Todd Patrick Armstrong

Associate Professor, Department of Russian

Director, Center for International Studies

Grinnell College

(armstron@grinnell.edu)

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Grinnell College

ACM Central European Studies Program

ACM CESP 1999 (my course and program website)

Olomouc 99 Scrapbook

Central and Eastern European Resource Portal

I first became interested in Russian in high school in Helena, Montana, and pursued my interest into college, for two years at the University of Montana and then at the University of Oregon, where I earned the Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1983. The next fall, I went to Moscow, where I studied in an ACTR program at the Pushkin Institute, one of the few places foreigners were allowed to study during the Soviet era. After Moscow, I spent time in Central and Eastern Europe--in the former Yugoslavia, where I worked as an interpreter for the Associated Press at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo; Hungary; the former Czechoslovakia; and Poland. I returned to Poland in Fall 1984 and studied for a semester at the University of Wroclaw, and a semester at the University of Warsaw. In 1987, I entered the graduate program in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University, where I earned the Ph.D. in Russian literature, with a secondary specialization in Polish literature.

I have been at Grinnell since 1993, and have taught a wide range of courses, including all four levels of our Russian language sequence; Introduction to General Linguistics; Dostoevsky; Perspectives in Twentieth-Century Central and Eastern European Literature; and two first-year tutorials ("Slavic Histories, Slavic Mysteries" in Fall 1994, and "On the Faultline: Voices from the Other Europe" in Fall 1998). My current research interests include the poetry of Russian poet Innokentij Annenskij and the works of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. I have engaged in interdisciplinary research with my colleague Anatoly Vishevsky, co-organizing a symposium for Grinnell's Sesquicentennial Celebration on the city of Odessa ("The Vanished World Revisited: The Myth and Reality of Odessa") and a Ford-funded Grinnell/University of Iowa Bridging Project ("Models of Empire and Colony: The Case of Russia and Chechnya"). I have been active on the Russian and Eastern European Studies Committee, the Linguistics Concentration Committee, and the Rosenfield, Watson and Cultural Films Committees. I taught Russian at the Middlebury College Summer Russian School in 1998 and 1999, and was the Resident Director of the ACM/GLCA Central European Studies Program at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic in Fall 1999. I was promoted to Associate Professor in Spring 1999. I was Acting Director of the Rosenfield Program in Spring 2001, and worked as an organizer and facilitator for the faculty development seminar, "The Human and Physical Environment in Central Europe," which was held in June of 2001.

In Fall 2001, I began a three-year term as Director of Grinnell's new Center for International Studies.

I have a great interest in cooking, especially in the Slavic world, and in Fall 1998, collaborated with students in a Grinnell ExCo course on Slavic cuisine--a topic I plan to pursue in the form of a book at some point in the future. Finally, as you can see from the picture above (taken in Olomouc, Czech Republic, I am the proud father of two boys, Alexander Jan and Patrick Konrad Armstrong.

 Last updated in November, 2001