David Cooper (Slavic Languages Professor)

That's one of the fascinating things is that it's only indirect evidence that sort of points to who was likely involved in this.

Yeah.

Yeah, for a lot of our students, Dostoevsky is a big one because he's one of the few that's actually...

frequently taught in high schools.

Right.

And so my, and crime and punishment is a big one.

So I actually taught a Dostoevsky course last semester.

And I asked at the beginning of the course, how many of, uh, how many of you have read crime and punishment and half the hands in the class went up and, and, and that's often, yeah, that's often the lead in.

it does work for you sometimes, right?

It does sort of, yeah, allow you to sort of go under the radar at times.

Like, I don't conform to what a lot of people expect to find for a Slavic literature professor.

I don't have a name that sounds like it comes from that part of the world.

And my family doesn't come from that part of the world.

My entry into Slavic studies was entirely different.

I went as a Peace Corps volunteer after I graduated from college to Czechoslovakia as an English teacher and spent two years there.

And that's what got me going with Slavic languages, so...

Yes.

Yeah.

Or they take it to fulfill some general education requirement and suddenly they're hooked and they're like, what are you taking?

What are you teaching next semester?