Penn State Students Experience Moscow During Spring Break 2019

Thirteen Penn State students enrolled in the one-credit embedded course, Moscow Cultural Immersion, traveled to the Russian capital over Spring Break. All of them had previous coursework in Russian language or culture, but only half of them are majoring or minoring in Russian.

The program included lectures on Russian Contemporary Arts, Opera, Geography and Peoples, and the Novgorodian Birch-Bark Letters at the Moscow Higher School on Economics (National Research University https://www.hse.ru/en/). This academic program was supplemented with guided tours of the city including Moscow Kremlin, Bolshoi Theatre, the Tretyakov National Art Gallery, and more provided by SRAS https://sras.org/. Other activities included attending a rap Concert, a hockey and soccer games, the museum of Gulag, Maslenitsa (the Russian carnival), and a ballet. The students enjoyed Russian and Georgian cuisine and had many opportunities to explore the city on their own or guided by HSE student-volunteers.

The program was organized by Teaching Professor of Russian Irina Mikaelian and led by herself and Associate Teaching Professor Yelena Zotova.