Byron Lindsey, associate professor of Russian at the University of New Mexico, was recently notified by the U.S Department of Education that he is a recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad award.
Lindsey's project is to study and translate texts from the literature of Dagestan, a region from the former Soviet Union in the northern Caucasus. This area and its religion and culture are little known and studied in the West, and apart from some translations of their writings from various native languages into Russian, these works are not even widely available in a language accessible to a broad spectrum of scholars.
“The Dagestani religion is Muslim, in contrast with the predominately Christian background of Russia, and the tension between these two Asian cultures adds to the fascination and need for new research,” Lindsey said.
Lindsey, faculty in UNM's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for more than 30 years, is well known as a translator of Russian literature and has already edited several volumes of short stories translated from Russian. In 1988-1989 he received a Fulbright fellowship for study in Kazakstan, and in 2000 he received the prestigious William Arrowsmith award for his translation of a Russian short story. His most recent trip to Russia was in July 2003 when he made a presentation on the literature of Dagestan at a conference in St. Petersburg.
The period of his fellowship will fall in the first half of 2005 when he is applying for a sabbatical from his teaching duties at UNM. During this time, he will work as a visiting scholar at the Gorky Institute of World Literature and Art of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, which will serve as his home base. He will make side trips to St. Petersburg, where he also has connections relevant to his research, and above all to Makhachkala, where he will consult with writers and materials in the region he is studying to select the best short stories for his translation project. His research will eventually lead to a book with a critical history of Dagestan and a selection of translations into English of its best works.
Contact: Carolyn Gonzales (505) 277-5920
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