MONMOUTH, Ill. — Monmouth College Classics professor Tom Sienkewicz will travel to Russia in June to participate in a Global Partners Project interdisciplinary seminar.

Titled “The Arts in Russia’s Changing Economy and Society,” the seminar is designed to engage faculty from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds in the discussion of Russian film, television, theater, the visual arts, music, literature and architecture. Participants will study those “high,” “middle” and “popular” arts and their role in society since the fall of the Soviet Union. The seminar’s ultimate goal is to encourage faculty members – in social science and other fields, as well as humanities and the arts – to include Russian material in their teaching and research.

Participants will meet with and hear presentations from local experts, visit museums and galleries, attend performances and discuss on-site experiences and a common core of readings. Based in St. Petersburg, with excursions to other relevant Russian sites, the seminar will last two to three weeks. Joseph Troncale, a professor of Russian studies at the University of Richmond, will be the facilitator.

A major focus of his trip, said Sienkewicz, will be visits to St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, where he plans to create a list of at least some of the vast number of its art objects that deal with Classical mythology.

This will be the first trip to Russia for Sienkewicz, who has lived or traveled extensively in Europe, Turkey and Africa.

“The Global Partners seminar offers me the opportunity to move my international interests in a different direction by incorporating contemporary Russian culture into my courses and research,” said Sienkewicz. “I am especially interested in learning in what ways ancient Greek and Roman culture is still part of the fiber of modern Russian society.”

The Global Partners Project is a joint effort of 42 colleges and universities comprising the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (of which Monmouth is a member), the Associated Colleges of the South and the Great Lakes Colleges.