Kathleen Manukyan

  • Teaching Associate Professor, Executive Director, The Slavic, East European, and Near Eastern Summer Language Institute (SLI)

Manukyan directs the acclaimed Summer Language Institute, which offers intensive courses in 10 languages of Eastern and Central Europe and the Near East at Pitt’s campus and abroad. She teaches all levels of Russian language and literature in the department and is an expert on Russian vocal literature and classical singing diction, maintaining an active career in opera performance and coaching.  

Education & Training

  • PhD, Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University, 2011
  • MA, Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University, 2008
  • BA, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University, 2004

Courses Taught

  • Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Fourth-year Russian
  • Russian conversation
  • Intensive Intermediate Russian
  • Beginning Czech
  • The Russian Short Story in Context
  • Masterpieces of Nineteenth-century Russian Literature
  • Masterpieces of Twentieth-century Russian Literature
  • Early Russian Culture
  • Forbidden Love on Page and Screen
  • Madness and Madmen in Russian Literature
  • Tolstoy (graduate)
  • Gogol (graduate)
  • Eighteenth-century Russian Literature (graduate)
  • Russian Literature in Music (graduate)

Representative Publications

“The Poet and His Readers: Three Lyrics and an Unfinished Story of Alexander Pushkin.” Pushkin Review. Vol. 12-13. (2009-2010).

“From Maidens to Mugs: The Motif of the Mirror in the Works of Nikolai Gogolˈ.” Canadian Slavonic Papers. Vol. 51. No. 2-3. (June-September 2009), 267-286.

Research Interests

  • Russian Opera and Dance
  • Phonetics
  • Gogol
  • Russian Romanticism
  • Russian Modernism

Representative Conference Presentations

“Creation and Crucifixion in Gogol’s Cossack Nation: A Reading of Taras Bulba.” Paper presented at ASEEES Conference, Boston, November 2013 and the Midwest Slavic Conference, Columbus, March 2014. Also presented as invited lecture at UCIS-CREES Lecture Series, University of Pittsburgh, February 2014.

“The Vowel Space of Sung Russian.” Paper presented at the Midwest Slavic Conference, Columbus, March, 2012.

“Casting and Crashing the Two Bits: Theatricality in Olesha’s Envy.” Paper presented at the AATSEEL Conference, Philadelphia, December, 2009 and at the ASEEES Conference, Washington, DC, November, 2011.

“Problems of the Moiseyev Dance Company in Scholarship: A Case Study of the Ballet A Night on Bald Mountain.” Paper presented at the National Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference, San Francisco, March, 2008.

Dissertation Title and Year

The Russian Word in Song: Cultural and Linguistic Issues of Classical Singing in the Russian Language. 2011.