American Friends of Russian Folklore

Promoting American understanding of Russian folklore and traditional Russian life and culture.

Board of Directors Board of Directors at 2011 meeting American Friends of Russian Folklore is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. It is governed by a Board of Directors consisting of 6 people. Margaret McKibben, President. Margaret McKibben has been involved with Russian folklore as a student, collector and performer ever since she learned her first Russian folksong in seventh grade. She holds a BA in Russian Civilization and a Masters in LIbrary Science. Ms. McKibben works as a reference librarian at North Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Tucker Hart Adams, Treasurer. Tucker Hart Adams (tuckhadams@aol.com) is President and CEO of The Adams Group, a regional economic consulting firm that provides research, analysis and forecasts throughout the Mountain West. She is a trustee of the Tax-Free Fund of Colorado, the Tax Free Fund of Utah, the Rocky Mountain Equity Fund and the Colorado Health Facilities Authority. She writes regular monthly columns for Colorado Business magazine and the National Mortgage Brokers magazine. Dr. Adams has traveled and worked in Russia since 1989. She is president of American Russian Collaborative Enterprises LLC (ARCHES) and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in economics and banking at Moscow State University. She is a trustee of the Colorado Russia Agricultural Group (CRAG), a former director of the Colorado World Trade Center and has participated in four folklore expeditions, to Yakimovo in 2000, to Batama in 2006, to the Ukraine in 2008 and to the Don Cossack region in 2009. Anna Berman. Anna Berman is a PhD candidate in the Slavic Languages and Literatures department at Princeton University. Her primary research interests include Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Russian opera.  Anna went on her first expedition with Yelena Minyonok when she was seventeen and since then her interest in Russian folk culture has grown alongside her academic studies as she continues to participate in expeditions, now as a staff member (she has been on eight expeditions, including western Russia, Siberia, and the Cossack region).  Anna received her BA from Brown University in 2005, spent a Fulbright year in Russia studying at the European University in St. Petersburg and traveling on expeditions with Dr Minyonok, and then received her MPhil from Cambridge in European Literatures and Cultures in 2007. When she doesn't have her nose stuck in a book, Anna enjoys drinking tea, doing ceramics, knitting sweaters, and singing in a Georgian choir. Dr. Yelena Minyonok. Dr. Yelena Minoyonok is a philologist, folklorist, and Principal Investigator of the project "Russian Folklore Expedition." Dr. Minyonok graduated from the Philological Department of the Moscow State Univversity. She received her M.A. degree from the Moscow State University in 1988. Her postgraduate studies were at the Institute of World Literature (Russian Academy of Sciences, 1988-1991). She received her Ph.D. in Folklore (Moscow, 1998). Dr. Minyonok has been a Principal Investigator for numerous folklore expeditions and has published over 30 articles about Russian Folklore traditions. Most recently, she led expeditions for Earthwatch and for Russian Folklore Expedition through the Institute of World Literature at the Russian Academy of Sciences. She was a visiting professor at the University of Kentucky in 2007, as a Fulbright scholar. Dr. Ruth Warner, Secretary.  Dr. Ruth Warner just recently retired from a career of teaching high school German, French and Russian and is now teaching occasional classes at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.  She has long been interested in folklore, especially Russian.  While doing her graduate study at the Ohio State University, she sang with the Rusalka Russian Folk Chorus.  Her dissertation topic was folklore in Russian literature, in particular the Russian Yuletide traditions in Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Akhmatova's Poem Without a Hero.  She had already traveled to Russia numerous times but was excited to find out about the expeditions to the Russian villages.  She has been on three expeditions, two in the summer to Siberia and one winter trip to the Cossack region, and hopes to go on more. MIchael Young.  Michael is a graduate student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. American Friends of Russian Folklore is a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation and a 501(c)(3) organization. Tax I.D. No. 26-0294873.