary Petersburg of the 20th Century: Akhmatova Museum, Blok Museum, Muruzi house on Liteiny Prospekt (Brodsky, and others).
Leningrad under Stalin: Kirov House Museum, Walking Tour of Bol’shoi dom, Pamiatnik Kresty.
Leningrad Under Blockade 1941-1944: Piskarevskaya Cemetary, Pulkovo Heights, Museum of the Blockade, Museum of the History of Leningrad.
4. Program for Mecca of the Arts (excursions):
Repino
Russian Museum
Mariinsky Theater
Philharmonic Society
Rimsky-Korsakov Apartment
Ethnographic Museum
5. City Excursions for the Arts: Performances
Russian opera/ballet (four perfomances)
Orchestral/instrumental/choir (several performances).
Rock/Jazz scene (clubs) and Petersburg circus.
3. Course-related tours and excursions outside St. Petersburg:
Peterhof (day excursion by train) (day trip)
Pavolovsk/Pushkin by train
Novgorod: Two Days (two breakfasts, two dinners, Hotel
included)
Moscow Trip (Five Days)
Faculty and Staff
Michael Pesenson, Director of the Bowdoin-Nevsky Institute Program. Having completed his Ph.D. in Medieval Russian Literature and History in the Slavic Department at Yale University and having spent two years teaching history and Russian at Trinity College, he is now in his second year as Assistant Professor of Russian at Bowdoin College and has a joint appointment with Bates College.
Himself formerly from St. Petersburg, he will be the first to direct the semester long Bowdoin-Nevsky Program in the spring of 2003. He will keep good company with Vyacheslav Viktorovich Evseev (see below) because he too likes to fish and sing. In his spare time (which he no longer has) he also plays the harpsichord. He has just finished a successful singing tour through Siberia (June-July 2003) with the Bowdoin Rachmaninoff Festival Choir as its manager.
Intercat"Musya" (the full name is Marusya Nevskaya).
Musya is the official mascot of Nevsky Institute where she rules the roost. All departments of Nevsky Institute try to win favor with Musya. You may frequently see Musya on the couch in the Institute's corridor on the second floor. Sometimes she visits lectures together with students, but most of all she loves to hang out in the International Department, and because of this she has been nicknamed "Intercat"; Musya appeared at the Nevsky Institute three years ago, although you can still mistake her for a kitten or adolescent, she is so miniature in stature. Musya doesn’t like to be picked up, apparently this is the result of some extreme "love" or sentiment on the part of some student. Musya’s most favorite treat is fresh cucumbers.
Marina Igorevna (Marina Igorevna Dobrova, Ph.D. in Philology (Languages and Literature, Vice Rector in International Relations). Marina Igorevna is Director of the International Department. She was born in St. Petersburg,
then Leningrad. She completed her graduate work in Literature and Russian as a Second (Foreign) Language. In 1987, she defended her doctoral dissertation. She has taught Russian in Hungary, Poland and the United States (Holy Cross and Princeton Universities). She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and European Association for International Education). She is one of the founders of the Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture. Currently she captivates Russian students by using examples of animal utterances of her two cats. She is very active in sports, particularly swimming. In the summertime she is often seen swimming in the well-traveled, expansive Neva River, which causes bewilderment, awe and no little concern among her colleagues.
Natalya Makharbekovna(Natalya Makhabekovna Kabanova, Dean of the International Department of Russian as a Foreing Language, was born in Vladikavkaz (Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia) is bilingual. Her two native languages are Russian and Osetian or Osettian (Osetia).
She completed her Philology degree at LSU (Leningrad State University) in the Department of Slavic Languages (Bulgarian is her speciality). She defended her dissertation in 1987 and has taught Russian in Hungary. She has taught Russian as a Second Language to several generations of members of the American, British and Bulgarian Consulates in St. Petersburg. Her hobby is horse back riding and she dreams of the time when Nevsky Institute will have its own stable. As a true woman of the Caucasus, in spite of her bilingual essence, she surprises and overjoys her colleagues in the International Department (of Nevsky) with her "Osetian" (or" Georgian") style toasts.
Vyacheslav Viktorovich (Evseev)
fulfills the duties of Head of the Department of Russian as a Second Langauge at Nevsky. He expects to complete his dissertation in 2003. He is from Karelia (the town of Olonets), which inevitably resulted in his great love for Russian nature and his passion for conducting seminars outside in the open air (just as we do on the Bowdoin College Quad) His best students get invited to such seminars. He is overjoyed when he can explain Russian grammar to a student not only with the help of English but also French. Most of all he loves phraseology and fishing. He plays a wicked guitar and sings.
Tatyana Yurievna ( Plotnikova)
is responsible for the culture program and excursions. Born in St. Petersburg, wife of a submarine sailor, she has spent many years in the severe conditions of the Russian North. She knows what it is to be cold not only by word of mouth by experiencing the Polar nights of the Kola Peninsula. The years of living on the shore of the North Sea has tempered her character and from the onset forged her productive work as a member of the Interational Department of Nevsky Institute. She is the sole person in the department who doesn't speak English, but for six years already there has never been a foreign student who could not understand Tatyana Yurievna.
Marina (Viktorovna Cherepivskaya) has been working at Nevsky as Admissions 
Officer for two and a half years. From the town of Oktau in Kazakhstan, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, she currently is in the fourth year of study in the Nevsky Evening Division in the Department of Public Relations. The Fall of 2001/2002 she spent as an exchange student at Oklahoma University. Marina is the main person at Nevsky in charge of visas and registration at OVIR. She too plays the guitar, writes songs and keeps giving up smoking.
Alyona (Elena Yur'evna Manucharova)
is the Financial Manager of the International Department. Born in Petersburg-Leningad, she completed her higher education in economics. She is the sole person in our humanitarian contingency who can add well and correct just in time the mathematical errors of her co-workers, specialists in Russian Philology. Her love for the science of economics has not hindered her successful completion of music studies in piano.
Tatyana Sergeevna (Zorina), also from Petersburg (Leningrad) and one of the instructors in the Department of Russian for Foreigners, recently completed (2002) her Ph.D.
in Language and Literature (Philology) in the Philology Department of the Saint Petersburg State University. She plays the piano and tennis, sings, dances, draws, and rather frequently treats her colleagues in the International Department to tasty pirozhkis, but, unfortunately, doesn't consider this to be her basic hobby. Her heart is set on poetry: she specializes in the poetry of the Silver Age and writes her own verses with which you may become acquainted on the web. Not long ago she began studying Danish.
Natalia Igorevna (Anokhina),
teacher in the Department of Russian Language for Foreigners, born in Petersburg (Leningrad), completed her studies in Language and Literature at the A. I. Herzen Pedagogical Institute. She spends her spare time with painting, theater and karate. She carefully conceals from her colleaques her successful role in the theater, but we suspect that she is secretly dreaming of playing the role of the Snowmaiden (snegurochka) or a role demonstrating her karate skills in a super modern fast action film ("killer-thriller").
Lily (Lilia Aleksandrovna Kladkova), former Program Coordinator and teacher in Nevsky's Deparment of Russian Language for Foreigners, comes to us from a small town in the Tyumen region of Western Siberia. In 2001, she completed her studies in the Department of Linguistics and Multi- or Intercultural Communications at the Nevsky Institute. Inasmuch as her father is Russian and her mother Tatar, Lily, in addition to her native Russian, understands Tatar very well. Her major love is linguistics. All her other hobbies such as crocheting and knitting, so Lily says, help her concentrate on solving linguistic problems. Upon deciding that a knowledge of Tatar, Russian, English and German are clearly not enough, she recently started studying Turkish and has begun studying Latin at Bowdoin College, where she is now a Teaching Fellow of Conversational Russian.
Guest Lecturers
There will be an occasional guest lecturer in the area of history, literature, art and other topics. Included among them is the St. Petersburg film director, Konstantin Lopushansky. 
Originally from Dnepropetrovsk, in 1970 he graduated from the Kazan Conservatory in the violin class. He completed a post-graduate course at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1978 (art criticism), then Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors in film directing in 1978 at the E. Lotyanu's Studio. Since 1980, he has been associated with "Lenfilm" as film director, winning prizes at international and home festivals. He was honored as Art Worker Winner of the State with the Vailyev Brothers' prize. His most well known films are "Letters from a Dead Man" (1986) and "Russian Symphony" (1994), both of which are replete with Dostoevskian motifs, images and themes. His latest film, which takes a critical look at the psychological state of Russian society at the turn of the century is aptly entitled "The Turn of the Centry" (2001).
Vladimir Uflyand is a talented and highly respected poet from the 1960s and member of the literary circle to which exiled Nobel Prize Poet Laureate, Joseph Brodsky, among others, belonged. 
He will give a lecture (s) on the period of the Thaw. He will focus on dissident writers and bards of the period. He will acquaint students not only with literature of the period, but also the political circumstances and censorship that made it so difficult for him and others to survive as writers with a conscience. Uflyand was born in Leningrad and remains there today. He has traveled to lecture at various American universities and colleges, including Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
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