Julia Verkholantsev

Assistant Professor

Office hours: ON LEAVE SPRING & FALL 2008
Email: juliaver@sas.upenn.edu

Education

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

M.A. Linguistics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997

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

1996-1997. Czech Language and Literature, Charles University at Prague

1987-1990. Czech Language and Literature, Moscow State University

Julia Verkholantsev’s primary research interests are in the field of Slavic (particularly, Early East Slavic, Russian, Czech, Polish and Ukrainian) 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, 2007), 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 Tale of Sivilla the Prophetess,” and “The Book of Tovit.” In her book, she suggests that these translations may provide textual evidence of Catholic missionary activity by the Czech and Croatian Glagolite monks among Orthodox Ruthenians in the fifteenth century.

Julia Verkholantsev is the author of a number of articles on Slavic cultural history and a co-editor (with Vyacheslav Vs. 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 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.

Courses:

RUSS 100, Once upon a Fairy Tale: Introduction to Russian Culture
RUSS 213, Saints and Devils in Russian Literature and Traditions (cross-listed COML 213, RELS 218)
RUSS 234 and SLAV 517, Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity (cross-listed COML 235, HIST 219)
SLAV 100, Slavic Civilization (cross-listed HIST 231)
RUSS 412, Romantics and Realists: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Culture (in Russian)
RUSS 419, Russian Song and Folklore (in Russian)
COML 526, In Defiance of Babel: The Quest for a Universal Language (graduate seminar) (cross-listed ENGL 705, HIST 526)