Rebecca Pyatkevich Mehr, Ph. D.
Inside the classroom
Teaching is about changing a student’s world — and my own — through the shared experience of work in the classroom. My teaching practice falls into 4 rough categories:
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literature courses (usually taught in translation)
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courses for freshmen focused on teaching writing skills
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Russian language courses at all levels, and
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interdisciplinary courses.
When I teach, I seek to create a community of learners, an environment for asking questions and developing both individual approaches and communal consensus. I encourage students to become suspicious of clearcut answers and to entertain multiple perspectives. In the literature classroom, I focus on helping students develop their abilities to read texts closely, to find textual support for their viewpoints, and encourage them to find ways to negotiate conflicting interpretations. In the language classroom, though at the beginning students may be limited, the goal is fluency — which means knowing different ways to communicate.
Please see each of the sections for more information about my teaching praxis.

Literature courses
Portland Community College, Lewis & Clark College, Columbia University
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Great Russian Writers
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Introduction to Russian Literature
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Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Heroes and Heroines in Russian Literature
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Love and Other Diseases in Russian Literature
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Introduction to Russian Literature (2 semester sequence, taught in Russian)
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Poetry and Politics in the Soviet Period
Language courses
Portland Community College, Lewis & Clark College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Columbia University, Indiana University (Summer Workshop in Slavic and Eastern European Languages)
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First-Year Russian
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Second Year Russian
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Advanced Russian (third-fourth year mixed courses)
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Russian for Heritage Speakers
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Russian conversation practice
Freshman-centered, writing-intensive courses
Lewis & Clark College
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Exploration and Discovery First Year Sequence: Discourses of/on Love
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Exploration and Discovery First Year Sequence: Rebels, Outcasts, Iconoclasts, Icons
Interdisciplinary/
content courses
Lewis & Clark College, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Translation as Theory and Practice
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Russian Life and Culture (online)
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Russian Life and Culture (face-to-face)