On September 10-11, 2019, with the support of the Oxford Russian Foundation, the Perm State National Research University hosted the XII International Seminar "Contemporary British Literature in Russian and Belarusian Universities." Its main objectives include improving the quality of teaching British literature in higher education, as well as familiarizing participants with the main trends in modern English literature. Currently, the project involves over sixty Russian and Belarusian universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Barnaul, Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladivostok, Donetsk, Yekaterinburg, Kursk, Minsk, Neryungri, Novosibirsk, Penza, Samara, Saransk, Chita, etc. The Faculty of Foreign Languages of I. Yakovlev Chuvash State Pedagogical University joined this literary project in 2018 and was this year represented by Natalya Kurnikova, Associate Professor of the Department of English Philology and Translation Studies.
During the two-day seminar, participants listened to lectures on images of women, representation of youth cultures, the art of convincing and the development of the genre of historical novel in contemporary British fiction. In addition, writers, literary critics and teachers of English literature from Oxford, Sheffield and Keele universities conducted a series of workshops for our colleagues.
Each university participating in the seminar received from the organizers of the event sets of popular British novels, as well as methodological comments on them. The works involved in the project reflect the cultural and everyday realities of modern Britain, and will be used in the teaching of such subjects as English Speech Practice, Interpretation, History of British and American Literature, as well as for individual reading and student research projects.