OKSANA WILLIS, Lecturer and Russian Language Coordinator

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Education: MA, PhD – Lomonosov Moscow State University

Professional interests:

In language pedagogy: teaching culture in Russian language courses, teaching Russian through literature, art, and performative arts, transformative teaching and learning, student autonomy and motivation, music in Russian language class, project-based instruction, community-based instruction, and task-based instruction, intensive immersion language programs.

Teacher training practices and principles.

Vladimir Nabokov studies, performative arts, flowers and gardens in poetry and prose, poetics of the ineffable.

 

Current projects:

Textbook:

Foundations of Russian: A Cognitive and Constructional Approach Enriched by Frequency Data. By Steven Clancy, Daniel Green, Veronika Egorova, Oksana Willis. Forthcoming 2023. Routledge Publishers.

Reader:

One Birthday for Everyone: Kalmykia. Pod Stuk Kol’os: The Reader. Intermediate Russian. Ed. K. Burvikova, E. Stremova (to be published)

Selected publications:

Georgy Ivanov, “Disintegration of the Atom”, “Petersburg Winters” (translated from the Russian by J. Katsell and S. Shvabrin in Collaboration with Oksana Willis), Academic Studies Press, Boston 2016

iBook: My Ticket to Target Language Country. Dialogue on Language Instruction Vol. 24 (2) 2014 DLIFLC

“The Poetics of Cityscape in the Prose of Vladimir Nabokov and Georgii Ivanov.” The Other Shore, Vol. 1, 2011

“Nabokov’s Berlin in his novel King, Queen, Knave and the “Berlin Text” of German Literature and Art.”Vestnik Rossiyskogo Universiteta Druzhby Narodov, Vol. 3, 2008

“The Structure and Functions of the Cityscape in Nabokov’s Early Prose.” Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Series 9, Vol. 3, 2008

Scholarly Presentations:

Digital Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom. Keynote Speaker at the 12th All-Russian Research and Methodological Conference with International Participation Institute of Foreign Languages (RUDN University) Moscow, March 27th, 2020

Interdisciplinary and Multimedia Approach (IMA) to Culture Studies for Advanced Heritage Learners. Workshop conducted at ACTFL Convention in Washington, DC

Dostoevsky’s “Krotkaya” and Domestic Violence Debate in the 21st Century Russia: Transformative Learning in Practice. AATSEEL Conference, Washington DC, February 2018

“Intermediate Russian e-Modules for Tbilisi Program” Foreign Language Advisory Group (FLAG) Conference. Harvard University, March 2017

“Teaching Russian Language in Modified Environment (Russian in Tbilisi)” roundtable; presented at AATSEEL Conference, San Francisco 2017

“Optimizing Russian Language Use in Study Abroad Outside Russia”. Workshop conducted at ACTFL, Boston 2016