ACTR Webinar:  Oral History Projects in the Russian-Language Curriculum

In this webinar, Benjamin Rifkin and Colleen Lucey discuss how oral history projects can be used in the Russian language curriculum to the benefit of students, departments, and community partners. They will discuss what oral history projects are, how to organize and implement them, and discuss how such activities provide students with meaningful communicative interactions with native speakers. The presenters will share the example of an oral history project conducted at The College of New Jersey as evidence of the positive impact such initiatives can have on student motivation for the study of Russian. 

Colleen Lucey is assistant professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona (UA). She has taught Russian language at UA, UW-Madison, The College of New Jersey, and Middlebury College School of Russian. She received her PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016 and is the co-author with Jason Merrill of Russian Folktales: A Reader for Students of Russian, 2nd edition (Hackett, 2017).

Benjamin (“Ben”) Rifkin is a professor of Russian and dean of arts and sciences at Hofstra University. He’s the former director of the Middlebury College School of Russian and has also served as an ACTFL-Certified OPI tester and trainer.  Rifkin is the author or co-author of articles about language teaching and Russian-language textbooks, most recently, START: An Introduction to the Sound and Writing Systems of Russian, an online tutorial published by Hackett, and Panorama, co-authored with Evgeny Dengub and Susanna Nazarova, from Georgetown University Press.