Russian Program Faculty


Lynne Ikach, Professor of Russian, teaches a wide range of courses in Russian language and literature from 1800 to the present, and she advises the Russian studies major. She has also developed a number of Russian Web resources and teaches the course Language in Context which builds advanced language skills through contemporary sources such as on-line magazines and news sites, films, interviews, and letters. Her research focuses on autobiographical genres and how they function as both literature and history, and she is currently working on a project involving several Russian diaries from the 1930s. Ph.D. and M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; B.A., Grand Valley State Colleges (Allendale, MI) Personal Pages

Robert Givens, Professor of History, teaches courses in Russian and Soviet history including Revolutionary and Soviet Russia, and the off-campus course Russia Today. Givens earned a Fulbright award for 2008-09 and spent September-January teaching at the School of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University, Russia, where he also taught as a Fulbright Scholar in 1999-2000. He also used this time to research changing interpretations of the Stalinist period. Givens serves as faculty advisor to Cornell's international relations program. Ph.D., M.A., and B.A., University of California, Berkeley Personal pages