By TINA IYER
Features Editor

Costlow had regained her power the night before our meal (I was still grimly without), but life had not yet returned to normal. We drove to Austin's in Costlow's car, which could only be entered from the back driverside door (the other doors were iced shut.)

Over steaming cups of coffee we continued our car conversation on biraciality. Costlow's husband is of Indian descent, as am I, and so we discusses issues of raising biracial children and being a "non-Indian Indian" in India. We chatted informally as we waited for our food, leaning in to talk over the lunchtime crowd huddled in Austin's, a small oasis of heat, food, and comfort.

It seemed selfish, however, to dominate an interview with a personal talk, and so the conversation turned to Costlow's time in France. I mentioned that it seemed somehow odd to me (and perhaps to others) that Costlow, herself a professor of Russian, should have led a program to France.

Of course, there was an easy explanation. "I was a double major in college, and the people in the French department have known that for awhile," Costlow said.

Costlow explained that she had begun studying French at age 11; her Russian language focus began only during her undergraduate days. Wellversed in French, Costlow's language skills encouraged Associate Professor of French Kirk Read to ask her last year if she would consider joining him as a leader for the Fall Semester Abroad program to Nantes. "It hadn't even entered my thinking that I would be the second person," said Costlow, and while she felt that her French "had been dormant for fifteen years," she recognized the opportunity of living in a country that she had only briefly visited and never spent an extended period of time in.

It was then that the lights in Austin's flickered. Behind the counter, Austin muttered, "Oh, come on ...". Heeding his wishes, the power stayed on.

Although Costlow clearly enjoyed her stay in Nantes, her first linguistic love is Russian, but she acknowledged the difficulty of being in the Russian department at Bates, where enrollment is akin to "a roller coaster" and fluctuates from greatly from year to year. Costlow said that once the department is able to attract students, the students remain motivated and excited about their subject of study, usually going to Russia to study abroad. "We have trouble at the front end," said Costlow.

What has impressed Costlow in recent years about students of Russian at Bates is there choice to pursue more than one discipline. "There is a real strength in [students] having other majors and also doing a lot of Russian - making the connection to other disciplines," she said.

What frustrates Costlow, however, about the sporadic interest in Russian is that "there are significant opportunities for employment in Russia now for people with Russian skills."

As we ate our sandwiches, Austin recognized Costlow and leaned over the counter to greet her. He asked about her power; Costlow grinned and responded that it had returned to her the day before. Austin nodded knowingly and said that he could tell just by looking at a person whether or not they had electricity.

I asked him if I had power. He looked at me intently. "You have power," he said. I shook my head. Even Austin makes mistakes.

Costlow began studying Russian while an undergraduate at Duke University in North Carolina, but her interest was sparked during high school, when a "wonderful English teacher" had Costlow's class read Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov."

"When I read that novel, I thought, there is something here that really speaks to me," Costlow said.

Furthermore, Costlow had a love for Russian music and all foreign languages and cultures in general. Growing up in a home with a biologist father who had many foreign contacts, Costlow was exposed from a young age to the different experiences of others, and wanted to pursue the study of other cultures. Russian and Russian culture proved the perfect discipline since "I wanted a hard language."

Costlow spent some time as a translator, but recognized early on that translating was not a career that she wanted to devote herself to.

She earned her graduate degree at Yale University, and began teaching at Bates in 1986. Hired to teach Russian language, Costlow, encouraged by her department, also expanded her courses to include the literature of Russian women.

Russian literature is known for its greatness and the enormous impact that writers such as Gogol, Pushkin, Chekov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, have made. Russian women's writing, however, seems largely peripheral. According to Costlow, some of the interest in Russian women was inspired by American women who defined what has come to be known as the women's liberation movement. Of course, Russian women are also involved in defining the importance of their own liberation movements and history, but it is still a small area of research.

"It was only at the end of the 19th century that there began to appear women who wrote with confidence and a breath of freedom," Costlow said.

For this reason, the course that Costlow is currently teaching on Russian women's writing is "weighted to the 20th century, but with a sense of the tradition behind it."

I asked Costlow about the issue of teaching literature in translation. While some of the more "popular" languages at Bates teach literature courses only in the native language of the author, the departments of Russian and Japanese, for example, also offer literature classes in translation for the benefit of students who are not adept in these languages.

"Its really important for students at Bates to read. Period," said Costlow, "and to read broadly. To read in translation as much as possible."

This is especially true because students in the department of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages and Literatures (GREALL) do not come in to Bates with the same knowledge of the languages as students of French and Spanish often do.

"It seems to me that in a liberal arts curriculum you want people to have read Tolstoy, for example," Costlow said, and also important Asian authors.

Our meal ended almost abruptly, since both of us had work to catch up on and a life to reassemble after the ice storm. We clambered back in to Costlow's car and made our way carefully over the ice back to campus.

Austin's Fine Wines and Foods
78 Main St. in Auburn
783-6312