SARAH VALENTINE - complitforlang.ucr.edu

SARAH VALENTINE

CURRICULUM VITAE

Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages
University of California, Riverside

240 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Riverside, CA 92521
(323) 528-3960

[email protected]

AREAS OF INTEREST

Transnational study of literature and culture; comparative minority and postcolonial literatures; Russian,
Post-Soviet, East European literature and film; contemporary Russian poetry and poetics; poetry and

cognition; translation; writing pedagogy; race/erasure; Russian-African encounter in literature.

EDUCATION

PhD Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University, 2007
Dissertation title: The Poetry and Thought of Gennady Aigi
Advisor: Professor Olga Hasty

MA Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University, 2005
BA Russian Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, 2000

Double Major in Creative Writing (Concentration: Poetry)
University Honors, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Sigma Iota

EMPLOYMENT

2010-11 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside
2009-10 Affiliate Scholar, University of California, Los Angeles
2007-09 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles
2006-07 Templeton Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton Univ.
2006-07 Writing Fellow, The Writing Center, Princeton University
2005 Research Assistant, Slavic Department, Princeton University
2004 Research Assistant, History Department, Princeton University
2001 Transcriber, Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania

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1998 Russian Tutoring and Translation, Carnegie Mellon University

COURSES TAUGHT

2010 Primary Instructor, Graduate Theory Seminar (CPLT 215A), UC Riverside
2010 Primary Instructor, Russian Literature 1880-1917 (RUSN 109B), UC Riverside
2010 Guest Lecturer, Graduate Poetry Seminar: East European Poetics (CW 252F), UC
Riverside
2009 Primary Instructor, Graduate Seminar: Second World Postcolonialism and the
Poetics of Identity: New Approaches to Russian Literature (Russian 293), UCLA
2009 Primary Instructor, Variable Topics: Looking Back on the Soviet Union through
Film (Russian 191), UCLA
2008 Primary Instructor, Russia and Asia (Russian 32), UCLA
2008 Primary Instructor, Russian Literature and World Cinema (Russian 30), UCLA
2005 Assistant Instructor, Beginner’s Russian I (Russian 101), Princeton University
2004 Assistant Instructor, History of Russian Literature: 1860-1917 (Slavic 220),
Princeton University
2000 Primary Instructor, Conversational English, Kamchatka Business School “Link,”
Kamchatka, Russia
1999 Primary Instructor, “Topics in Advanced English,” Russian State Humanities
University, Moscow, Russia

LANGUAGES

Russian fluent reading, writing, speaking, comprehension
Czech excellent reading, speaking, comprehension; good writing
German good reading, writing, speaking, comprehension
Spanish good reading, intermediate speaking, passive comprehension
Italian passive comprehension, beginning speaking
French good reading, translating

HONORS, AWARDS, GRANTS

2008 Faculty Grant for Media and Instructional Development
2008 Callaloo Summer Poetry Workshop, Fellowship
2007-09 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, UCLA
2007 Callaloo Summer Poetry Workshop, Fellowship
2006 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship, Honorable mention
2005-07 Templeton Foundation Research Grant
2004 Dean’s Fund for Scholarly Travel Award
2001-06 Princeton University Fellowship
2000 Pennsylvania Arts Council Grant, Visual Arts

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2000 Rotary Foundation International Volunteer Grant
2000 Gretchen Goldsmith Lankford Teaching Award
2000 Anthology Magazine Poetry Competition, Honorable mention
2000 Carnegie Mellon Adamson Award, Poetry, Honorable mention
1999 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Award
1998 Undergraduate Research Initiative Travel Award
1996-2000 Andrew Carnegie Scholarship

PUBLICATIONS

Book Projects:

Into the Snow: Poems by Gennady Aygi, Translations from the Russian with and Introduction by Sarah
Valentine (Wave Books). Forthcoming Spring 2011.

A New Russian Literature: The Poetics of Gennady Aygi. Single-author monograph on the work of
Russian-language Chuvash poet Gennady Aygi. Under consideration at Northwestern UP for the
Russian Literature and Theory series.

Critical Essays:

“Mulatto Millenium 2.0.” Under consideration at The Root.

“Found in Translation: A Conversation with Fanny Howe on Poetry Crossing Borders, Making
Connections.” Under consideration at Inventory: A Journal of Translation Theory and Practice
(Princeton University).

“No Names for Brown: Racial Ambiguity and Its Discontents in the Obama Era.” Under consideration at
Witness.

“Art as Prayer in the Soviet Union: A Comparative Approach” Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research
on Culture, Media and the Arts 36, 2008, pp. 462-475.

“Music, Silence and Spirituality in the Poetry of Gennady Aygi,” Slavic and East European Journal 51,
2008, pp. 675-692.

“Problems of Style Accuracy in American Translations of Osip Mandelstam,” Russia and the USA:
Forms of Literary Dialogue, journal of conference proceedings, Russian State University for the
Humanities, Moscow, 2000, pp. 17-24. Published in Russian.

Book Reviews:

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Book Review: Ed. Catharine Nepomnyashy, et al. Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and
Blackness. Northwestern UP, 2006. Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 33, 2010,
pp. 572-575.

Book Review: Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears. Translated from the Belarusian by Elizabeth Oehlkers
Wright and Franz Wright. Copper Canyon Press, Bilingual edition, March 2008. ReDactions: Poetry
and Poetics 11, 2009, pp. 55.

Book Review: Emil Draitser, The Supervisor of the Sea and Other Stories. Riverside, CA: Xenos
Books, 2003. Slavic and East European Journal 52, 2008, pp. 302-304.

Book Review: Uche Nduka, Eel on Reef: Poems by Uche Nduka. Los Angeles: Black Goat Series,
Akashic Books, 2007. Post No Ills Online Magazine 1, Summer 2008
<http://www.postnoills.com/main/?p=49>.

Poetry:

“Wolves” and “Orchid,” Zoland Poetry 5, forthcoming February 2011.

“Svidrigailov’s Dream” and “Untitled,” Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 31,
2008, pp. 381-384.

From “Seven Poems about Loss:” “#4” and “#5,” The Nassau Literary Review 2004, pp. 78.

“Leaving,” Anthology Magazine 8, 2000, pp. 11.

Translations:

“A Few Notes about Poetry,” Gennady Aygi, trans. Sarah Valentine. Two Lines: Some Kind of Beautiful
Signal, ed. Natasha Wimmer and Jeffery Yang. The Center for the Art of Translation, 2010, pp. 136-
141.

“Now Always Snow,” Gennady Aygi, trans. Sarah Valentine. ReDactions: Poetry and Poetics 11, 2009,
pp. 10-11.

“To Mother,” “Untitled,” Gennady Aygi, trans. Sarah Valentine, Circumference: Poetry in Translation
7, 2008, pp. 35-38.

“Outskirts: Winter Without People,” “Once Again: In Breaks Between Sleep,” “Bidding Shalamov
Farewell,” “People,” “Summer with Angels,” Gennady Aygi, trans. Sarah Valentine, diode 1, Spring
2008 < http://diodepoetry.com/ >.

Screenwriting/Film

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Black President: The Fela Kuti Story, Dir. Steve McQueen, written by Chris Abani and Steve McQueen
(Focus Features 2010), script assistant.

The Pas Reality Tour of Pittsburgh: A Short Documentary, Dir./Ed. Sarah Valentine. Submitted to LA
Shorts Fest and Big Sky Film Festival, 2010.

Shooting script for The Pas Reality Tour of Pittsburgh: A Short Documentary, written by Sarah
Valentine, registered with Writers Guild of America, West, January 2010.

PRESENTATIONS AT PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS AND CONFERENCES

“Russia’s Heart of Darkness in Tatiana Tolstaya’s Limpopo,” Department of Comparative Literature and
Foreign Languages, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA 2010.

“Creolization and Erasure in Post-Soviet Russia,” Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitinisms: The American
Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference, New Orleans, LA, 2010.

“Shifting Borders in End-of-the-Soviet-Era Film,” Transnational Space and the Politics of Place: The
Third Annual Mellon Conference, University of California, Los Angeles, 2009.

“Second-World Postcolonialism and the Poetics of Identity: New Approaches to Russian Literature,”
Works in Progress Colloquium, Comparative Literature Dept., University of California, Riverside, CA,
2009.

“Ethics of Difference: The Poetics of Gennady Aygi,” Mellon Seminar “Cultures in Transnational
Perspective,” University of California, Los Angeles, 2008.

“Unlikely Lineage: Translation and Recognition in Contemporary Avant-Garde Poetry,” TransNations:
The Second Annual Mellon Conference, University of California, Los Angeles, 2008.

“Art Amidst Atheism: Spirituality and Social Organization in the Late-Soviet Moscow Avant-Garde,”
Mellon Seminar “Cultures in Transnational Perspective,” University of California, Los Angeles, 2007.

“Spirituality in the Moscow Avant-Garde,” Cognitive and Textual Methods Seminar, Center for the
Study of Religion, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2007.

“City Outskirts and the Moscow Avant-Garde,” American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East
European Languages (AATSEEL) Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 2006.

“Suffering and Transcendence: Gennady Aigi,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies (AAASS) Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 2006.

“Cognitive Poetics,” Cognitive and Textual Methods Seminar, Center for the Study of Religion,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2006.

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“Sound and Silence: The Poetry of Gennady Aigi,” At the Edge of Heaven: Russian Poetry since 1970:
A Graduate Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2005.

“Chuvash Word Formation in Gennady Aigi’s Russian Poetry,” American Association of Teachers of
Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 2004.

“Impressionism in Early Chekhov,” The Chekhov Society Conference Series “Chekhov Readings,”
Melikhovo, 1999. Presented in Russian.

“Problems of Style Accuracy in American Translations of Osip Mandelstam,” Russia and the USA:
Forms of Literary Dialogue: A Graduate Conference of the Russian State University for the Humanities
and The Ohio State University, Moscow, 1998. Presented in Russian.

OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

“Transnational Space and the Politics of Place”: Third Annual Mellon Conference, Co-organizer,
University of California, Los Angeles, 2008-2009.

“TransNations”: Second Annual Mellon Conference, Co-organizer, University of California, Los
Angeles, 2007-2008.

Contemporary Russian Poetry Forum, Participant, University of Southern California, 2007.

The Sense of Poetry: A Graduate Symposium, Panel Moderator: “The Voice of Sense,” Princeton
University, 2006.

At the Edge of Heaven: Russian Poetry since 1970: A Graduate Conference, Co-organizer, Princeton
University, 2005.

McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, Workshop Participant (“The Inclusive Classroom,” “When
You are the Diversity in the Classroom,” “The Teaching Portfolio,” etc.), Princeton University, 2004-06.

Contemporary Russian Poetry Forum, Participant, Princeton University, 2003.

OTHER EDUCATION

Advanced Russian Language Training with Private Instructor, Los Angeles, CA 2009-2010
Callaloo Summer Poetry Workshop, Texas A&M, College Station, TX, 2007, 2008
Kelly Writers’ House Fiction Workshop, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2006-07
Czech Language Program, Summer Prague University, Prague, Czech Republic, 2006
French for Reading, Summer Language Program, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2005
Czech Language Program, Charles University Albertova, Prague, Czech Republic, 2002
German Language Program, Actilingua Academy, Vienna, Austria, 2000
Semester Abroad, Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), Moscow, Russia, 1999

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Russian Language Program, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, 1998

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND MEMBERSHIPS

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), Member
Academy of American Poets, Member
Modern Language Association (MLA), Member
American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Member
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), Member
Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (ATSEEL), Member

ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE

Lived Abroad: Moscow (Winter-Spring1999), Vienna (Fall 2000), Prague (Summers 2002, 2006),
Kamchatka (Summer 2000)
Research-related travel: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland (Summer 2006); Trans-Siberian Railroad
(Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Ulaan Baator, Beijing, Summer 2005); Germany, Czech
Republic (Spring 2001)
Volunteer, Save Animal Shelter, Princeton, NJ, 2006-2007
After-school Tutor (Grade 5), Patton J. Hill Elementary School, Trenton, NJ, 2005
Visual Arts Teacher (8-11yrs), Princeton Arts Council, Princeton, NJ, 2003
International Rotary Volunteer, English Instructor (K-Adult), Kamchatka, Russia, 2000
Creative Writing Tutor (Grade 11-12), Creative and Performing Arts High School and Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2000