Office: ??? Klarman Hall
kgolovakova@yahoo.com

I am originally from Zhytomyr, Ukraine, where I first fell in love with languages and teaching. I got my degree in 1992 and spent the first years of my career teaching at the local high school and later at the Zhytomyr Pharmaceutical College.

In 2009 I moved with my family to Manila, Philippines, where I stayed for 11 years. In the beginning I struggled with feeling disconnected from my home and my language, so I made myself new opportunities to engage with my culture. I would cook Russian and Ukrainian frozen foods (pelmeni, vareniki, blini) for other Russian speakers who craved that familiarity as much as I did. Then I taught Russian at International School Manila and finally at Enderun College to the groups of students at a variety of levels. I returned back to Ukraine in June 2020, after extremely strict COVID requirements were implemented in the Philippines at the time.

I came to Ithaca and the US with my two younger children in March of 2022 seeking safety from the war back in Ukraine. We chose Ithaca because my eldest daughter already lived here with her husband, who is a graduate student here at Cornell. We immediately fell in love with the beautiful expansive sky, the ever-changing foliage, and the kind and intellectual people here in Ithaca. I love going on walks exploring the town from Lansing to the Commons and to Cornell’s magnificent campus.

My favorite thing about the Russian language is all of its literature. I love its rich vocabulary, its rhythm, its capacity to capture beauty. My favorite Russian language author is probably Nikolai Gogol, who was originally from Ukraine. As a kid I loved reading his stories about the Ukrainian countryside and all of the supernatural horror. Now, I appreciate those same stories for the incorporation of Ukrainian phrases and the mystical atmosphere in Gogol’s descriptions.

I am happy to have the opportunity to teach at Cornell. Together with my students we will go through Russian grammar and the rich vocabulary of the magnificent and poetic Russian Language.

Curriculum Vitae