PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Sasha Kazantsev admitted in class that he had a hobby of staying up late searching YouTube for clips of Americans singing Russian songs. The ensuing discussion was interesting but unsatisfying---we were unable to get to the bottom of Sasha's hobby, to understand exactly what is so funny about hearing your native tongue in a foreign mouth, or, inversely, why it is pleasurable to sing songs you don't understand. Smolny is a specifically Russian/American institution, so we embarked on the project of interviewing Russian and American Smolny students on this topic. In exploring the phenomena, the question of the inversion of cultural stereotypes came up---what does it mean to mock the way a culture mocks you? We have included in this show, which is really an extension of our classroom, our discussion and two projects in which foreign hands handle Russian imagery and language.