I received notice in April 2021 that I have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Berkeley! I’m so relieved to put that hurdle behind me, and so grateful to the friends, colleagues, mentors, and interlocutors who supported me on that long road.
One of the affordances of the Zoom year is that the various talks that I gave, which would normally be to very small audiences, are archived on YouTube. All three of these are tied to publication projects that are at various stages ranging from “in press” to “in early draft.” So if you’re interested, here they are, from most recent to oldest:
- “Sharovarshchyna: Sonic Contestations of Ukrainian Wildness,” a lecture I gave at the invitation of the TCUP Program at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, organized by Dr. Emily Channell-Justice
- “A Rapper for the Village: Class, Gender, and Body Politics in Contemporary Ukrainian-Language Rap,” a talk given in collaboration with Galina Yarmanova (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) for the Hunter College Music Department’s special event on Ukrainian Hip Hop in the World, organized by Dr. Leah Batstone and featuring a talk by Prof. Adriana Helbig (University of Pittsburgh)
- “Musical Evolution and The Other: State-Sponsored Musical Evolutionism in the USSR and the Conundrum of Post-Soviet Crimean Tatar Indigenous Music,” a lecture given for the Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, sponsored through the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at UC Berkeley
And with that, on to thinking about which novel I will read before turning my mind to the neglected writing projects of the last year…
Maria Sonevytsky 
Dear Dr. Sonevytsky,
If I am accepted into the Masters of Folklore program at UC Berkeley, I would be delighted to work with you as my advisor. After reading your biography I believe we would be a good fit. I spent three and a half years in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer. My home site was Bukhara, where I taught EFL at Bukhara State University. With the help of my students we translated a comprehensive collection of Central Asian Folklore and published a book, “A Treasury of Uzbek Legends and Lore”. The book of about 180 pages was distributed to the schools in Uzbekistan, but included only about one-third of the collection. For this work the Minister of Education honored me with a special award commemorating my support for the advancement of education in Uzbekistan.
Your interest in the folklore of former Soviet countries and especially in music is of great interest to me. After I returned from Uzbekistan I wrote a one act musical about the legends of Navruz, an important springtime holiday in Central Asia. This play was performed before an audience of about 100 and had a cast of about 14.
Currently I am researching folk music of America and western Europe dating between the 17th and 20th centuries. I am especially interested in what sparked the inspiration of the composers. My collection includes over two hundred songs, many of them broadside ballads as well as a large collection of songs for children.
I would be very interested in meeting with you at your convenience.