DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

Spring 2023 Class Schedule

• Spring 2022 Class Schedule
• Spring 2022 Course Descriptions

Spring 2022 class Schedule

Spring 2022 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.

RUSSIAN 101-3-21,22 – 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 and build on the Russian they have learned in the previous two quarters building on 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 102-3-21 – Intermediate Russian

Intermediate Russian 102-3 is the continuation of a two-year sequence that enables students to acquire intermediate-level proficiency. This course is designed for students who have successfully mastered the language skills in Elementary Russian. 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. Video materials and audiotapes will be used throughout the course. For students who have completed RUSSIAN 102-2.

RUSSIAN 302-3 – Advanced Russian in Conversation

This course is the third part in a yearlong combined third- and fourth-year multi-skill course, focusing on communication, cultural understanding, and comparisons of Russian and American culture and language. 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.

RUSSIAN 304-1 – Advanced Russian in Conversation

Russian for advanced speakers, including heritage speakers. Stress on skills in speaking and reading in professional and formal environments. Occasional writing assignments, but these are not a focus. The class will be set up like a series of short conference presentations and discussions with students regularly presenting and leading these discussions. Of their own choice, but with some consultation with and approval by the instructor, students will pick a topic (genre, author, theme, etc.) of interest to them (encouraged are research topics that students may already have) to work on throughout the quarter. The instructor will gladly work with students who don't already have a research topic to help find one. Working on their topics, students will create several min-lessons and presentations throughout the quarter to lead class discussion on their topic. For example, students will assign a short reading passage (for example, for a close reading) or video (etc.) to the entire class with a prepared vocabulary list and/or other prepared materials to help the rest of the class understand what they are reading and/or viewing. The rest of the class works through these materials to prepare for a discussion that is then led by the student who works on this topic. Each of these mini-lessons should lead to a final presentation by each student at the end of the quarter on their research topic. Students are expected to also discuss and concretely document their progress (or lack of progress) in their speaking and reading skills throughout the class as well as self-reflect on their progress (or lack thereof). Taught entirely in Russian (except for the first meeting).

SLAVIC 210-1-20 – Introduction to Russian Literature

Before Tolstoy and Dostoevsky came three canonical nineteenth-century Russian writers: Pushkin, Gogol, and Lermontov. In this early era, Russia was heavily in dialogue with Western European culture, which introduced Russia to a new genre of writing—the novel. Steeped in poetry, the gothic, and the Romantic, these writers' groundbreaking works resounded through the generations that followed. We explore the history, culture, and society that produced these long-studied classics of Russian literature.

SLAVIC 211-1-20 – 20th-Century Russian Literature

(Co-listed with CLS 202-0-21)

This course is a general survey of early 20 century Russian Literature, focused on the interconnections between new ideas in culture and politics. Texts include great Modernist novels Peterburg (1913) by Andrei Bely, Master and Margarita (1940) by Mikhail Bulgakov, and Evgeny Zamiatin's We (1921); poetry by Aleksandr Blok, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. These major literary works are discussed in the broad Russian and European cultural and historical context. Students are introduced to the thrills and challenges of reading Russian modernist novels.

SLAVIC 261-0 –Heart of Europe: Poland in the Twentieth Century

(Co-listed with CLS 202-0-22)

Over the last century, Poland has undergone an extraordinary range of transformations and traumas: the end of partition among three empires (Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian) leading to the brief period of interwar independence; Nazi conquest, and the virtual elimination of Poland's Jewish population; Soviet subjugation; Solidarity and the revolt against Soviet rule; martial law; and in 1989, independence once again. Poland's shifting borders and the complex history and politics they represent provide a unique point of entry into modern European history. In this course, we will explore the distinctive ways in which history and culture combine in a colonized nation at Europe's heart by way of novels, films, essays, memoirs, journalism, and poetry. Authors to be read will include Nobel Laureates Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, and Olga Tokarczuk.

SLAVIC 360-0-20 –Survey of 19th Century Russian Poetry

As is well known, poetry in Russian culture is a powerful and unique catalyst. This course offers a first part of the survey of the main trends in Russian poetry, which is dedicated to 19th-century Russian Poetry. Precisely in the 19th century, Russian poetry had become a kind of national symbol due to the works of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Baratynsky, Lermontov, Tiutchev, and others. Although the topics of this so-called Golden Age of Russian literature were many, particular emphasis was on the genre of elegy. The Russian elegy is a kind of "the glass bead game," if we use this title of Hesse's novel, that each of the Russian poets tried to add with his own brilliance, not with just sorrow and tears. To find out how brilliance and approach were different in each particular case, is one of the intellectual adventures that this course offers.

SLAVIC 390-0-3 – The Fall of the USSR and the Rise of Russia

(Co-listed with Int St 390-0-23)

This course will examine the roots and the drivers of Putin's foreign policy. It will look at the factors leading to the USSR's disintegration and resulting ethnic conflicts, the security issues requiring responses from the U.S., and the decision-making processes in responding to these challenges.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was the twentieth century's last in a series of collapses of multinational empires, and it presented the U.S. with the most difficult security challenges. In the immediate aftermath, U.S. policy makers were faced with not one but four nuclear powers (Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus), thousands of under-secured nuclear weapons and under-paid nuclear scientists, and several armed secessionist conflicts in the Caucasus and Moldova.

The collapse of the USSR meant the end of an uneasy, but by and large consensual, international security system. Russia has shown a willingness to reject that consensus. It has rejected Western support for the democratic aspirations of former Soviet states, willing even to use military force to deny countries like Ukraine and Georgia their sovereign rights to join NATO and the EU. Closer to home, it has employed various direct and indirect efforts to undermine Western solidarity and confidence in the liberal democratic system.

SLAVIC 392-0-20 –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 silent movies and 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 the Polish Film School and the Cinema of Morality Anxiety. Further, we will analyze themes of absurdism and the subversive, and later examine the changing forms, subjects, and elements of films in post-1989 Poland.

SLAVIC 441-0 – Studies in Russian Literary and Cultural Criticism

(Co-listed with CLS 481-0-20)

This course focuses on the theory and practice of Socialist Realism dogma in literature and beyond. We will examine Socialist Realism in contrast to the most innovative and experimental forms of modernism and avant-garde visual and literary narratives (from prose and poetry to political posters and commercial advertisements) forged in a crucible of intense political and cultural interaction in Russia and Europe in 1920- 1930-s. We focus on the ways the images and metaphors have been used as carriers of cultural value and ideological meaning, exploring such issues as word and image, gender and nationality, aesthetics and psychology, politics and propaganda. Since the course topic involves such disciplines as visual art, literature, cultural theory, and philosophy, readings include modern and contemporary aesthetic theories (Shklovsky, Gyorgy Lukacs, Boris Groys) and twentieth-century political and ethical philosophy (Gramsci, Ortega-i-Gasset, Walter Benjamin et al.), and psychology (Freud, Edward Bernays).

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