Renee Perelmutter
Director of Jewish Studies Associate Professor of Slavic and Jewish Studies
The University of Kansas 1445 Jayhawk Blvd.
Wescoe Hall, Room 4029
Lawrence, KS 66045-7590
785-864-2356
Positions Held
Obermann Center Fellow-In-Residence University of Iowa Fall 2015 (sabbatical leave)
Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures with teaching duties in the Jewish Studies Program University of Kansas August 2014 – present
Associate Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
The University of Kansas August 2012 – May 2014
Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures with teaching duties in the Jewish Studies Program University of Kansas August 2008 – present
Graduate Student Instructor, Slavic Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley August 2002-May 2008
Education
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
May 2008
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Committee: A. Timberlake (chair), J. Nichols, V. Zhivov, E. Sweetser
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
April 2003
Slavic Languages and Literatures
B.A. Hebrew University, Israel
May 2001
Linguistics, summa cum laude
Teaching at KU
JWSH 327 “Secular Jewish Culture”; Fall 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014
JWSH 311 “Narratives of Jewish Life”; Spring 2010, 2012, 2015
JWSH 300 “Languages of the Jews”; Spring 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
JWSH 572 “Jewish Folklore”; Spring 2009, 2010, 2011, Fall 2014
SLAV 675 “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Narrative” (graduate); Spring 2015
SLAV 148 “Slavic Folklore”; Fall 2008, Spring 2009
JWSH 300 “Jewish Film”; Fall 2009, 2010
Yiddish 104 - 108 “Beginning Yiddish”; Fall 2012 - Spring 2013
Yiddish 204-208 “Intermediate Yiddish”; Fall 2013 - Spring 2014
Special topics courses in narratology and narrative structure, language and gender, advanced Yiddish.
Publications
(Im)politeness and identity construction: Russian women’s discourse online. (monograph, to be submitted to John Benjamins in Nov. 2015)
Edited Volume
V. Driagina and R. Perelmutter (eds.). 2010. New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Articles
(submitted) Israeli Russian Online: Variation and Performativity in an Immigrant Written Vernacular.
(forthcoming) “Israeli Russian,” in Jewish Languages: An International Handbook, Benjamin Hary and Yaron Matras (ed), Mouton.
2015 “Shaming, group face, and identity construction in a Russian virtual community for women,” in Interdisciplinary approaches to im/politeness, Marina Terkourafi (ed), John Benjamins. (forthcoming)
2014 "Resisting folklore: Folk belief and motherhood in Russian-language forums for women," Western Folklore 73:2-3, 257-279.
2013 “Klassika zhanra: The flamewar as a genre in the Russian blogosphere. Journal of Pragmatics 45: 74-89.
2012 “Interactive Properties: Modern Russian predicate adjectives in affirmative and negative contexts.” Russian Linguistics 36(1).
2011 “Deictic shifts in the Slavic translations from Hebrew associated with the Judaizers,” in Translation and Tradition in Slavia Orthodoxa, B. Gasparov and V. Izmirlieva (eds), Lit Verlag, Slavische Sprachgeschichte, 5.
2010 “Impoliteness recycled: Subject ellipsis in Modern Russian complaint discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (12), 3214-3231.
2010 “Verbs of motion under negation in Modern Russian.” In New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion, V. Driagina & R. Perelmutter (eds.) pp. 163-193.
2010 with Viktoria Hasko. “Introduction. Verbs of motion in Slavic languages: New paths for exploration.” In New approaches to Slavic verbs of motion, Hasko, Viktoria and Renee Perelmutter (eds,) pp. 1-11. (effort each = 50%)
2009 “Pragmatic functions of reported speech with jako in the Old Russian Primary Chronicle.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 10 (1), 108-131.
2008 “The language of dream reports and Dostoevsky’s The Double.” Slavic and East European Journal 52 (1), 55-86.
2006 with O.Gurevich, J. MacAnallen, E.Morabito, J. Platt, J. Nichols, and A. Timberlake. “Lexicon and context in feminization in Russian.” Russian Linguistics 30 (2), 175-212.
2005 “The choice of genitive/nominative in Russian absence constructions.” Russian Linguistics 29 (3), 319-346.
Book Reviews
2012 Jeffrey Veidlinger. 2009. Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Russian Review,
2010 Larisa Fialkova and Maria N. Yelenevskaya. 2007. Ex-Soviets in Israel: From Personal Narratives to a Group Portrait. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. Detroit: Wayne State University press. Slavic and East European Journal 54.4, Winter 2010.
2009 B. Nathans & G. Safran (eds.). 2008. Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Russian Review, July 2009.
Recent conference presentations
“Folk Belief, Motherhood, and the Struggle for Identity in Russian-language Women’s Forums.” Western States Folklore Society: Folklore in the Digital Age, April 2013, San Diego, CA
“The speakers' evolving attitudes towards Israeli Russian: A sociolinguistic analysis” January 2013 AATSEEL 2013, Boston, MA
“Impersonal constructions correlate with Individual, Communal, and Locus Face Concerns in Russian-language forums for women” August 2012 Slavic Linguistics Society 7 Lawrence, Kansas
“Confessions, Impoliteness, and Identity Construction in Russian women's forums” August 2012 Empirical Approaches to Politeness and Impoliteness; Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
“Confessional Strategies and Facework in Russian Women’s Discourse Online” AATSEEL 2012, Seattle, WA
January 2012
“Editorial restructuring in the Judaizers’ Biblical translations”
June 2011
Medieval Jewish-Slavic Contacts conference, Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (by invitation) “(Im)politeness and power in Russian blogosphere”
May 2010
Etiology and Ecology of the Post-Soviet Internet, Columbia University (by invitation)
“Deictic Shifts in Early Slavic Translations from Hebrew”
February 2010
Slavic Languages – Time and Contingency,
University of California, Berkeley (by invitation)
“Impersonal constructions in family conflict discourse” December 2008 AATSEEL 2008, San Francisco
Reviewed manuscripts for:
Journal of Slavic Linguistics
Journal of Pragmatics
Journal of Politeness Research
John Benjamins (various edited volumes)
Slavia Centralis
Awards and Honors
Faculty Service Award, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Fall 2014
Nominee and Honorable Mention (2nd place), The Barbara Schowen Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, Spring 2014
Nominee, The Barbara Schowen Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, Spring 2013
Michael J. Young Advisor Award, Spring 2012
KU General Research Fund Awards, Summers 2011, 2012
KU New Faculty General Research Fund Award, Summer 2009
UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship, Fall 2006 – Spring 2007
UC Berkeley Dean Normative Time Fellowship, Fall 2005 – Spring 2006
Berkeley Language Center fellowship, Fall 2004
Slavic Languages and Literatures departmental fellowship, 2001
Frenkel Prize for best undergraduate paper in Linguistics, 2000
Dean’s list, 1998-2000