Julia Verkholantsev

Assistant Professor

Office Hours:W 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. and by appt. (Spring 2012 Semester)

Email: juliaver@sas.upenn.edu

Spring 2012 Courses

RUSS136 Portraits of Russian Society
RUSS419 Russian Song and Folklore

Education

Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Los Angeles, 2004

M.A. (Indo-European) Linguistics, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998

B.A. Russian and Slavic Studies, Linguistics, and Greek Language and Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995

Julia Verkholantsev’s primary research interests are in the field of Slavic (particularly, Early East Slavic, Russian, Czech, Polish and Croatian) cultural history, early modern and medieval literary and linguistic culture, textual and cultural transmission. Her monograph, "RUTHENICA BOHEMICA: Ruthenian Translations from Czech in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland" (Lit-Verlag, 2008), examines the historical circumstances and textual history of four fifteenth-century Ruthenian translations from Czech: “The Song of Songs,” “The Book of Taudal the Knight” (“The Vision of Tundal”), “The Tale of Sivilla the Prophetess” (The Sibylline Prophecy”) and “The Book of Tovit.” In her book, she suggests that these translations may be associated with the activity by the Czech and Croatian Glagolite monks among Orthodox Ruthenians in the fifteenth century. Julia Verkholantsev is also the author of a number of articles on Slavic cultural history and a co-editor (with Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov) of the book SPECULUM SLAVIAE ORIENTALIS: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages. UCLA Slavic Studies, n.s., IV. Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2005. Her other academic interests include linguistic historiography, history of writing and literacy, Slavic (Cyrillic, Glagolitic and Latin) and Greek paleography and cryptography, projects and theories of universal language, literary contexts of the visual and performing arts, and the formation of the literary canon. She is currently completing her book manuscript, tentatively titled "The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: How a Translator of the Vulgate Became a Slav," which is under a contract with the Northern Illinois University Press (Orthodox Christian Studies series). The book explores the history of the medieval belief in St. Jerome's authorship of the Glagolitic letters and Slavonic liturgy, and investigates its spread from Dalmatia to Bohemia and Poland.

Courses:

Undergraduate

RUSS 100, Introduction to Russian Culture

RUSS 213, Saints and Devils in Russian Literature and Traditions (cross-listed COML 213, RELS 218)

RUSS 234, Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity (cross-listed COML 235, HIST 219)

SLAV 100, Slavic Civilization (cross-listed HIST 231)

RUSS410 Russian Folk and Literary Tale (in Russian) RUSS 412, Romantics and Realists: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture (in Russian)

RUSS 419, Russian Song and Folklore (in Russian)

Graduate seminars

SLAV 526, In Defiance of Babel: The Quest for a Universal Language (cross-listed COML 526, ENGL 705, HIST 526)

SLAV 517, Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity

Select Recent Publications

	Ruthenica Bohemica: Ruthenian Translations from Czech in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, Julia Verkholantsev Slavische Sprachgeschichte Bd 3. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008
	Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, Julia Verkholantsev, Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, eds. UCLA Slavic Studies, n.s., IV, Moscow: Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2005

Last updated on January 17, 2012