August 6th, 2008
Intro
Hi all! My name is Sarah and this is my blog for my undergraduate summer research. I hope to use this blog as a forum to display the new developments in my research. I’ll start with a little background. I’m a rising junior and a double major in Russian Studies and Government. Russian culture has always fascinated me, so naturally I was excited about the opportunity to study it at William and Mary. I focused my summer research on observing Russian culture, specifically Russian film culture.
The name of my research project, and also the name of this blog site, is the Moscow Theater Project. The purpose of this research project is to study film history in Russia, to observe how significant events in Russia have influenced this aspect of Russian culture. Examination of the Russian movie-going experience can provide valuable insights into the mindset of Russians in different periods, and can help develop a better understanding of the Russian experience through the past several decades.
My contribution to the project required that I travel to Russia this summer. During the spring semester, I worked closely with two Russian department professors and a fellow William and Mary student, who would also travel to Russia. Together, we developed specific interview questions, with the intent of interviewing native Russians about their individual movie-going experiences. The questions were entirely in Russian, which forced the other student and myself to call upon and further develop our language skills. Once we arrived in Russia, the plan was for us to interview as many Russians as possible. These interviews will eventually be transcribed in both Russian and English, and then posted online to this site and others. The mp3 files of the interviews themselves will also be available at a later date.
In future posts I will discuss different interviews and also share my own cultural experiences after spending nearly two months in Russia. I look forward to sharing my work with the rest of the College community.