Russian

Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.

Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.

Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.

Prerequisites: RUSS UN2101 or the equivalent. Drill practice in small groups. Reading, composition, and grammar review.

Prerequisites: RUSS UN2101 or the equivalent. Drill practice in small groups. Reading, composition, and grammar review.

Prerequisites: RUSS UN2102 or the equivalent and the instructors permission. Enrollment limited. Recommended for students who wish to improve their active command of Russian. Emphasis on conversation and composition. Reading and discussion of selected texts and videotapes. Lectures. Papers and oral reports required. Conducted entirely in Russian.

Russian Through Theater is a content-based language course designed for students who already have the equivalent of two semesters of college-level Russian and want to continue exploring their path as Russian language learners. This course is experimental in that it combines elements of traditional language learning with theatricality and creativity.  A stress-free learning environment will stimulate language skills and fluency. Staging skits, theatrical pieces, short at first and longer by the end of the semester, will encourage students to focus on phonetics, intonation contour, and idiomatic expressions. In addition to performing skits and short plays, the course includes various forms of improvisation. Reading, listening and speaking - these three essential skills of language learning are constantly practiced. Incorporating theater into language learning not only makes the process enjoyable but also creates a rich, immersive environment that supports language development holistically. Various performative and ludic models, offered by the theater productions -- rehearsed and improvised alike – will help students with shaping a language persona, a skill that students may use in life situations. This skill adds confidence to their conduct of language and allows to communicate effectively with limited linguistic knowledge.

Classes will be conducted primarily in Russian, with sporadic instruction in English when necessary for clarification of assignments or for better understanding of terminology used during mini-lectures.

The revolutionary period (1905-1938) in Russia was not only one of extreme social upheaval but also of exceptional creativity. Established ideas about individuality and collectivity, about how to depict reality, about language, gender, authority, and violence, were all thrown open to radical questioning. Out of this chaos came ideas about literature and film (just for example) which have shaped Western thought on these subjects to this day. In this course we will study a variety of media and genres (poetry, manifestos, film, painting, photomontage, the novel, theoretical essays) in an effort to gain a deep understanding of this complex and fascinating period in Russian cultural history.

Two epic novels, Tolstoys War and Peace and Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov, will be read along with selected shorter works. Other works by Tolstoy include his early Sebastopol Sketches, which changed the way war is represented in literature; Confession, which describes his spiritual crisis; the late stories Kreutzer Sonata and Hadji Murad; and essays on capital punishment and a visit to a slaughterhouse. Other works by Dostoevsky include his fictionalized account of life in Siberian prison camp, The House of the Dead; Notes from the Underground, his philosophical novella on free will, determinism, and love; A Gentle Creature, a short story on the same themes; and selected essays from Diary of a Writer. The focus will be on close reading of the texts. Our aim will be to develop strategies for appreciating the structure and form, the powerful ideas, the engaging storylines, and the human interest in the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. No knowledge of Russian is required.

Prerequisites: RUSS V3430 or the instructors permission. This course is designed to help students who speak Russian at home, but have no or limited reading and writing skills to develop literary skills in Russian. THIS COURSE, TAKEN WITH RUSS V3430, MEET A TWO YEAR FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT. Conducted in Russian.

Prerequisites: the department's permission. Supervised Individual Research

Prerequisites: RUSS W4334 or the equivalent or the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: four years of college Russian or instructor's permission. The course will focus on theoretical matters of language and style and on the practical aspect of improving students' writing skills. Theoretical aspects of Russian style and specific Russian stylistic conventions will be combined with the analysis of student papers and translation assignments, as well as exercises focusing on reviewing certain specific difficulties in mastering written Russian.

Prerequisites: four years of college Russian or the equivalent. Workshop in literary translation from Russian into English focusing on the practical problems of the craft. Each student submits a translation of a literary text for group study and criticism. The aim is to produce translations of publishable quality.

From Prince Valdimir’s Rus’ to the Post-Soviet Russia of Vladimir Putin, religion has remained a key factor in the making and remaking of Russian polity and culture. This course will explore how Orthodox Christianity—whether privileged or persecuted—came to dominate the Russian religious scene and shape Russian institutions, discourses, and lived experiences. Students will draw from a variety of primary and secondary sources—chronicles, saints’ lives, travel narratives, memoirs, letters, legal documents, icons and other ritual objects, films and fictional texts, as well as a large body of scholarly works and contemporary media materials—to examine how Russia’s Orthodox past and its rewriting into competing “histories” have been used over time as “legacies” shaping the present and the future.

The Soviet underground constitutes a highly important example of alternative culture that developed in the USSR outside of restraints of censorship, albeit not in a full isolation from Soviet environment. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with this rich legacy as the extrapolation of interrupted trajectories of Russian modernism and the avant-garde as well as underdeveloped tendencies that can form a foundation for new Russian culture of the 21st century.  The course, if approved, can be offered in several iterations, each time with a focus on a particular genre. This version of the syllabus focuses on prose and dramaturgy, but there can be a syllabus on poetry, performance, and visual art in any combination.