Slavic Languages and Literature
For questions about specific courses, contact the department.
For questions about specific courses, contact the department.
Courses
Course Number
BCRS1101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 10:10-11:25We 10:10-11:25Fr 10:10-11:25Section/Call Number
001/10751Enrollment
3 of 12Instructor
Aleksandar BoskovicCourse Number
BCRS2101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 11:40-12:55We 11:40-12:55Fr 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/10752Enrollment
3 of 12Instructor
Aleksandar BoskovicPoets, Rebels, Exiles examines the successive generations of the most provocative and influential Russian and Russian Jewish writers and artists who brought the cataclysm of the Soviet and post-Soviet century to North America. From Joseph Brodsky—the bad boy bard of Soviet Russia and a protégé of Anna Akhmatova, who served 18 months of hard labor near the North Pole for social parasitism before being exiled—to the most recent artistic descendants, this course will interrogate diaspora, memory, and nostalgia in the cultural production of immigrants and exiles.
Course Number
CLRS4037W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Th 14:10-16:00Section/Call Number
001/11476Enrollment
5 of 25Instructor
Anna KatsnelsonThe Cold War epoch saw broad transformations in science, technology, and politics. At their nexus a new knowledge was proclaimed, cybernetics, a putative universal science of communication and control. It has disappeared so completely that most have forgotten that it ever existed. Its failure seems complete and final. Yet in another sense, cybernetics was so powerful and successful that the concepts, habits, and institutions born with it have become intrinsic parts of our world and how we make sense of it. Key cybernetic concepts of information, system, and feedback are now fundamental to our basic ways of understanding the mind, brain and computer, of grasping the economy and ecology, and finally of imagining the nature of human life itself. This course will trace the echoes of the cybernetic explosion from the wake of World War II to the onset of Silicon Valley euphoria.
Course Number
CLRS4213W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 14:10-16:00Section/Call Number
001/11518Enrollment
8 of 15Instructor
Adam LeedsThis seminar course will provide a punctual survey of trends and figures in the experimental cultures of East Central Europe. Formations include the avant-gardes (first, postwar, and postcommunist); experimental Modernisms and Postmodernisms; alternative film, media, and visual culture; and formally inventive responses to exceptional historical circumstances. Proceeding roughly chronologically from early twentieth to early twenty-first centuries, we will examine expressionist/surrealistic painting and drama; zenithist hybrid genres such as cinépoetry and proto-conceptualist writing; mixed-media relief sculpture; post-conceptual art; experimental and animated film; and avant-garde classical music. In terms of theory, we will draw on regional and global approaches to artistic experimentation ranging from Marxist and other theories of value through discourses of the body and sexuality in culture to contemporary affect theory. The course will be taught in English with material drawn primarily from Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Each session will include a lecture followed by discussion.
Course Number
CLSL4011W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 16:10-18:00Section/Call Number
001/10754Enrollment
10 of 18Instructor
Aleksandar BoskovicChristopher CaesHow do you write literature in the midst of catastrophe? To whom do you write if you don’t know whether your readership will survive? Or that you yourself will survive? How do you theorize society when the social fabric is tearing apart? How do you develop a concept of human rights at a time when mass extermination is deemed legal? How do you write Jewish history when Jewish future seems uncertain?
This course offers a survey of the literature and intellectual history written during World War II (1939-1945) both in Nazi occupied Europe and in the free world, written primarily, but not exclusively, by Jews. We will read novels, poems, science fiction, historical fiction, legal theory and social theory and explore how intellectuals around the world responded to the extermination of European Jewry as it happened and how they changed their understanding of what it means to be a public intellectual, what it means to be Jewish, and what it means to be human.
The aim of the course is threefold. First, it offers a survey of the Jewish experience during WWII, in France, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Romania, Greece, Palestine, Morocco, Iraq, the USSR, Argentina, and the United States. Second, it introduces some of the major contemporary debates in holocaust studies. Finally, it provides a space for a methodological reflection on how literary analysis, cultural studies, and historical research intersect.
Course Number
CLSL4012W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
We 10:10-12:00Section/Call Number
001/13510Enrollment
0 of 12Instructor
Offer DynesThe course will discuss how filmmaking has been used as an instrument of power and imperial domination in the Soviet Union as well as on post-Soviet space since 1991. A body of selected films by Soviet and post-Soviet directors which exemplify the function of filmmaking as a tool of appropriation of the colonized, their cultural and political subordination by the Soviet center will be examined in terms of postcolonial theories. The course will focus both on Russian cinema and often overlooked work of Ukrainian, Georgian, Belarusian, Armenian, etc. national film schools and how they participated in the communist project of fostering a «new historic community of the Soviet people» as well as resisted it by generating, in hidden and, since 1991, overt and increasingly assertive ways their own counter-narratives. Close attention will be paid to the new Russian film as it re-invents itself within the post-Soviet imperial momentum projected on the former Soviet colonies.
Course Number
CLSL4075W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 18:10-22:00Section/Call Number
001/10737Enrollment
5 of 25Instructor
Yuri ShevchukA graduate seminar which invites students to re-read contemporary history of Eastern Europe through the lens of women’s resistance. Women are no less effective history agents than men, but they usually act outside of dominant power structures, opposing and subverting them through imaginative strategies of resistance in the everyday. Focused on the Soviet Union and the contemporary states of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, this course explores female resistance channeled through visual and performance art, fiction and documentary, poetry and film. Structured in reverse chronological order, it begins with current manifestations of women’s resistance, from artistic interventions in the War in Ukraine to Pussy Riot’s punk performances and the political activism of the Belarus Free Theater. It then investigates the genealogy of these contemporary forms of resistance in underground feminist and dissident activism during the late Soviet period, a whole range of resistance articulations through the female experiences of WW2, the GULAG and Stalinist purges, and female agency in subverting gender norms since the Bolshevik sexual Revolution of the 1920s. All reading will be available in English.
Open to graduate students. Advanced undergraduates can register with instructor’s permission. No Russian, Ukrainian or Belarusian required.
Course Number
CLSL6128G001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
We 16:10-18:00Section/Call Number
001/10985Enrollment
5 of 12Instructor
Valentina IzmirlievaCourse Number
CZCH1101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 10:10-11:25Th 10:10-11:25Fr 10:10-11:25Section/Call Number
001/10748Enrollment
1 of 12Instructor
Christopher HarwoodCourse Number
CZCH2101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 11:40-12:55Th 11:40-12:55Fr 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/10749Enrollment
2 of 12Instructor
Christopher HarwoodCourse Number
CZCH4333W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 10:10-11:25We 10:10-11:25Section/Call Number
001/10750Enrollment
2 of 12Instructor
Christopher HarwoodCourse Number
POLI1101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 11:40-12:55We 11:40-12:55Th 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/11064Enrollment
4 of 12Instructor
Madeleine Pulman-JonesCourse Number
POLI2101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 11:40-12:55Th 11:40-12:55Fr 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/10755Enrollment
3 of 12Instructor
Christopher CaesPrerequisites: two years of college Polish or the instructor's permission. Extensive readings from 19th- and 20th-century texts in the original. Both fiction and nonfiction, with emphasis depending on the interests and needs of individual students.
Course Number
POLI4101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 13:10-14:25Th 13:10-14:25Section/Call Number
001/10756Enrollment
0 of 12Instructor
Christopher CaesGrammar, reading, composition, and conversation.
Course Number
RUSS1101V001Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 08:50-09:55Tu 08:50-09:55We 08:50-09:55Th 08:50-09:55Section/Call Number
001/12493Enrollment
2 of 12Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.
Course Number
RUSS1101V002Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 10:10-11:15Tu 10:10-11:15We 10:10-11:15Th 10:10-11:15Section/Call Number
002/12498Enrollment
7 of 12Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.
Course Number
RUSS1101V003Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 14:40-15:45Tu 14:40-15:45We 14:40-15:45Th 14:40-15:45Section/Call Number
003/12515Enrollment
2 of 12Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation.
Course Number
RUSS1101V004Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 18:10-19:15Tu 18:10-19:15We 18:10-19:15Th 18:10-19:15Section/Call Number
004/12508Enrollment
2 of 12Prerequisites: RUSS UN1102 or the equivalent. Drill practice in small groups. Reading, composition, and grammar review.Off-sequence
Course Number
RUSS2101V001Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 10:10-11:15Tu 10:10-11:15We 10:10-11:15Th 10:10-11:15Section/Call Number
001/12521Enrollment
5 of 12Prerequisites: RUSS UN1102 or the equivalent. Drill practice in small groups. Reading, composition, and grammar review.Off-sequence
Course Number
RUSS2101V002Format
In-PersonPoints
5 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 13:10-14:15Tu 13:10-14:15We 13:10-14:15Th 13:10-14:15Section/Call Number
002/12525Enrollment
6 of 12Course Number
RUSS3101V001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 10:10-11:25We 10:10-11:25Fr 10:10-11:25Section/Call Number
001/12529Enrollment
9 of 15Instructor
Tatiana MikhailovaCourse Number
RUSS3220V001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 10:10-11:25Th 10:10-11:25Section/Call Number
001/00652Enrollment
22 of 25Instructor
John WrightTricksters constitute one of the universal themes or tropes in mythology and folklore of many cultures. Through the discussions of ancient Greek, North-American, African, Paleo- Asiatic, Scandinavian, African-American, Muslim and Jewish myths and folklore about tricksters, the course will telescope the cultural functions of the comedic transgression as a form of social critique; it will also highlight cynicism, its productive and dangerous aspects. Then we’ll introduce different historical subtypes of tricksters, such as buffoon, fool, jester, holy fool, kynik, picaro, adventurer, imposter, con artist, female and transgender tricksters, thus moving through premodern and early modern periods. Each type of the trickster is illustrated by literary examples from different world cultures (European and non-European alike) as well as theoretical works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Peter Sloterdijk. Finally, the role of the trickster in modernity will be discussed through the case of Soviet tricksters, who had become true superstars manifesting the resistance to repressive political ideology by the means of “cynical reason”. The course will culminate in the trial of the most popular and important trickster in Soviet culture, Ostap Bender from Ilf and Petrov’s satirical novels. In the course’s finale will discuss the role of tricksters in contemporary politics.
Course Number
RUSS3230V001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 16:10-17:25We 16:10-17:25Section/Call Number
001/13890Enrollment
50 of 50Instructor
Mark LipovetskyCourse Number
RUSS3333V001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 11:40-12:55We 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/10730Enrollment
6 of 18Instructor
Irina ReyfmanPrerequisites: RUSS V3430 or the instructor's 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 V3431, MEET A TWO YEAR FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT. Conducted in Russian.
Course Number
RUSS3430V001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 13:10-14:25We 13:10-14:25Section/Call Number
001/12535Enrollment
6 of 15Instructor
Alla SmyslovaCourse Number
RUSS3595V001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 16:10-18:00Section/Call Number
001/00651Enrollment
4 of 8Instructor
John WrightIf you have a passion for music, like listening to music, or simply want to explore the realm of Russian melodies, this course is made for you. In the class, we'll focus on the development and strengthening of “four language skills”: speaking, listening, reading, and writing in Russian. You will learn to analyze and interpret lyrics, compare and contrast music across generations, discuss the values of a certain generation of people, and argue the popularity of music genres in specific time periods. Beyond linguistic proficiency, the course will immerse you in a comprehensive exploration of common knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, cultural traditions, and behavioral patterns unique to the people of Russia.
Course Number
RUSS4127W001Format
In-PersonPoints
3 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Tu 13:10-14:25Th 13:10-14:25Section/Call Number
001/12559Enrollment
4 of 15Instructor
Marina TsylinaCourse Number
RUSS4342W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 14:40-15:55We 14:40-15:55Fr 14:40-15:55Section/Call Number
001/12551Enrollment
5 of 15Instructor
Tatiana MikhailovaThe goal of this seminar is twofold: 1) To introduce students to the variety of styles, tropes and forms of Russian lyrical poetry in the 20th -21st cc.; 2) To develop and practice analytical skills. The material will include poems by both famous and lesser known poets, with an accent on the latter. For each class students will be required to familiarize themselves with readings either justifying an analytical approach or providing a sample for the analysis, and to be prepared to analyze 4-5 original texts. Each seminar will provide examples of a given subgenre of Russian lyrics, spreading from the early 20th c. to the present-day poetry (some units are spread for two or three classes, e.g. – 2 and 3, 10-12). Intentionally, texts for the analysis represent different trends and groups, spreading from Neo-Classical modernism to contemporary performative poetry. Having practiced the analysis of poetic texts during entire semester, for their final project, students will have to produce a comprehensive analysis of a lyrical poem (optionally, a poetic cycle) of their choosing placing it in the context of Russian poetic traditions.
Course Number
RUSS6223G001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
We 14:10-16:00Section/Call Number
001/10729Enrollment
0 of 12Instructor
Mark LipovetskyRonald MeyerDesigned for students with little or no knowledge of Ukrainian. Basic grammar structures are introduced and reinforced, with equal emphasis on developing oral and written communication skills. Specific attention to acquisition of high-frequency vocabulary and its optimal use in real-life settings.
Course Number
UKRN1101W001Format
In-PersonPoints
4 ptsFall 2024
Times/Location
Mo 11:40-12:55We 11:40-12:55Th 11:40-12:55Section/Call Number
001/10733Enrollment
4 of 12Instructor
Yuri ShevchukPrerequisites: UKRN UN1102 or the equivalent. Reviews and reinforces the fundamentals of grammar and a core vocabulary from daily life. Principal emphasis is placed on further development of communicative skills (oral and written). Verbal aspect and verbs of motion receive special attention.