User:Andreaelassar

My name is Andrea Kaspryk, and I am an American living Chicago, whose parents immigrated from Ukraine after WWII. Like many children of the Ukrainian immigrants who left Europe after WWII, I grew up speaking Ukrainian. In college I majored in English, with a minor in Russian, and then continued my graduate education, a master of arts a doctorate in philosophy, in Ukrainian and Russian literature and culture. I received a doctoral degree in Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2000) and wrote my dissertation on the Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880-1951). Unable to find teaching work in my field, I taught English as a Second Language and Composition at the City Colleges of Chicago from 2000-2005; currently I work as an independent translator and in educational testing. I have read a lot of Ukrainian and Russian literature, secondary literature about Ukrainian and Russian literature and culture, as well as literary criticism and theory.