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To be an expatriate means that on
more than one occasion ordinary experience can take very intense
forms. Thus, education is never simply the classes you took or the
degrees you acquired. For an immigrant, one's life story or process
of education is also a tale of cultural adjustment, invariably punctuated
by memorable cultural shocks. In my case, I no longer worry whether
I am Russian, North American, Canadian, or even a Southern belle.
I know I have come into close contact with several cultures, and
I know that I am now very fortunate to be able to introduce Emory
students to Russian literature, culture, civilization, and language.
For me what I teach is an academic discipline, but it is also a
personal story.
I was born in Moscow and left it at the same age as most American
students enter their sophomore year. Just before Richard Nixon visited
Moscow, every member of my family was stripped of Soviet citizenship,
and we never expected to see our country again. Nixon's visit was
significant: to avoid troubles with the United States, people, like
my parents, were sent West, rather than to the Russian Eastern or
Northern Gulags. Thus, entering a North American lifestyle was a
blessing, but also a necessity. There was no other homeland.
Yet history has chapters and new volumes, just like fiction. The
1990s saw formidable changes of Soviet policy (both internal and
external), and for us it meant that we were allowed to visit Russia.
That return affected what I teach and read and how I interpret the
tradition I examine. That same return was also, in my case, accompanied
by writing. Looking through the growing list of stories, I find
that they go beyond a personal reflection. They are a diary of change,
which has (the young T.S. Eliot would be pleased) an objective correlative,
i.e., historical reality, and for this reason, among others, I offer
them to Emory students.
1991: Moscow Childhood. The Make-Up
of a Generation
1994: Christianity Returning to Russian
Philology
1994: The Grieving Angel
1999: Requiem for my Father
2002: Shakespearean Tempest: Buying
an Apartment in St. Petersburg
This page last revised
March 5, 2008
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