For Bodymind Creativity, Problemsolving and Cooperative Relationships

Vida Johnson, Ph.D.

Vida is professor of Russian language, literature and film, and chair of the Department of German, Russian and Asian languages and literatures at Tufts University. Although her academic training has been in the Russian field (PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University), she has also taught an interdisciplinary course in World civilizations, and more recently a freshman seminar on National Cinemas in the Era of Globalization. In some 30 years of teaching, she has explored ways of making the study of foreign languages and cultures not only relevant but fun. For more fun, she herself has travelled widely all over the world—Europe, Russia, East Africa, China and Japan—and is now also a lecturer and travel host for the Tufts Alumni Travel-Learn Program. And for even more fun, she skies every winter in Colorado and swims every summer in the cold ocean off her beach house in Scituate, MA.