Spring 2021 Class Schedule
Spring 2021 class Schedule
Spring 2021 course descriptions
POLISH 108-3 – Elementary Polish
This course is the third in a three-quarter sequence introducing students to Polish language and contemporary culture. We continue to learn the basic grammar of Polish and students progress in speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of communicative, content-based activities in a proficiency-orientated curriculum. Emphasis is placed on practical communication so that students should be able to function at a basic level in several authentic situations by the end of the year.
POLISH 208-3 – Intermediate Polish: Language and Culture
In Spring Quarter of Second Year Polish, students expand their speaking, reading and writing skills by building on grammar and vocabulary learned during prior quarters. As a complement to the linguistic side of the course, the students will gain a greater familiarity with Polish history and culture through varied means, including readings of literary works, articles from contemporary Polish newspapers and movies.
RUSSIAN 101-3 – Elementary Russian
Elementary Russian 101-3 is the third part in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. In this course, students will continue to develop the fundamentals of speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of communicative and content-based activities. Emphasis will be placed on practical communication so that students should be able to function at a basic level in several authentic situations by the end of the year.
RUSSIAN 102-3 – Intermediate Russian
Intermediate Russian 102-3 is the continuation of a two-year sequence that enables students to acquire intermediate-level proficiency. It proposes the further development and command of skills and abilities in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Emphasis is also placed on vocabulary expansion, especially in the areas of speaking and writing. A great deal of attention will be devoted to the learning of grammar in conjunction with the immediate activation of it in conversation.
RUSSIAN 303-3 – Advanced Russian Language & Culture
This course is the third part of a three-quarter sequence focusing on communication, cultural understanding, connections of Russian language and culture with other disciplines (such as history and sociology), and comparisons of Russian and American culture and language. It is a combined third- and fourth-year all skills language and culture class. This course includes topics in grammar, a focus on developing discussion and conversational skills and writing, and readings from a range of contemporary Russian writers. It is taught in Russian and is intended for students who have completed the SLAVIC 302 series and/or the SLAVIC 102 series.
SLAVIC 210-3 – Introduction to Russian Literature
In this course, Spiritual Autobiography and Russian Literature, we will read classic works of Russian literature that explore the challenges of achieving spiritual growth in an individual life, with focus on moments of heightened experience and consciousness. Students will have the (optional) opportunity to write a spiritual autobiography. Works by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Bunin.
SLAVIC 311-0 – Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the most important artists and thinkers of the modern era. His writings prompted new developments in philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and existentialism, and his writings continue to have an impact around the world; much of Western thinking since his death has been a response to his provocations. In this class, we read enduring works of literature that challenge us to address questions such as: what are the consequences of believing in God and immortality, or rejecting such beliefs? What is a meaningful life? What is the purpose of my life—if it has a purpose? We will study Dostoevsky as a biting social critic, in the acerbic essays on the bourgeoisie in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions; as an artist whose depth of religious and philosophical questioning compels us to study him together with figures like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; and as the first and perhaps best analyst of what we think of as some distinctly modern afflictions, such as excessive self-consciousness and despair.
SLAVIC 322-0 – Making a Dictionary
(Co-listed with Linguistics 363)
Northwestern University is a community, working to set goals, achieve them, defining and striving for excellence, etc. As such, we are a speech community, using language to describe and form our culture and identity. This includes jargon (e.g., Wildcat, distros, CAESAR, CTECs, DM, ASG, SafeRide, MMLC, etc.) and slang. We focus on language, identity, and heritage, and the students create “WildWords”: https://nudictionary.mmlc.northwestern.edu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
SLAVIC 390-0-1 – The Fall of the USSR and the Rise of Russia
(Co-listed with Int St 390-0-22)
This course examines the roots and the drivers of Putin’s foreign policy. We will look at factors leading to the USSR’s disintegration and resulting ethnic conflicts, security issues and responses. The U.S. faced four nuclear powers (Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus), under-secured nuclear weapons, and armed secessionist conflicts in the Caucasus and Moldova. We will examine the post-Cold War security environment, focusing on Russia’s efforts to assert a sphere of influence, and its efforts to undermine Western solidarity and confidence in the liberal democratic system.
SLAVIC 390-0-22 – The Nobel Prize in Literature: Three Women
(Co-listed with CLS 390 and CLS 488)
Little history begins where Great History leaves off. --Tadeusz Nyczek. Postwar Eastern Europe produced a remarkable series of Nobel Prize winning writers between 1957-1987: Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Czesław Miłosz, Jaroslav Seifert, Joseph Brodsky. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, three Eastern European writers, all women, have received the prize: Wisława Szymborska (1996), Svetlana Alexievich (2016), and Olga Tokarczuk (2018). They work in different genres: poetry, literary journalism, and prose fiction. But they share a common concern with recovering the “little histories” lost in the wake of the twentieth century’s great narratives.
What led the Nobel committee to pick these writers? What does their work tell us about gender, politics, and literature in modern Eastern Europe? This course will explore these and other questions through the writings of Szymborska, Alexievich, and Tokarczuk. All work available in English translation.
SLAVIC 392-0 – East European Literature and Visual Arts: Polish Cinema From its Origins to the Present
(Co-listed with RTVF 351-0-21)
This course will survey Polish film (all subtitled) from its earliest beginnings at the turn of the 20th century to the present day. We will begin by watching Poland’s earliest talkies and Polish- and Yiddish-language films of the interwar period before discussing the effects of Stalinism and its “thaw” on film during the communist era. From there, we will discuss themes of absurdism and the subversive, and later examine the changing forms, subjects, and elements of films in post-1989 Poland. We will watch films by such directors as Joseph Green, Stanisław Bareja, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, and Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Paweł Pawlikowski.
SLAVIC 411 – Proseminar
*Content varies. May be repeated for credit with a change of topic.
(Co-listed with COMP_LIT 487)
ELENA GURO: A WOMAN IN THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE. This course will be focused on Russian Modernism, and early Avant-Garde, reflecting on the works of the first futurist woman poet and artists, Elena Guro (1877-1913) in the context of major issues visual and literary Modernism and Avant-garde carries within: 'life-building' (zhiznetvorchestvo), and mythologization; search for new cultural, national, and personal identity; gender politics; word/image interrelationship; new aesthetic ideology. Poetry and visual works by Bely, Briusov, Gippius, Khlebnikov,Kruchenykh, Malevich, Goncharova et al.
No language prerequisite.
SLAVIC 438 – Studies in 20th Century Russian Literature
RUSSIAN MODERNISM: 1910–1930s PROSE. This course is a general survey of Russian Prose of the early 20th century, with emphasis on Modernist works in the context of Formalist Theory. Readings are in Russian (or in both Russian and English translation where available) and include major works and short stories by Ivan Bunin and Maxim Gorky; Fedor Sologub, Andrei Platonov, Boris Pilniak, Mikhail Bulgakov, and others.
SLAVIC 441 – 20th Century Russian Literature and Cultural Criticism
(Cross-listed with COMP_LIT 481)
RUSSIAN FORMALISM. This seminar will examine the school and theory of Russian Formalism, which influenced and informed many developments in the 20th century literary and art theory, from Prague Linguistic Circle through Structuralism and Semiotics. Along with the detailed study of the critical and theoretical essays by such adherents of Formalism as Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jacobson, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eikhenbaum, et al., we will be exploring the major works of Russian modernism and avant-garde in literature and film through the methodological approach of Formalist theory. Special focus on the issues of Formalism and Marxism, Formalism and History, and the interconnections between culture and politics of the time.
Discussion and presentations in English.