Slavic Department

2016 – 2017 Undergraduate Courses

Please note, courses with an x after the number are offered in the Fall. Courses with a y are offered in the spring.

Russian Language

RUSS UN1101x – UN1102y:First Year Russian I and II. 5 pts. Prerequisites: for 1102: RUSS UN1101 or the equivalent. Grammar, reading, composition, and conversation. MTWR.

Section 001, 8:50 – 9:55 – Drennan, Erica

Section 002, 10:10 – 11:15 – Kun, Nataliya

Section 004, 1:10 – 2:15 – Lussier, Benjamin

Section 005, 2:40 – 3:45 – Senina, Vera

Section 006, 6:10 – 7:15 – Gluck, Michael

RUSS UN1201x-UN1202y: Second-year Russian, I and II. 5 pts. Prerequisites: For UN1201: RUSS V1102 or the equivalent. For UN1202: RUSS UN1201 or the equivalent. Drill practice in small groups. Reading, composition, and grammar review. MTWR.

Section 001, 8:50 – 9:55, Kun, Illya

Section 002, 8:50 – 9:55, Tereshchenko, Serhii

Section 003, 1:10 – 2:25,Mortensen, Mie

RUSS UN3101x-UN3102y:Third-Year Russian I and II. 4 pts. Prerequisites: RUSS UN1202 or the equivalent and the instructor’s 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. MWF.

Section 002, 10:10 – 11:25, A. Smyslova

Section 001, 1:10 – 2:25, N. Kun

RUSS UN3430x-UN3431y: Russian For Heritage Speakers I and II. 3 pts. A. Smyslova.
Review of Russian grammar and development of reading and writing skills for students with knowledge of spoken Russian. MW, 1:10 – 2:25.

RUSS GU4333x-GU4334y:Fourth-Year Russian I and II. 4 pts. , Maria Doubrovskaia. Prerequisites: Three years of college Russian and the instructor’s permission. Systematic study of problems in Russian syntax; written exercises, translations into Russian, and compositions. Conducted entirely in Russian. MWF, 2:40 – 3:55.

RUSS GU4350x: Moving to Advanced-Plus and Beyond I. 4 pts. A. Smyslova. Prerequisites: Seven semesters of college Russian. The course is designed to enable advanced and highly-motivated undergraduate and graduate students to be able to discuss their interests and special fields of competence in Russian in formal and informal settings with fluency and accuracy. The analysis in context of different representative texts of various kinds – verbal, visual, musical--will allow us to map cultural, sociopolitical and language complexities in Russia today. The course targets all four language competencies: speaking, listening, reading and writing, as well as cultural understanding. Conducted in Russian. MWF, 11:40 – 12:55.
RUSS GU4910x: Literary Translation. 3 pts. R. Meyer. 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. W, 4:10 – 6:00.

Russian Literature and Culture (in English)
RUSS UN3220x: Literature & Empire (19th Century Literature). 3pts. C. Popkin.
Knowledge of Russian not required. Explores the aesthetic and formal developments in Russian prose, especially the rise of the monumental 19th-century novel, as one manifestation of a complex array of national and cultural aspirations, humanistic and imperialist ones alike. Works by Pushkin, Lermonotov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. TR, 1:10 – 2:25.
RUSS UN3221y: Literature & Revolution. 3pts. E. Tyerman.
Survey of Russian literature from Symbolism to the culture of high Stalinism and post-Socialist realism of the 1960s and 1970s, including major works by Bely, Blok, Olesha, Babel, Bulgakov, Platonov, Zoshchenko, Kharms, Kataev, Pasternak, and Erofeev. Literature viewed in a multi-media context featuring music by Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, avant-garde and post-avant-garde visual music (from Malevich and Kandinsky to Komar and Melamid), and film. Knowledge of Russian is not required.TR, 1:10 – 2:25.
RUSS UN3222y: Tolstoy & Dostoevsky. 3 pts. L. Knapp.
Knowledge of Russian is not required. Analysis of major works of the two writers.
MW, 10:10 – 11:25.

RUSS UN3595x: Senior Seminar. 3pts. E. Tyerman.
A research and writing workshop designed to help students plan and execute a major research project, and communicate their ideas in a common scholarly language that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Content is determined by students' thesis topics, and includes general sessions on how to formulate a proposal and how to generate a bibliography. Students present the fruits of their research in class discussions, culminating in a full-length seminar presentation and the submission of the written thesis.
T, 4:10 – 6:00.
CLSLGU4003y. Central European Drama In The Twentieth Century 3 pts. I. Sanders
Focus will be on the often deceptive modernity of modern Central and East European theater and its reflection of the forces that shaped modern European society. It will be argued that the abstract, experimental drama of the twentieth-century avant-garde tradition seems less vital at the century's end than the mixed forms of Central and East European dramatists. Emphasis on the achievements of Central and East European theater will also provide a postmodern perspective on the various stylistic"isms" of the early twentieth century. TR, 6:10 – 7:25.

RUSS GU4006x. Russian Religious Thought, Praxis, and Literature. 3 points. L. Knapp.
This course examines the interaction of religious thought, praxis, and literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the Russian Empire sought to define it place in the world, many Russian writers and thinkers turned to religious experience as a source of meaning. A varied body of work emerged as they responded to the tradition of Russian Orthodoxy. The goals of this course are to acquaint students with key texts of Russian religious thought and to give students the knowledge and tools required for critical inquiry into the religious dimension of Russian literature and culture. MW, 2:40 – 3:55.

CLRS GU4011x: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the English Novel [In English]. 3 pts. L. Knapp. A close reading of works by Dostoevsky (NetochkaNezvanova; The Idiot; A Gentle Creature) and Tolstoy (Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; Family Happiness; Anna Karenina; The Kreutzer Sonata) in conjunction with related English novels (Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Eliot’s Middlemarch, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway). Knowledge of Russian not required. MW, 10:10 – 11:25.

RUSS GU4036y: Nabokov & Global Culture. 3 pts. V. Izmirlieva
In 1955, an American writer of Russian descent published in Paris a thin book that forever changed English language, American culture, and the international literary scene. That book, of course, was Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. In less than a decade, the novel had become a highly successful movie and a household name, “lolita” had entered transnational language, and Nabokov had become the most famous writer alive. This lecture course will begin with the novel (and films) that made Nabokov famous, then move back in time to trace the origins of the international literary legend in the young Russian émigré fleeing the Revolution. We will end our journey with a number of literary works, social concepts, artifacts, and cultural phenomena inspired by Nabokov, from Simone de Beauvoir’s Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and the Japanese “lolita” fashion craze to Gabriel GarcíaMárquez’s Memories of My Melancholy Whores, OrhanPamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants. We will speak of exile, memory and nostalgia, of hybrid cultural identities and cosmopolitan elites, of language, translation and multilingualism. All readings will be in English. TR, 10:10 – 11:25.

RUSS GU4107y: Russian Literature and Culture in the New Millennium. 3pts. E. Tyerman
Survey of Russian literature and culture from the late 1970s until today. Works by Petrushevskaya, Pelevin, Tolstaya, Sorokin, Ulitskaya, Akunin, Rubinshtein, Prigov, Vasilenko and others. Literature, visual art, and film, are examined in social and political context. MW, 11:40 – 12:55.
RUSS GU4109x: From the Rigid Rocks of Finland to the Fiery Colchis; Russia’s Self-Image in the Mirror of Music. 3pts.B. Gasparov.
This course offers a snapshot of Russian cultural history, from the age of Romanticism and realism to early twentieth-century modernism, to the Soviet time, made through the lens of most notable musical events of the epoch. While following highlights of the history of Russian music, from Glinka and the popular “romance” of Pushkin’s time to Schnittke and Gubaidullina, the course makes an attempt to build an overall picture of Russian music as integral part of Russian cultural identity with all the diversity of ideological and aesthetic trends that has contributed to it.
TR, 11:40 – 12:55.

RUSS GU4155x. History of Russian & Soviet Film 3 pts.E. Tyerman.
History of Russian & Soviet Cinema. 3 pts. This course surveys developments in Russian film history and style from the prerevolutionary beginnings of cinema through the Soviet and post-Soviet experience. We will be studying both the aesthetic qualities of the films and their historical and cultural contexts. Students will be exposed to a wide range of visual media, including experimental films of the 1920s, films on Russia's experience of World War II, Soviet classics, late Soviet and contemporary Russian films. Readings will include theoretical articles and selections from Russian film history and criticism. All readings are in English and the films will be screened with English subtitles. W, 6:10 – 8:00.

Russian Literature and Culture (in Russian)

RUSS UN3332x. Vvedenie v russkuiuliteraturu: Scary Stories. 3 pts.I. Reyfman.
Two years of college Russian or the instructor's permission. For non-native speakers of Russian. The course is devoted to the reading, analysis, and discussion of a number of Russian prose fiction works from the eighteenth to twentieth century. Its purpose is to give students an opportunity to apply their language skills to literature. It will teach students to read Russian literary texts as well as to talk and write about them. Its goal is, thus, twofold: to improve the students' linguistic skills and to introduce them to Russian literature and literary history. A close study in the original of the "scary stories" in Russian literature from the late eighteenth century. Conducted in Russian. MW, 1:10 – 2:25.

Slavic Literature and Culture
SLCL UN3001x. Slavic Cultures. 3 pts. A. Timberlake.
The history of Slavic peoples - Russians, Czechs, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, Bulgarians - is rife with transformations, some voluntary, some imposed. Against the background of a schematic external history, this course examines how Slavic peoples have responded to and have represented these transformations in various modes: historical writing, hagiography, polemics, drama, and fiction, folk poetry, music, visual art, and film. Activity ranges over lecture (for historical background) and discussion (of primary courses). TR, 10:10 – 11:25.
CLRS UN3307y: Adventures in Textual Paichnidology, or Playing Around with (Russian) Literature. 3 pts. B. Lussier. There’s a lot to be said for the virtues of playing around! While we may be accustomed to thinking that it consists of little more than frivolous, unproductive activity, this course proceeds from the premise that play is a serious business with a great deal of potential for enriching our creative, social, and scholarly lives. Over the course of this semester we will read a number of writers who suggest in their own way that play has deep aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological dimensions, while we puzzle through the complex interrelationships between literature and philosophy, science and the arts, the serious and the absurd. This is primarily intended to be a literature course, but it does have one foot firmly planted in philosophy and some of the course readings (especially in the first few weeks) will reflect this preoccupation. Most of these these texts are comparatively light, several are downright unconventional, and we will take a lighthearted, demystifying approach to all of them. While some previous experience reading and writing about philosophy might be helpful, it should not be required to do well in this course. MW, 4:10 – 5:25.
CLRS UN3308y: Russian Literature, A travel Guide. 3pts. M. Mortensen.
This course offers a tour of Russian literature, 7ilms, letters and travel descriptions depicting European and American cities. Rather than moving chronologically, the course will move geographically from one city to another. Within each speci7ic 1 “location,” we will, however, begin with the earliest text and end with the most recent in order to get a sense of how the Russian presence in and ideas about each city evolved over the century. The course will begin in London and then move to Berlin, then on to Paris, Italy and 7inally to America (primarily New York) and Mexico. The last section of the course is dedicated to what I called “imagined returns.” These last two weeks of the semester will provide a return to the Russian/ Soviet cities that have only been mentioned in the context of Western places up until this point. TR, 11:40 – 12:55.

RMAN GU4002x: Romanian Culture, Identity and Complexes3 pts.M. Momescu.

This course addresses the main problems that contribute to the making of Romanian identity, as fragmented or as controversial as it may seem to those who study it. The aim is to become familiar with the deepest patterns of Romanian identity, as we encounter it today, either in history, political studies, fieldwork in sociology or, simply, when we interact with Romanians. By using readings and presentations produced by Romanian specialists, we aim to be able to see the culture with an "insider's eye", as much as we can. This perspective will enable us to develop mechanisms of understanding the Romanian culture and mentality independently, at a more profound level and to reason upon them.

SLLN GU4005y. Introduction to Old Church Slavonic. 3 pts. A. Timberlake
An abridged course in Old Church Slavonic phonology and morphology, with some attention to the role of Church Slavonic in shaping the lexicon of modern Russia. M, 4:10 – 6:00.
CLSS GU4028y: In the Shadow of Empires: Literature of the South Slavs From Realism to Today.3 pts.A. Boskovic.

Readings and discussion of the most important works of the South Slavic writers from the second half of the 19th Century to the present. M, 4:10 – 6:00.

CLSLGU4995 Central European Jewish Literature: Assimilation and Its Discontents. 3pts.I. Sanders.
Examines prose and poetry by writers generally less accessible to the American student written in the major Central European languages: German, Hungarian, Czech and Polish. The problematics of assimilation, the search for identity, political commitment and disillusionment are major themes, along with the defining experienceof the century: the Holocaust; but becasue these writers are often more removed from their Jewishness, their perspective on these events and issues may be different. The influence of Franz Kafka on Central European writers, the post-Communist Jewish revival, and defining the Jewish voice in an otherwise disparate body of works. TR, 6:10 – 7:25.

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Literature and Culture

BCRS UN1101x-UN1102y: Elementary Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I and II. 4 pts. A. Boskovic. Essentials of the spoken and written language. Prepares students to read texts of moderate difficulty by the end of the first year. MWF, 10:10 – 11:25.

BCRS UN1201x-UN1202y: Intermediate Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I and II. 3 pts. A. Boskovic. Prerequisites: BCRS UN1102 or the equivalent. Readings in Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian literature in the original, with emphasis depending upon the needs of individual students. MW, 11:40 – 12:55.

BCRS GU4331x-GU4332y: Advanced Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I and II. 3 pts. A. Boskovic. Prerequisites: BCRS GU1202. Further develops skills in speaking, reading, and writing, using essays, short stories, films, and fragments of larger works. Reinforces basic grammar and introduces more complete structures. MW, 1:10 – 2:25.

Czech Language and Literatures

CZCH UN1101x-UN1102y: Elementary Czech, I and II. 4 pts.C. Harwood. Essentials of the spoken and written language. Prepare students to read texts of moderate difficulty by the end of the first year. TRF, 10:10 – 11:25.

CZCH UN1201x-UN1202y: Intermediate Czech, I and II. 4 pts. C. Harwood. Prerequisites: CZCH UN1102 or the equivalent. Rapid review of grammar. Readings in contemporary fiction and nonfiction, depending upon the interests of individual students. TRF, 11:40 – 12:55.

GU4035. The Writers of Prague 3 pts. C. Harwood.
A survey of the Czech, German, and German-Jewish literary cultures of Prague from 1910 to 1920. Special attention to Hašek, Čapek, Kafka, Werfel, and Rilke. Parallel reading lists available in English and in the original. TR, 2:40 – 3:55.

CLCZ GU4333x – GU4434y: Readings in Czech Literature I and II. 3 pts. C. Harwood.
Prerequisites: Two years of college Czech or the equivalent A close study in the original of representative works of Czech literature. Discussion and writing assignments in Czech aimed at developing advanced language proficiency. TR, 1:10 – 2:25.

Polish Language and Literatures

POLI UN1101x-UN1102y: Elementary Polish, I and II. 4 pts. C. Caes. Essentials of the spoken and written language. Prepares students to read texts of moderate difficulty by the end of the first year. MWF, 10:10 – 11:25.

POLI UN1201x-UN1202y: Intermediate Polish, I and II. 4 pts. C. Caes. Prerequisites: POLI UN1102 or the equivalent. Rapid review of grammar; readings in contemporary nonfiction or fiction, depending on the interests of individual students. MWF, 1:10 – 2:25.

POLI GU4101x-GU4102y: Advanced Polish, I and II. 4 pts. C. Caes. Prerequisites: 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. MW, 2:40 – 3:55.

Ukrainian Language and Literature

UKRN UN1101x-UN1102y: Elementary Ukrainian, I and II. 4 pts. Y. Shevchuk. Designed 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. MWF, 8:40 – 9:55.

UKRN UN1201x-UN1202y: Intermediate Ukrainian, I and II. 3 pts. Y. Shevchuk. Prerequisites: 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. MW, 10:10 – 11:25.

UKRN GU4001x-GU4002y: Advanced Ukrainian, I and II. 3 pts. Y. Shevchuk. Prerequisites: UKRN GU1202 or the equivalent. The course is for students who wish to develop their mastery of Ukrainian. Further study of grammar includes patterns of word formation, participles, gerunds, declension of numerals, and a more in-depth study of difficult subjects, such as verbal aspect and verbs of motion. The material is drawn from classical and contemporary Ukrainian literature, press, electronic media, and film. Taught almost exclusively in Ukrainian. MW, 1:10 – 2:25.

UKRN GU4037. The Aura of Soviet Ukrainian Modernism. 3 pts. M. Andryczyk.
This course studies the renaissance in Ukrainian culture of the 1920s - a period of revolution, experimentation, vibrant expression and polemics. Focusing on the most important developments in literature, as well as on the intellectual debates they inspired, the course will also examine the major achievements in Ukrainian theater, visual art and film as integral components of the cultural spirit that defined the era. Additionally, the course also looks at the subsequent implementation of socialist realism and its impact on Ukrainian culture and on the cultural leaders of the renaissance. The course treats one of the most important periods of Ukrainian culture andexamines its lasting impact on today's Ukraine. This period produced several world-renowned cultural figures, whose connections with 1920s Ukraine have only recently begun to be discussed. The course will be complemented by film screenings, presentations of visual art and rare publications from this period. Entirely in English with a parallel reading list for those who read Ukrainian. TR, 1:10 – 2:40.