Alina Makin, M.A. in Applied Linguistics, is a faculty member in the Slavic Department at the University of Michigan, and head of the Intensive Russian Program at the University’s Residential College. A native Muscovite, she was educated at what is now the Moscow Linguistics University and the University of Leicester, England, where she studied applied linguistics and language acquisition. In Moscow she worked as a language teacher, translator and interpreter, and her Russian curriculum vitae includes simultaneous translation of films at international festivals and interpreting for American tourists on Russian river boat cruises.
At the University of Michigan, where she has worked for over fifteen years, in addition to teaching all levels of Russian in the Intensive Russian language program and at the Slavic Department, she also gives advanced language seminars on the history and culture of the Russian table, Russian everyday life, as well as polar and sometimes conflicting roles of Moscow and St Petersburg in Russian culture.
She has produced a four-part video series (in Russian) on Russian Food (Russian food shopping in Detroit, Russian cooking, entertaining guests Russian-style and Russian peasant cooking). She has given public lectures on Russian foodways, mushroom- and berry-picking in Russian culture, as well as food in Russian literature and folklore. Her research interests include several areas of applied linguistics, second-language acquisition and pedagogy, and the history and culture of food and cooking.
