Contact information

Department of Russian Studies, University of Bristol, 17 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TE And: European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY England e-mail: mlpot@bath.ac.uk

Research Interests

Languages

• Russian (native)
• Ukrainian (second native)
• English (fluent)
• French (in progress; self-taught)
• Hebrew (basic)
• German (basic)

Teaching

I am very serious and enthusiastic about my teaching duties. I enjoy developing new modules and innovative ideas, especially of a cross-disciplinary nature. My teaching experience and linguistic expertise involves working with the virtual learning environment, designing new e-learning materials, programming in html, and using multimedia means and computer assisted tools as well as reviewing some language teaching software. This together with my experience as a webmaster make me effective in the area of WebCT and distance learning. At present I am involved in the project of designing an e-learning site for Russian-English studies (at the ESML Department of the University of Bath in my capacity as a Language Teaching Development Officer) and hope to extend it to other languages taught in the Department at various levels.

Since 1995 I have also been teaching both Russian language and literature at various local educational institutions in the Bath area at different levels (this includes beginner's level, A-level, continuing education, Russian for business-people and undergraduate level). From 1994 until 2002 I worked as a part-time tutor in mathematics at the University of Bath (Department of Mathematical Sciences) and as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England (UWE) where I gave a course in Computer Science in the academic years 1998 and 1999.

Administrative experience:

• Organizing an International Conference on the Contemporary Russian Women Writers (CRWW) held in conjunction with the International Conference on the Contemporary European Women Writers: Gender and Generation, Bath, March 31 - April 2, 2005
• Organizing a one-day International conference for the British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture (BFASRC), October 18, 2003
• Administering a Web-site of the British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture (BFASRC), 2001-2002
• Administering a Web-based Russian-English translation course at the University of Bath, from 2003
• Administering the mailing list for the CRWW conference participants

Professional Affiliations:

• Member of BASEES : the British Association for the Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (Study Groups: Religion in Russia, Eastern and Central Europe; 19th and 20th centuries Russian literature)
• Member and webmaster (2001-2002) of the British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture (BFASRC)
• Member of MHRA: the Modern Humanities Research Association

Awards and Prizes

• Departmental grant to pay my fees as a part-time research student, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, Bath, England, (since 2000)
• Holder of 2001-2002 Entente Cordiale Scholarship (in the frame-work of my Franco-Russian research) visiting the Sorbonne, Paris, France.
• Bronze Medal at the International Poetry Tournament Pushkin in Britain, London, June, 2005

Selected Publications

• Book Unpublished Letters of Lev Shestov to Boris de Schloezer
  fully annotated edition (co-edited with R. Salazar-Ferrer) (to be published by the Russkij Put' Publishing House in 2006)
• Book Selected Poems
  published by Folio Publishing House in 2002 (available for purchase in the Russian bookshop "Les Edituers Reunis", 11, rue de la Montagne St. Genevieve, 11, tel. 33 (0)1 43 54 74 46, Paris)
• Book Chapter The look directed within or a note on hopelessness (Shestov's Understanding Of Chekhov)
  (to be published in the book "The Tragic Discourse - Shestov's and Fondane's Existential Thought" by the Peter Lang Publishing House in 2006)
• Book Chapter The Treatment of Aesthetics in Lev Shestov's Search for God
  (to be published in the book "Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity", by Peeters Publishers, Leuven, Belgium, in 2006)
• Book chapter Alexander Galich: life and songs - crossing borders
  published in the book Border Crossings: Mapping Identities In Modern Europe by the Peter Lang Publishing House, 2004, pp. 185-205
• Paper Lev Shestov and Joseph Brodsky
  published in Le Messager (Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenija), Paris--New-York--Moscow, No 184, 2002 (An English version of this paper (translated from the original Russian) is published in the Lev Shestov Journal, issue No 3, 2002)
• Paper Andre Gide and Lev Shestov: two perspectives on Dostoevsky
  (to be published in the Shestov's Journal, issue No 5, 2006)
• Paper "The world is ugly and people are sad". On Chekhov's ethics and aesthetics in the works of Sergej Dovlatov
  (to be published in Essays in Poetics in 2006)
• Paper Female Russian Poetry: The Voice of Tatiana Voltskaja in the context of preceding generations
  (to be published in the Conference Volume of the international conference on Contemporary European Women Writers: Gender and Generation, Bath, 2005)
• Paper On Pushkin's poem Zimniaia Doroga
  published in Le Messager (Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenija), Paris--New-York--Moscow, No 185, 2003
• Paper A remark on poetry
  published in the Russian literary journal Znamya, No 11, 2001
• Poems
  published in the Modern Poetry in Translation, No 17, 2001
• Book Review On the book by Alyssa W. Dinega "A Russian Psyche. The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva"
  published in the Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 13, No 1, 2004
• Review of the educational software for beginners in Hebrew
  published in the ReCALL journal: Volume 15, Number 2, November 2003, as well as electronically at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/reviews/hebrew.html
  
• Paper On the use of mnemonic rules when teaching Russian to English speakers
  to be published by Rusistika in 2005

In Submission:

• Paper The Achilles' Heel Of The Russian Intelligentsia (On The Film "Osennij Marafon" by G. Danelia)
  
• Paper Problems of Poetry Translation Revisited (Case Study of Pushkin's Poem)
  
• Paper Across The World Order: Lev Shestov, Marina Tsvetaeva and Venedikt Erofeev
  
• Paper Repudiation and Appropriation - Two Jewish Identities: Soviet and Israeli
  
• To Seem and to Be in Russian Literature - Eternal Conflict between an Author and His Lyrical Hero
  
• Paper Poet in Russia Is More Than Just a Poet. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vladimir Vysotsky - Relationships With The Epoch
  

Selected Conference Talks

• Written contribution into Collective Analysis of Pushkin's poem Zimniaia Doroga
  at the Neo-Formalist Conference 200 years of Pushkin in Oxford 1999
• Conference talk Repudiation and Appropriation - Two Jewish Identities: Soviet and Israeli,
  given at BASEES 2000, Cambridge, April 2001
• Conference talk Lev Shestov and Joseph Brodsky,
  given at the meeting of the British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture, the Sorbonne (Paris IV), October 2001
• Conference talk Inexhaustible light, or Where cultures meet: Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Deniska's stories by V. Dragunsky,
  given at the meeting of the British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture, University of Surrey, Guilford, April 2001
• Conference talk On the use of mnemonic rules when teaching Russian to English speakers,
  given at BASEES 2001, Cambridge, April 2001
• Conference talk On the questions of poetry translation,
  given at BASEES 2002, Cambridge, April 2002
• Conference talk The Achilles' heel of the Russian intelligentsia (On the film "Osennij Marafon" by G.Danelia),
  given at the conference Screening the Word: Visual Adaptations of Literature in Russian and Soviet Culture, University of Surrey, Guilford, May 2002
• Conference talk The look directed within OR A couple of words on hopelessness (Shestov's understanding of Chekhov),
  given at the meeting of British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture, The Sorbonne (Paris IV), October 2002
• Conference talk ``To Seem And To Be In Russian Literature - The Eternal Conflict Between An Author And His Lyrical Hero"
  (given at the conference ``Self-reflection in Russian history, literature and culture", Wolfson College, Oxford, February 2003)
• Conference talk``Across the World Order: Lev Shestov, Marina Tsvetaeva and Venedikt Erofeev"
  (given at BASEES 2003, Cambridge, March 2003)
• Conference talk "Perception of God (On Spiritual Journeys in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky")
  (given at the conference on Religious Spaces in Russian Culture, University of Wales, April 2003)
• Conference talk ``Poet in Russia is more than just a poet. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vladimir Vysotsky - relationships with the epoch"
  (given at the conference "Literature and Nation " of the BASEES 20th Century Literature Group at Mansfield College, Oxford, September 2003)
• Conference talk "Andre Gide and Lev Shestov: two perspectives on Dostoevsky"
  (given at the meeting of British-French Association for the Study of Russian Culture, University of Bath, October 2003)
• Conference talk "The world is ugly and people are sad". On Chekhov's ethics and aesthetics in the works of Sergej Dovlatov
  (given at BASEES 2005, Cambridge, April 2005)
• Conference talk Female Russian Poetry: The Voice of Tatiana Voltskaja in the context of preceding generations
  (given at the international conference on Contemporary European Women Writers: Gender and Generation, University of Bath, 2005)
• Conference talk The revival of Russian philosophical and religious thought after "perestrojka": the case of Lev Shestov
  (given at the VIIth World Congress of ICCEES (International Council for Central and East European Studies) in Berlin, July 2005)
• Conference talk Russian Jewish writers - exile becoming migration: a new experience within "open borders"
  (given at the VIIth World Congress of ICCEES in Berlin, July 2005)

Translation Work

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