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john e. bowlt
John E. Bowlt is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
- Art History.
[webpage]
What kind of research
do you conduct?
The Institute of
Modern Russian Culture (IMRC) at the University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, is a resource center for
the advanced study of Russian and Soviet culture. Among the
several concentrations of the IMRC is the group of artists
and writers who criticized the policies of the Soviet
Union during the 1950s-80s -- known as the Dissident
Movement. The IMRC possesses a large archive of photographs and documents
and a library of catalogs and monographs related to
this movement. The primary aim of the Undergraduate Research
Project was to organize the archive in an efficient and
regimented manner and to produce a website and searchable
database for two of the leaders of that movement well
represented in the IMRC archive, i.e., the Moscow artists
Francisco Infante and Nonna Goriunova.
In a typical semester, how
many undergraduates do you work with? What kind of research
activities do the undergraduate students perform?
50-60. Undergraduate students
working on the dissident archival materials would be
required to perform overall organization of materials
(placing photos and manuscripts in acid-free preservational
envelopes, documenting each photo, letter, etc with an
appropriate catalogue number, and entering this number into
the IMRC ProCite database.) Further, all original
photographs must be digitized for preservation on CD-Rom
as well as for presentation online. An accompanying
website might be created to further propogate the achievements
of some artists. Computer skills and knowledge of programs
such as Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, and ProCite
are required, as are bilingual skills from English to
Russian and visa versa.
What are some of your recent undergraduate projects?
Our
website demonstrates the culminative efforts of two
undergraduates, Anna Bunina and Lorin Johnson, who during
2001-2002 organized and digitized the entire IMRC collection
dedicated to the creativity of the Russian artists Francisco
Infante and Nonna Goriunova. Please visit the
IMRC website
for more up to date information on new projects.
To find
out more about Dr. Bowlt and his research, please visit
his homepage.
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