Connor Doak

HOW I BECAME A CELT

For St. Patrick's Day, I brought my Irish heritage into the Russian language classroom, assigning our second-year students part of Vladimir Gorban's memoir "Как я стал кельтом" [How I Became a Celt] to translate.

There's a little excerpt below for those who know Russian...

Were you involved at all in the preparation of the audiobook process? e.g. Advising the narrator on tone, pacing, characters' voices?

Listen up! And listen here:
tinyurl.com/4hb6dajh

Hear a sample of my #Russian #novel — a coming-out story + #thriller set in #1990s Moscow — for FREE on Audible

Suspense, heartbreak💔, a snapshot of #Russia before #Putin AND discos! 🪩

Modern languages departments are neither colonial nor obsolete Advanced linguistic and cultural skills remain essential for deep insight into how people see themselves in the world, say five modern languages academics

Important piece in Times Higher Ed today:

www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/mode...

Compartment No. 6, dir. Juho Kuosmanen

I introduced this movie in our LGBTQ+ film festival last week. It's a Finnish-Russian co-production made when such things were possible, and a great slow burn set on Russian rails.

It's currently available on BBC iPlayer:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Eric Naiman discusses The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature on the CUP blog:

cambridgeblog.org/2025/02/back...

Artists and researchers sitting in a conference room listening to a presentation

Queer Creativity: Bringing Eastern European and Central Asian LGBTQ+ Research to Life

Excellent conference yesterday at Wadham College, Oxford, that brought together artists and scholars come together to discuss queer creativity across the East European, Eurasian, and Slavic regions.

Today Bristol SML hosted a talk by the UK ambassador to Latvia, Paul Brummell. He discussed the strong cooperation between the UK and Latvia, Latvian history, and the challenges facing the country today. Many of our students go to Latvia on Year Abroad; they valued the opportunity to talk with him.

Sign the Petition Save MLANG at Cardiff University!

Please sign and share to support languages at Cardiff:

www.change.org/p/save-mlang...

Cardiff’s closure of modern languages will tongue-tie its humanities The global examination of culture is not possible without languages at degree level, say Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Charles Burdett and Emma Cayley

Please help support our colleagues in languages at Cardiff by challenging the decision to exclude them from the category of ‘global humanities’ @ucflangs.bsky.social @artsandhums.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/card...

Music on the Move in Communist Europe 27-28 May 2025, Victoria Rooms, Department of Music, University of Bristol Convenors: Pauline Fairclough and Mariia Romanets Invited speakers including: Leah Batstone (University of Vienna) Gabriel…

We have a new Study Group, 'Music of Eastern Europe and Eurasia'! They will be holding their inaugural conference ‘Music on the Move in Communist Europe’ in the Department of Music, University of Bristol, 28-29 May 2025 rmameee.wordpress.com/music-on-the...

Peripheral Sexualities? LGBT (Studies) in Estonia – a conversation with Rebeka Põldsam As part of the series that discusses ‘peripheries’ in the Baltic states, Rasa Kamarauskaitė (RK) of the BASEES Study Group on the Baltic States interviewed Estonian sexuality scholar Rebeka Põldsam (R...

In our latest post, you can learn more about the development of LGBT studies and the normalisation of queerness in Estonia. Check out Rasa Kamarauskaitė's (@balticbasees.bsky.social) interview with Estonian sexualities scholar Rebeka Põldsam www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/periphe...

Our Bristol Translates Literary Translation Summer School will take place 7-11 July 2025! Check it out -- this annual event gets great reviews every year. Russian-English is taught this year by the wonderful @annagunin.bsky.social

www.bristol.ac.uk/sml/translat...

My colleague Irina Roldugina has written a blog piece, 'Trans Visibility in the Late Soviet Union', based on her current research uncovering the surprising history of trans people in the perestroika-era USSR

artsmatter.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2025/01/

My review of Global Russian Cultures, ed. Kevin M.F. Platt, is in this month's Slavic Review:

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Braverman wants Britain to turn its back on LGBTQ+ refugees. She must be stopped The home secretary’s warnings makes little sense in a world that is increasingly homophobic

My piece for the New European on LGBTQ+ refugees

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/braverman-wa...

Friel's Living Quarters, I think, would qualify?

Image of Bristol city including the university

PhD Scholarships at Bristol -- September 2024 entry

Bristol is offering fully-funded scholarships for PhDs in the Arts & Humanities, September 2024 entry:
shorturl.at/aePT3

Anyone interested in doing a PhD based in Russian or Czech studies should check out our department:
bristol.ac.uk/russian/

Poet Iryna Shuvalova and her translator Uilleam Blacker will be giving a reading in Swedenborg House, London on 13 October.

I heard Iryna reading via Zoom a couple of weeks ago at an event in New York -- her poetry is powerful yet often intimate and playful.

ukrainianinstitute.org.uk/events/

Ilya Kukulin: Dostoyevsky, Kundera, and the Culpability of Russian Culture Does Russian culture contain an alternative to the "expansionist universalism" (as embodied in landmark works by Tyutchev, Dostoyevsky, and Blok, among others) that has seemed to work hand in glove wi...

Thought-provoking intervention by Ilya Kukulin (Translated by Ainsley Morse and Maria Vassileva) on the fraught question of Russian culture and its relationship to politics

therussianreader.com/2023/09/22/2...

The special issue of /AvtobiografiЯ/ on 'Queer Life Writing in Russia and Beyond' has now been published and is available open access:

tinyurl.com/avtobiografija