Visiting Associate Professor Martin Stary As a non-Communist faculty member at Charles University in Prague, Martin Stary was asked many times to change his mind. Then in November of 1989 the Velvet Revolution occurred, bringing peaceful transition to the Czech Republic and Slovakia from the Soviet authority. Professor Stary recalls "there was an excitement, an energy, on campus. Everyone was enthusiastic, eager to be involved with society and its reform. There was a lot of excitement about the possibilities within the country. Students were working to spread the messages for reform and it was really an exciting time."

After earning his undergraduate degree, Martin spent a mandatory year in the armed services where he felt fortunate to secure a position as Assistant Librarian, instead of the Tank Leader position he had been told would be his assignment. In 1987, he accepted an Assistant Professor position at Charles University. He subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Czech Language and Teaching Methodology, English and American Literature, and Language Materials Development.

Having first visited the US in 1991 as a student at Johns Hopkins University and American University in Washington, D.C., he studied American English and Culture. His second visit, in 1998, was to Princeton as a Fulbright Scholar, Visiting Lecturer, and lastly Visiting Fellow. After five years of teaching in Prague, he returned to an American academic setting as Visiting Associate Professor. Martin taught First- and Second-Year Czech, as well as Directed Reading. His other interests are jazz music, sports, and travel.

Professor Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, winner of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1996) and of the "Russian" Booker Prize for nonfiction (1998).
Dr. Gasparov, the foremost authority on Russian poetics and comparative study of verse, is the Research Director of the Division of Stylistics and Poetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Professor at the Russian State University of Humantities. He was a visiting scholar in the Department in Winter Term 1999, teaching "Poetics of the Verse Text: The Techniques of Analysis and Interpretation" and conducting joint research with Professor Ronen on the critical edition of the poetry of Ossip Mandel'shtam. Dr. Gasparov is the author of hundreds of articles and scores of books on classical and modern philology and poetics, especially Russian verse. His most recent books are "A History of European Versification" (Oxford, 1996), "Izbrannye trudy" [Selected Works] (in three volumes, Moscow, 1997),and "Zapisi i vypiski" [Records and Excerpts, previously serialized in Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie] (Moscow, 1999). He has translated into Russian many masterpieces of European poetry, including all of Pindar's odes, Ovid's "Ars amandi", and Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso". He also published a remarkable book for children: "Zanimatel'naia Gretsiia" [Greece for Fun].