We extend our congratulations to the recipients of the 2024 Yaro Skalnik Essay Prizes and Grant. The recipients were presented with these awards at the REEEC Spring Reception on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
Louise Shannon (BS Student, Mathematics) was the recipient of the Yaro Skalnik Prize for Best Undergraduate Essay in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Her paper, “Sleep, Self, and Society: Autobiography in Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov,” was praised by the committee for its reworking of the sociological myths surrounding Goncharov’s masterwork, noting her thesis—that Goncharov was building from autobiographical as much as social insights—was a compelling avenue for research with broad implications for our understanding of the novel and its reception.
Sergei Motov (PhD Student, Slavic Languages & Literatures) was the recipient of the Yaro Skalnik Prize for Best Graduate Essay in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. The committee remarks that his paper, “German Puppet Theater of Horror: Dostoevsky’s Hidden Criticism of Russian Autocracy in The Double,” offers a set of interpretations that both fascinate and inform. He thoughtfully summarizes, and helpfully synthesizes, several decades of criticism that illuminate the novella’s recurring motif of the puppet theater — a venue that, despite its role in popular entertainment, is also a site of dehumanization, violence, and menace. To this set of interpretations Motov adds his own fascinating ethno-historico-political twist that substantially raises the stakes of Dostoevsky’s pre-exile writing: he sees in the cruel (and parodically German) character of Dr. Rutenspitz (whose name can be read as “Beating-stick”) an image of Emperor Nicholas I himself, depicting him as an oppressor of foreign origins.
Sonia Kelly (MA REEES/MS LIS Student) was awarded the Yaro Skalnik Scholarship Grant, which helps support student research and conference travel. Sonia shares, “I traveled to Almaty, Kazakhstan this May, which was an incredibly gratifying experience after several years of studying and reading about Central Asia. I spent one month conducting research at the Presidential Archive for my master’s thesis, and everyone I met there was welcoming, helpful, kind, and interested in sharing about Kazakhstani identity and culture. I cannot wait to return for further research and travel, and I am so grateful that the Skalnik Scholarship Grant helped make this trip possible for me.”