Перунъ (Perun), which may be translated as thunderbolt, is the name of the pagan Slavic thunder god. It is also the penname of Vadim Nevskii, who contributed illustrations to Russian satirical journals from the years 1905-1907. His monogram graces the heading above, which was taken from the Russian Satirical Journal Collection housed in the University of Southern California Digital Library. Our most recent issue is presented here as a flipbook and past issues are linked below.
Alumni News
Yuliya Ilchuk, USC Slavic
Prof. Yuliya Ilchuk’s book Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity (University of Toronto Press 2021) received two awards in 2022 from ASEEES: the Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies and the USC Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies. It argues that the ambiguities within his subversive, ironic works are matched by those that surround the debate over his national identity. This book presents a completely new assessment of the problem: rather than adopting the predominant “either/or” perspective – wherein Gogol is seen as either Ukrainian or Russian – it shows how his cultural identity was a product of negotiation with imperial and national cultural codes and values. By examining Gogol’s ambivalent self-fashioning, language performance, and textual practices, this book shows how Gogol played with both imperial and local sources of identity and turned his hybridity into a project of subtle cultural resistance.
Frederick H. White, USC Slavic 2002
Prof. White gives a shout out to his alma mater in this video that promotes Russian Studies at Utah Valley University where he teaches.