About Eloise M. Boyle

In 1978, a week in to my first trip to the Soviet Union, I was confounded: I was sitting on a park bench, minding my own business (or so I thought), when two babushki approached and began yelling at me in a most agitated fashion, pointing all the while at my feet, which I had perched comfortably on the edge of the bench. I sat dumbfounded for only a moment before I got up and quickly walked away. Of course these Keepers of the Social Order were reprimanding me both for my general lack of ladylike behavior, and for placing my feet where law-abiding citizens park their bottoms. But I had neither the conversational skills, nor the cultural literacy to understand, at that moment, what I'd done wrong. I could recite my case endings and conjugate verbs, but I could neither comprehend nor react to what was said to me. In my teaching career I've tried to prevent this happening to anyone in my classes.

I now teach at the University of Washington, and I have taught at Ohio University, the Ohio State University and the Defense Language Institute. My interests are primarily pedagogical, but at times the urge to re-explore the world of Russian literature (in which I was schooled as a graduate student) proves too strong to resist.

I was lucky enough to travel to many of the former Soviet republics, and their sights, sounds and smells remain with me: there's nothing quite like a soft snow falling at dusk in Moscow's Andronnikov Monastery, or the sound of traditional Uzbek music haunting Registan Square in Samarkand, or the aroma of freshly-baked khachapuri newly delivered to street stalls in Tbilisi. The memory of these and other encounters informs my world view to this day.

Email Eloise M. Boyle at boyle6@earthlink.net