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Peter Thomas: Bjorklunden’s Russian Aficionado

Communications — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 14:52:29 +0000

Peter Thomas received both his BA degree in comparative literature and PhD in Russian from Northwestern University. He studied at the Moscow State University for over a year where he received training in how to teach Russian to non-native speakers. Then after a few years of practicing his newly honed skills on students at St. Olaf and Beloit, in 2006 he was hired by ��ý��Ƶ to be its professor of Russian Studies. During his twenty-year tenure, he has been dedicated to assuring that his students succeed, and clearly they have greatly benefitted from his nurturing and supportive style of teaching. And so too have the many lifelong learners at Bjorklunden! Peter has led summer seminars over the past 16 years sharing his wide knowledge and deep love of Russia and its culture.

How easy was it for you to connect with seminar participants during the first few summer sessions?

From the very beginning it has been easy to connect with seminar participants. They are warm, curious, and enthusiastic about learning. For me, the real challenge was figuring out how much we can really do in one week. My first seminar was on Dostoevsky. I called our session The Idiot, for the novel we were reading. We all had name tags. Mine read “Peter Thomas,��The Idiot.” That was fitting because I assigned a 600-page novel of material that is not exactly beach reading. I’ve since learned to better gauge the reading I ask participants to do before our session and during the week.

I think my sessions have a reputation for being rather hard-core; people show up having read everything I asked or even suggested. Our seminars are very much discussion-based, so anyone who wants to spend a week talking about Russian culture is welcome. We do a lot of reading aloud during the week. That has been an evolving part of my seminars. I’m really excited about how much fun it is and how much more we get out of the texts.

How would you compare older lifelong learners with your on-campus students?

University students have reasonable concerns about grades and their prospects for the future. In many cases, I have to teach them basic study and time-management skills that have nothing to do with the materials, but if I don’t teach them those things, they will learn much less. These students have relatively little experience in life, and for the most part their experiences are similar to each other’s. A big part of what I have to teach them is that: life and the world are much, much bigger and more complicated than they suspect. That is enjoyable, so long as the student (and family) are on board. With summer participants, I am the inexperienced one in the room. I am fairly certain that I learn as much each summer as they do. Participants bring such a wide range of skills, talents, and experiences to our sessions that my job is to just facilitate a conversation around whatever we are working on at the time. When I have done my job in choosing a good topic, the course takes on a life of its own. And I don’t have to grade anything or anyone.

Was it challenging to get us to refrain from discussing current political events all the time?

Russian politics is always a part of the discussion, and that is to be expected. Conversations about politics in the US tend to be a part of conversations over meals, but not always. The materials we work on have a lot to say about how people treat each other and the world we share. I am careful not to let the conversation derail for political reasons. That is much easier to do with seminar participants than with university students.

Do you cover political history? Why or why not?

I have taught two seminars on political history in Russia. I would certainly do so again. Speaking honestly, for many years now I have left the topic of the next year’s seminar to the participants in the current one. I trust them to choose topics that will attract new participants.

Do you wish participants had better geographical background?

No. Figuring out how to capture the topography, flora, fauna, and meteorology of whatever region we are working on is a part of the fun. I do wish that I had a strong geographical background. Some of my regular participants are incredibly well-travelled and have been to places I have only seen online.

What seminar topic have you enjoyed presenting the most?

I have never had a seminar that didn’t feel like my favorite while I was teaching it. I love teaching “The Russian Short Story.” I’ve taught Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina twice, and each time was a revelation for me. The sessions on Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Aleksievich, and Putin were challenging and invigorating. Last summer’s class on film and literature was so much fun that it felt like I was a student, not the teacher. This summer, in response to a story and film from last summer, we are reading Chekhov, one of my favorite authors. I cannot wait to prepare that class.

Plans are being created to do a “Great Books” program during the 2027 summer featuring three Freshman Studies books taught over the years and you have been asked to participate. Can you share some of the preliminary plans?

This is a team-taught course called “The Long Novel” that Professor Dominica Chang of French, Professor Tim Spurgin of English, and I have taught at ��ý��Ƶ four times now. The central problem of the class is thinking about how the different traditions in European literature of the nineteenth century represent the challenges of modernity. The first three times we taught the course, we read Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. We are just completing our first run through a new version that features Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The key to this class is that all three of us are at every discussion, and we each take one session as lead instructor for the books that are outside of our own field. The other key is that these are long and complicated novels. We are talking about how we would create a two-week class with the same or similar authors and the same topics, but with fewer than 1700 pages of reading. A challenge!

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Lighting the Way With … Kir-Sey Fam: Into the tech fray with Disney+

Communications — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 18:06:21 +0000

��ý��Ƶ this series: Lighting the Way With … is a periodic series in which we shine a light on ��ý��Ƶ alumni. Today we catch up with Kir-Sey Fam ’19, a software engineer with Disney+.

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Kir-Sey Fam ’19 has been a ��ý��Ƶ alumnus for all of eight months. But he already has stories to tell.

It’s not often that you step from the stage at Commencement and immediately land in the midst of one of the most talked about media developments in the world.

Welcome to Fam’s life since graduating in June — a bachelor of arts degree with majors in mathematics, computer science, and Russian studies. Before leaving ��ý��Ƶ, he was hired as a software engineer with Disney+ in New York, meaning he was jumping into the fire as Disney prepared to roll out its much-anticipated streaming service on Nov. 12.

It reportedly had 10 million sign-ups the first day, a number that has grown to nearly 29 million in the three months since. Along the way, it’s introduced the world to Baby Yoda, put the Marvel,��Star Wars, and Pixar libraries at subscribers’ fingertips, and reshaped the high-stakes battleground for streaming services in ways we haven’t yet wrapped our eyes around.

As a kicker, a Disney+ original show is in the works that will be set in, yes, Appleton, Wisconsin. Kristin Chenoweth will take the lead in “The Biggest Star in Appleton,” playing a mom and waitress who gets her kicks as the star of local community theater.

Fam took some time to share what life has been like in the midst of all that wonderful chaos.

On his role at Disney+:

I’m currently working as a software engineer on the Growth Engineering team. What that means on a high level is that we examine each stage of the user experience, from when someone first lands on the Disney+ page, through to when they’re watching a show or interacting with other parts of Disney+. We then work to figure out what points of friction the user faces and experiment with changes to improve the user experience and increase retention.

The methods for accomplishing these goals are varied; the project I’m working on now involves using machine learning to improve how we handle billing for each user. Going in, I didn’t really know what to expect as I hadn’t done any prior internships in larger companies before working at Disney. I would say that though they’re put together differently, taking classes at ��ý��Ƶ engaged me with a lot of the elements that I now use in my work.

On being part of the Disney+ launch:

As you may know, we experienced some launch-day issues related in part to the huge demand for Disney+. So, there was a bit of firefighting going on in different areas during launch. Thankfully, the services my team developed didn’t face any issues despite the huge throughput. That was a bit of a relief since my team had been on a tight deadline leading up to the launch for developing a service integral to the super bundle combining Disney+, ESPN+, and HULU subscriptions, which saw a lot of usage. Following the launch, you could hear people talking about Disney+ on the subway, waiting in line at stores, just everywhere. And that really gave me a sense of accomplishment and excitement to hear so many people feeling enthusiastic about something that I had worked on.

On seeing a Disney+ show being developed that’s based in Appleton (no, he’s not a consultant … yet):

Yes, I’m excited to see what they do with the show. Unfortunately, as I’m on the engineering side of things, I don’t have much to do with direct content creation.

On how his ��ý��Ƶ experience, including the growth in computer science and data science during his time here, prepared him for the Disney+ job:

I would say that the classes I found most helpful were the algorithms courses I took with Professor (Joseph) Gregg, and particularly relevant now in my current project, the machine learning courses I took with Professor (Andrew) Sage.

Technology changes rapidly, and I think that the fundamentals I learned in the math/computer science department have helped ensure that I can quickly pick up any languages and frameworks that I need to use in projects. Aside from that, although music and Russian literature are seemingly disparate subjects from computer science, I see a deep interconnectedness in my experience and knowledge from these fields that helps bring fresh perspectives to whatever I’m working on.

More alumni: Check out these recent alumni profiles in our Lighting the Way With … series: ’10,�� ’10,�� ’12, and Terry Moran��’82.

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