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Curriculum Vitae

Dissertation

  • Title: “Phonological Aspects of Language Contact Along the Slavic Periphery”
  • Proposal defended 5/17/10
  • Theme: language contact along the Slavic periphery within an ecological framework, focusing on phonological phenomena. Case studies are drawn from north Russia and the Balkans to argue that feature selection in language contact can be explained as an optimization process between the competing factors of social prestige, phonological groundedness, faithfulness to the innovating language, and mappability to other local languages.

Education

Degree-granting programs

  • 2006 – present: Ph.D. student in Slavic Linguistics and Linguistics, University of Chicago
  • 2006: BA/MA in Slavic Linguistics, University of Chicago

Certificate-granting programs / seminars / institutes

  • Certificate of completion: 27th International Seminar on Albanian Language, Literature, and Culture; Prishtina, Kosovo, August 2008
  • Completion of Intermediate Albanian I and Advanced Mastery Albanian at the Critical Languages Institute of Arizona State University, summer 2008
  • Certificate of completion: 39th International Seminar for Macedonian Language, Literature, and Culture; Ohrid, Macedonia, August 2006
  • Certificate of completion: Medieval Slavic Summer Institute; The Ohio State University, June – July 2006 (courses in Slavic paleography and readings in Church Slavonic texts)
  • Certificate: Azbukum program in Serbian language, level 4 of 4; Belgrade, Serbia, July – August 2005.

Awards

  • May 2010: Student support grant to attend the 2010 Balisage conference in Montreal
  • April 2010: ACLS travel grant to attend the 2010 annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea in Vilnius, Lithuania
  • May 2008: FLAS award for summer study of Albanian
  • September 2006: Century Fellowship, University of Chicago
  • June 2006: ACLS grant for summer study of Macedonian in Ohrid, Macedonia
  • June 2006: Induction into Phi Beta Kappa
  • June 2006: George V. Bobrinskoy award from University of Chicago Slavic Dept.
  • June 2005: Order of the October Star award for Russian language from University of Chicago Slavic Dept.
  • April 2002: College Honor Scholarship from University of Chicago
  • May 2002: National Merit Scholar award
  • April 2001: Winner of NY State Olympiada of Spoken Russian

Teaching

  • First Year Russian (RUSS 10100-10200-10300): 2009-2010, Autumn 2010
  • Russian through Pushkin (RUSS 10400-10500-10600): 2010-2011
  • Second Year Russian (RUSS 20100): Autumn 2007
  • Fourth Year Russian through Contemporary Short Stories (RUSS 21002-21102-21202): 2006-2009
  • South Slavic I and II (co-taught with Prof. Lenore Grenoble and Yaroslav Gorbachov) (SOSL 33100-33200): Winter-Spring 2009
  • Intermediate Albanian at the Criticial Languages Institute, Arizona State University: Summer 2010
  • TA for Second Year Russian (RUSS 20100-20200-20300): 2009-2010
  • TA for first-, second-, and third-year BCS (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) (BCSN 10100-10200-10300, BCSN 20100-20200-20300, BCSN 30100-30200-30300): 2008-2009
  • TA for Fourth Year Russian through Contemporary Short Stories (RUSS 21002-21102-21202): 2007-2008

Languages

  • Russian: near-native (superior on ACTFL scale)
  • Serbian: near-native (superior on ACFTL scale)
  • Albanian: high
  • Macedonian: intermediate-high
  • Turkish: intermediate
  • Bulgarian: intermediate
  • French: intermediate
  • Hindi: intermediate-low
  • Georgian: basic
  • Additional coursework completed in: Georgian, Lak, Romani, Old Turkic
  • Reading knowledge of: German, Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian / Rusian, Italian

Relevant work experience and service

  • Spring 2010: Student coordinator for Workshop on Language Variation and Change, University of Chicago
  • 2009 – present: Graduate student representative on board of SEESA (Southeast European Studies Association)
  • Student council representative, Balkan Express
  • Spring 2006 –2008: Data compilation for project “Aspectual Pairs of BCS verbs”
  • Spring 2006: Assistant Editor of Leptir Mašna
  • May 2005 – 2007t: Research assistant with Nada Petkovic (lecturer in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) (general editing, preparation of glossaries, etc.)
  • Winter 2005 – August 2005: Research assistant, Slavic department (Searchable Database of Medieval Slavic Documents, Prof. Daniela Hristova)

Publications

  • 2010. “When is Orthography Not Just Orthography? The Case of the Novgorod Birchbark Letters”. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. [pdf]
  • 2010. “Vowel Harmony Loss in West Rumelian Turkish.” eLanguage, LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts.
  • 2009. “Diachronic and Areal Aspects of Macedonian Hiatus Resolution”. Proceedings of the 7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies. [pdf]

Selected talks

  • “Language Contact and Change in 13th Century Novgorod”. January 2011: Workshop on Language Variation and Change, University of Chicago.
  • “Slavic Influence on Turkic Vowel Harmony.” October 2010: Slavic Linguistics Society.
  • “Baltic Influence on Slavic Spread: the Case of North Russian.” September 2010: Societas Linguistica Europaea.
  • “Orthography and the Jer Shift in the Birchbark Letters.” April 2010: Medieval Slavic Workshop, University of Chicago. [handout]
  • “An XML-based approach to dialectological data: The development of syllabic liquids in Bulgarian.” April 2010: 17th Balkan and South Slavic Conference. Co-authored with Quinn Dombrowski. [slides-pdf] [slides-ppt]
  • “An Albanian Look at the Jers.” April 2010: 17th Balkan and South Slavic Conference. [handout]
  • “When is Orthography Not Just Orthography? The Case of the Novgorod Birchbark Letters.” February 2010: Berkeley Linguistics Society. [handout]
  • “Vowel Harmony Loss in West Rumelian Turkish.” January 2010: Linguistic Society of America Annual Conference, Baltimore. [slides] [extended abstract]
  • “Vowel Harmony Loss in West Rumelian Turkish.” December 2009: Workshop on Language Variation and Change, University of Chicago.
  • November 2009: AAASS 2009, Boston. Participant in Roundtable “Macedonian Language Contact – From Linguistic League to Diaspora.”
  • “On Vowel Contraction in Macedonian.” November 2009: 7th Macedonian-North American Conference on Macedonian Studies.
  • “Albanian-Slavic Contact and the Modeling of Phonological Borrowing.” May 2009: Slavic Forum 2009, University of Chicago.
  • “Vowel-Zero Alternations in Albanian and Morphophonological Contact.” February 2009: Albanian Linguistics Workshop, University of Chicago.
  • “Albanian-Slavic Contact: Phonetic and Phonological Variation.” November 2008: AAASS 2008, Philadelphia.
  • “On the development of syllabic liquids in East South Slavic.” April 2008: Slavic Forum 2008, University of Chicago.
  • “A New Balticism in Old Novgorod?” October 2007: Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference.
  • “Ancient Dialect Continua and the North Russian Dialect.” September 2007: 5th Graduate Colloquium of Slavic Linguistics, The Ohio State University.
  • “Early East Slavic Dialect Differentiation: Perspectives and Chronology.” October 2006: 4th Graduate Colloquium of Slavic Linguistics, The Ohio State University.
  • “Cokan’e and the Velar Palatalizations in the Old Novgorod Dialect.” September 2006: Slavic Linguistics Society.
  • “On the development of *tъrt groups in Bulgarian.” March 2006: Midwest Slavic Conference, The Ohio State University.
  • “Active participles in Stefanit i Ixnilat: The evolution of participial forms in a Middle Bulgarian Manuscript.” April 2005: Southeast European Studies Association (SEESA) conference, The Ohio State University.