SLAVIC 77Q:
Russia's Weird Classic: Nikolai Gogol
This seminar investigates the work and life of Nikolai Gogol, the most eccentric of Russian authors, the founder of what was dubbed Fantastic (or Magic) Realism. Our investigation will be based on close reading of the works written in various genres and created in various stages of Gogol's literary career. This study provides a perspective on the relationship between Romanticism and Realism in Russian literature (the so-called "Natural School" of the 1830-1840s), and between the popular Ukrainian culture and "high" Russian and West European traditions in Gogol's oeuvre. The seminar traces Gogol's influences on subsequent Russian literature (Dostoevsky in particular) and investigates the impact of his work on XX century modernist literature, theatre, music, and painting (Vladimir Nabokov, literature of the absurd, Dmitry Shostakovich, Marc Chagall). The seminar is intended for students interested in literature and literary studies.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 78N:
Poetry to Prose: The Birth of the Great Russian Novel in Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin
Devoted to a close reading and detailed discussion of Alexander Pushkin's masterpiece in the context of XIX century Russian and continental literary history. Pushkin (1799-1837) is the founder of modern Russian literature; his place in it is comparable to that of Shakespeare in Britain. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2013
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 88N:
UKRAINE AT A CROSSROADS
Literally meaning "borderland," Ukraine has embodied in-betweeness in all possible ways. In the course, we will consider the historical permeability of its territorial, linguistic, and ethnic borders as an opportunity to explore the multiple dimensions of Ukraine's relations its neighbors. The reading materials for the course include the earliest records of Herodotus about the prehistoric Ukrainian civilizations, the cultural legacy of Kyivan Rus¿ and baroque, as well as artistic works created during romanticism, realism, modernism, and postmodernism. In addition to learning how to interpret literary texts, we will examine the works of visual and performative arts which shape modern Ukraine and create several cartographic projects with the use of GIS tools. All required texts are in English. No knowledge of Ukrainian is required.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
SLAVIC 103Q:
Subversive Acts: Invention and Convention in the 20th Century
Course investigates a range of artistic, social, and political meanings of the term avant garde in the 20th century. Several major international avant-garde artifacts, texts, and films will be explored through the prism of artistic and political subversion. This course traces a wide range of aesthetic case studies, which offer unique visions of how art influences and subverts established social practices and challenges political ideologies.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 115:
Between Europe and Asia: Introduction to Russian Culture
The course investigates the main stages of Russian history and civilization. Taught in Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| Units: 3
SLAVIC 118N:
Other People's Words: Folklore and Literature
What happens when you collect and use other people's words? This class considers folklore and literature based on it, focusing on the theme of objects that come to life and threaten their makers or owners (including Russian fairy tales and Nikolai Gogol's stories, the Golem legend and Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and Ovid's and Shaw's Pygmalion). We read essays by Jacob Grimm, Sigmund Freud, Roman Jakobson, and others, to understand what folklore can mean and how the oral and the written can interact. Students collect living folklore from a group of their choosing. This course fulfills the second-level Writing and Rhetoric Requirement (Write-2) and emphasizes oral and multimedia presentation.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, Writing 2
SLAVIC 129:
Russian Versification: History and Theory (SLAVIC 329)
A survey of metric forms, rhyming principles and stanzaic patterns in the Russian poetry of the 18th - 21st centuries. Taught in Russian. Prerequisite: Two years of Russian.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-4
SLAVIC 145:
Survey of Russian Literature: The Age of Experiment (SLAVIC 345)
This course discusses the transition from predominantly poetic to predominantly prosaic creativity in the Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century Russian literature and the birth of the great Russian novel. It covers three major Russian writers -- Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol -- and examines the changes in the Russian literary scene affected by their work. An emphasis is placed on close reading of literary texts and analysis of literary techniques employed in them. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 146:
The Great Russian Novel: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (SLAVIC 346)
Connections of philosophy and science to literary form in War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, Chekhov stories: alternative shapes of time, perception, significant action. Taught in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 147:
Modern Russian Literature and Culture: The Age of War and Revolution (SLAVIC 347)
The Age of Revolution: Readings in Russian Modernist Prose of the 1920-30s: What makes Russian modernist prose special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernist prose? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by Babel, Mandelstam, Zoshchenko, Platonov, Olesha and Bulgakov. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English. (This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 148:
Slavic Literature and Cultures since the Death of Stalin (SLAVIC 348)
The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 156:
Nabokov in the Transnational Context (COMPLIT 115, COMPLIT 315, SLAVIC 356)
Nabokov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel "The Gift," "Lolita" (the novel and screenplay), and "Pale Fire." Readings in English. Russian speakers will be encouraged to read Russian texts in original.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 160:
Cultural Hybridity in Central-Eastern Europe (SLAVIC 360)
Historically shaped by shifting borders and mixing of various cultures and languages, identities in-between have been in abundance in Central-Eastern Europe. This course offers a comprehensive study of the oeuvre of several major Central-European authors of modernity: the Ukrainian-Russian Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), the Czech-German-Jewish Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Austrian-Galician-Jewish Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), the Ukrainian-Galician Olha Kobylyans¿ka (1863-1942), the Russian-German Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), the Jewish-Polish-Galician Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), and the Polish-Argentinean Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969). Performing their selves in two or more cultures, these writers were engaged in identity games and produced hybrid texts with which they intervened into the major culture as others. In the course, we will apply post-structuralist and post-colonial concepts such as minor language, heterotopia, in-betweenness, mimicry, indeterminacy, exile, displacement, and transnationalism to the study of the writers oeuvres. We will also master the sociolinguistic analysis of such multi-lingual phenomena as self-translation, code-switching, and calquing and examine various versions of the same text to uncover the palimpsest of hybrid identities.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 165:
City Myth: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sites of Memory (SLAVIC 365)
How does memory work in Soviet and post-Soviet space? How do cities create and transform memory? This course uncovers the layers of cultural history in four Russian and Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. All four cities were imagined as utopian projects and all underwent transformation and destruction in the 20th century; their earlier layers exist only in literary texts and films. Readings combine literary and critical theory (Benjamin,Foucault, Barthes, Lotman) with fiction and films (Akhmatova, Andrukhovych, Babel, Bitov, Bulgakov, Bunin, Paradzhanov, Sokurov, Trifonov, Zhabotinsky, Vertov, Zeldovich) that display the ongoing collective memory work on the Soviet legacy. Students will create cartographic projects with Google Maps, Earth and Tour Builder, and HyperCities that visualize the urban palimpsest of cities undergoing major transformations.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 179:
Literature from Medieval Rus' and Early Modern Russia (SLAVIC 379)
This course offers a survey of the culture of the East Slavs from the 9th to the 17th centuries. The emphasis will be on written literature, visual arts, and religion. Most of the texts that the East Slavs had produced during the time period were influenced and borrowed from Byzantium therefore we will examine the regional variations in the adopted culture of early Rus', as well as its response to Mongol Rule, the impact on culture of political consolidation around Moscow beginning in the 15th century, and the responses to "Westernization" in the 15th-17th centuries. We will pay special attention to stylistics, poetics, and language transformation through the reading of the texts in the original Old Rus¿ian language. Knowledge of Old-Church Slavonic is required.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 181:
Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81)
Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track. Majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature, with particular focus on the question of value: what, if anything, does engagement with literary works do for our lives? Issues include aesthetic self-fashioning, the paradox of tragedy, the paradox of caring, the truth-value of fiction, metaphor, authorship, irony, make-believe, expression, edification, clarification, and training. Readings are drawn from literature and film, philosophical theories of art, and stylistically interesting works of philosophy. Authors may include Sophocles, Chaucer, Dickinson, Proust, Woolf, Borges, Beckett, Kundera, Charlie Kaufman; Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas; Plato, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Taught in English.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 184:
Word & Image: From the Soviet Avant-Garde to the Late Soviet Post-Modernism (SLAVIC 384)
The course investigates the interaction and tension between visual and textual components present in the early Soviet avant-garde and the late Soviet postmodernism. It explores a broad range of materials: futurist books (Mayakovsky-Rodchenko; Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh), photo-montage experiments of the 1930s, Ilya Kabakov's art, Andrei Monastyrsky's performances, Vladimir Sorokin's experimental novels and Dmitrii Prigov media projects. Taught in English. (This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 185:
Cinemato-graph (FILMSTUD 131, FILMSTUD 331, SLAVIC 285)
The term cinematography, which literally means "inscribing motion," tends to lose the "graphic" part in modern use. However, several influential film-makers not only practiced the art of "inscribing motion" but also wrote texts discussing the aesthetic premises of cinematographic art. This course explores theories of cinema as propagated by the following film-makers: Vertov, Eisenstein, Godard, Bresson, Antonioni, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Greenaway, and Lynch. Selected key texts will be supplemented by screenings of classic films, indicative of each director's work.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 187:
Russian Poetry of the 18th and 19th Centuries (SLAVIC 387)
A survey of Russian poetry from Lomonosov to Vladinmir Solov'ev. Close reading of lyrical poems. Prerequisite: 3rd Year Russian Language
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 188:
20th century Russian Poetry: From Aleksandr Blok to Joseph Brodsky (SLAVIC 388)
Developments in and 20th-century Russian poetry including symbolism, acmeism, futurism, and literature of the absurd. Emphasis is on close readings of individual poems. Taught in Russian.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 190:
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophical, Social, and Ethical Thought (COMPLIT 190, COMPLIT 390, SLAVIC 390)
Anna Karenina, the novel as a case study in the contest between "modernity" and "tradition," their ethical order, ideology, cultural codes, and philosophies. Images of society, women and men in Tolstoy v. those of his contemporaries: Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Freud. Open to juniors, seniors and graduate students. Requirements: three interpretive essays (500-1000 words each). Analysis of a passage from the novel; AK refracted through a "philosophical" prism and vice versa (30% each); class discussion and Forum (10%).
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
SLAVIC 194:
Russia: Literature, Film, Identity, Alterity (SLAVIC 394)
How do Russian literature and film imagine Russian identity ¿ and, in contrast, the ethnic or national Other? Does political and literary theory analyzing national identity and the literary imagination elsewhere hold true in the Russian context? Texts include works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Blok, Mayakovsky, Platonov; Soviet and post-Soviet films; theory and history. Recommended for returnees from Moscow, Slavic majors, and CREEES MA students. Accepted for IR credit. Readings in English and films subtitled; additional section for Russian readers. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2012
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
SLAVIC 195:
Russian and East European Theater (SLAVIC 395)
Evolution of modernist Russian/EEur. dramaturgy, theatrical practices, landmark productions from Chekhov-Meyerhold-Grotowski to present; re-performance of classics; techniques of embodiment. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 198:
Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature (JEWISHST 148, JEWISHST 348, SLAVIC 398)
Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolving language ideologies. We focus on major literary and sociolinguistic texts. Reading and discussion in English; students should have some reading knowledge of at least one relevant language as well.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 199:
Individual Work for Undergraduates
Open to Russian majors or students working on special projects. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
SLAVIC 200:
Proseminar in Literary Theory and Study of Russian Literature
Introduction to advance study of Russian literature and culture: profession, discipline, theoretical perspectives. Variety of approaches, from semiological to psychoanalytic, phenomenological, historical, and sociological; practical exercises in the analysis of verse, narrative, and visual representation in literature and art. Three short essays (800 words) and a review of a recent monograph on Russian literature and culture. Required for graduate students and honors seniors in Russian; first-year graduate students must enroll during their first quarter. Prerequisites: Knowledge of Russian language and literature
Last offered: Autumn 2012
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 218:
Modernist Journeys
Radical displacements took place in the Soviet Union of the 1920-30s: immigration, war, forced relocation, labor camps, and, in very rare cases, travel for leisure. In spite of these sweeping movements of dislocation, this was the time when the Soviet subjectivity was formed. Modernist Journeys explores theoretical, biographic and artistic texts by key writers and artists of the period who contributed to the formation (or disintegration) of the Soviet man: Sergei Tretiakov, Evgenii Zamiatin, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Platonov, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Dziga Vertov, among others.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 224:
The Russian Postmodern Text
What is the place of postmodernism in Russia? The course aims to answer the question by engaging with theories of postmodernity (Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida) and through close reading of several gems of Russian postmodern literature and art: Venedikt Erofeeva¿s Moscow-Petushki, Sasha Sokolov's School for Fools, Vladimir Sorokin's Norma, Dmitrii Prigova¿s selected poems, and Ilya Kabakov texts. Texts read in Russian. Taught in Russian
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 226:
BAKHTIN AND HIS LEGACY
"Quests for my own word are in fact quests for a word that is not my own, a word that is more than myself," writes Mikhail Bakhtin towards the end of his life. It was this ceaseless pursuit of another word that allowed Bakhtin, one of the most distinguished literary critics of the twentieth century, to author several influential literary theory concepts, many of which deal with the ideas of multiplicity, diversity and unfinalizability. The seminar explores these core concepts through close reading of key texts in English and investigates their reverberations in the writings of other thinkers such as Kristeva, de Man and Derrida
Last offered: Winter 2015
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 230:
18th Century Russian Literature
For graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Russian literature of the long 18th century, from the late 1600s to 1800. Readings in the Baroque, Neoclassicism and Sentimentalism. Major works are examined in their literary and historical context and also in relation to the principal subcultures of the period, including the court, academy, church and Old Believer diaspora.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 5
SLAVIC 235:
Late and Post-Soviet Literature
This course will cover major trends and in Russian literature of the late and post-Soviet periods. We will give some consideration of related developments in art and cinema. Readings will be in Russian, and course discussions will be in English.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 236:
The Russian Long Take
"Time flows in a film not by virtue but in defiance of montage-cuts," wrote the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The course explores the phenomenon of long take (a single continuous shot which presents `a vision of time') and its aesthetic and philosophical significance to the art of cinema. Key films by cult auteurs (Tarkovsky, Paradjanov, Tarr and Sokurov among others) will be used as case studies and read through the prism of film theory (Béla Balázs, Andre Bazin, Gilles Deleuze, Maya Deren, Jean Epstein, and Slavoj Zizek).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 240:
The Yiddish Story (AMSTUD 240Y, JEWISHST 240)
The Yiddish language is associated with jokes, folktales, and miracle legends, as well as modern stories. This class traces the development of Yiddish literature through these short oral and written forms, following Jewish writers out of the East European market town to cities in the Soviet Union, Israel, and especially the United States. We conclude with stories written in other languages about Yiddish writers. Readings include Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Esther Singer-Kreitman, Cynthia Ozick, and Dina Rubina. Readings in English; optional discussion section for students who read Yiddish.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 242:
Artists and Power: Eastern European Literature and Film from 1945 to 1991
During the Cold War, the highly diverse region of Eastern Europe was largely united by a common political allegiance to the USSR. The oppressive politics of the Eastern Bloc regimes meant that artists were frequently compelled to respond to political pressure in their works. This situation has been interpreted according to the logic of the Cold War: artists were either courageous dissidents who opposed the regime or brainwashed conformists. In this course we will consider examples that conform to this frame--literature and film of political reform as well as models of Socialist Realism. In addition, however, we will also consider works of self-reflection, escapism, and every-day life under Socialism, in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the cultural history of the era. The course will include literature and film produced by artists from Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. All readings will be in English.
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 245:
Slavic Literary Theory: Formalism Structuralism Semiotics, Formalism and Structuralism
Introduction to seminal Slavic contributions to 20th c. literary theory (formalism, structuralism, semiotics) considered in broader intellectual historical context. First half of course to focus on central concepts of Russian formalism (material and device, defamiliarization, poetic language, narrative structure, literary evolution) through writings of Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, Tynianov, Jakobson and others. Second half to look at subsequent developments in Czech and French structuralism (Mukarovsky, Levi-Strauss, Barthes) and Soviet semiotics (Lotman).
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 251:
Dostoevsky: Narrative Performance and Literary Theory (COMPLIT 219)
In-depth engagement with a range of Dostoevsky's genres: early works (epistolary novella Poor Folk and experimental Double), major novels (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot), less-read shorter works ("A Faint Heart," "Bobok," and "The Meek One"), and genre-bending House of the Dead and Diary of a Writer. Course applies recent theory of autobiography, performance, repetition and narrative gaps, to Dostoevsky's transformations of genre, philosophical and dramatic discourse, and narrative performance. Slavic students read primary texts in Russian, other participants in translation. Course conducted in English. For graduate students; undergraduates with advanced linguistic and critical competence may enroll with consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 252:
Anton Chekhov
What does it mean to write like Chekhov? This class examines Chekhov as the quintessential modern writer and considers his Russian imperial context. We read his early and late prose and the major plays (Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, Cherry Orchard), as well as sample works by his contemporaries. Students write analytical papers and their own Chekhovian stories, and they perform a short play. Readings in English; optional discussion section for students who read Russian. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 260:
History and Politics of Russian Language (REES 260)
How did standard Russian develop? Who determines how the language is spoken and written? How does Russian interact with other languages of the region (such as Ukrainian and Yiddish)? This class examines the development of the standard literary Russian language, focusing on the 19th century, the Soviet period, and post-Soviet language politics. Taught in English, reading in Russian.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
SLAVIC 285:
Cinemato-graph (FILMSTUD 131, FILMSTUD 331, SLAVIC 185)
The term cinematography, which literally means "inscribing motion," tends to lose the "graphic" part in modern use. However, several influential film-makers not only practiced the art of "inscribing motion" but also wrote texts discussing the aesthetic premises of cinematographic art. This course explores theories of cinema as propagated by the following film-makers: Vertov, Eisenstein, Godard, Bresson, Antonioni, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Greenaway, and Lynch. Selected key texts will be supplemented by screenings of classic films, indicative of each director's work.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 300B:
Research Tools and Professionalization Workshop
This course introduces graduate students in Slavic Studies to library, archival, and web resources for research, grant opportunities, publication strategies, and professional timelines. Open to PhD students in the Slavic Department and other departments and to MA students in CREEES. NOTE: Those wishing to enroll, please contact Prof. Safran to obtain the course's meeting time and location.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1
SLAVIC 311:
Introduction to Old Church Slavic
The first written language of the Slavic people. Grammar. Primarily a skills course, with attention to the historical context of Old Church Slavic.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 315:
Isaac Babel and His Worlds
Isaac Babel, his ouevre, literary, theatrical, and cinematic; his milieu; cultural and historical setting; literary and cultural legacy. Taught in English, knowledge of Russian language and literature strongly recommended.
Last offered: Winter 2013
| Units: 3-4
SLAVIC 325:
Readings in Russian Realism
For graduate students or upper-level undergraduates. What did Realism mean for late imperial Russian writers? What has it meant for twentieth-century literary theory? As we seek to answer these questions, we read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Chekhov, alongside their brilliant but less often taught contemporaries such as Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leskov, Garshin, Korolenko, Gorky, Andreev, and Bunin. Taught in English; readings in Russian. Prerequisite: Three years of Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2015
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 326:
(Pseudo)Bakhtin: Marxism, Formalism and Psychoanalysis in the Early 20th-Century Cultural Discourse. (COMPLIT 326)
The course explores the works allegedly written by the great Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin but published under the names of his friends and colleagues. The three texts include critical engagements with Marxism, Formalism and Psychoanalysis¿key interpretative frameworks of the early 20th century. The seminar investigates core Bakhtinian concepts and their dialogic reverberations in the "pseudo-Bakhtinian" corpus.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
SLAVIC 327:
Boris Pasternak and the Poetry of the Russian Avant-garde
An emphasis is made on close reading of the poetry of Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Taught in Russian. Prerequisite: 3rd Year Russian Language
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 329:
Russian Versification: History and Theory (SLAVIC 129)
A survey of metric forms, rhyming principles and stanzaic patterns in the Russian poetry of the 18th - 21st centuries. Taught in Russian. Prerequisite: Two years of Russian.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-4
SLAVIC 340:
Russia's Castaway Classic: Andrei Platonov
"The power of devastation [Platonov's texts] inflict upon their subject matter exceeds by far any demands of social criticism and should be measured in units that have very little to do with literature as such," wrote Joseph Brodsky. Explores key texts of Andrei Platonov, who is frequently considered the greatest Russian prose writer of the twentieth century, and covers major critical approaches to his "devastating" oeuvre. The texts will be read in Russian, discussion in English.
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 345:
Survey of Russian Literature: The Age of Experiment (SLAVIC 145)
This course discusses the transition from predominantly poetic to predominantly prosaic creativity in the Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century Russian literature and the birth of the great Russian novel. It covers three major Russian writers -- Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol -- and examines the changes in the Russian literary scene affected by their work. An emphasis is placed on close reading of literary texts and analysis of literary techniques employed in them. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 346:
The Great Russian Novel: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (SLAVIC 146)
Connections of philosophy and science to literary form in War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, Chekhov stories: alternative shapes of time, perception, significant action. Taught in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 347:
Modern Russian Literature and Culture: The Age of War and Revolution (SLAVIC 147)
The Age of Revolution: Readings in Russian Modernist Prose of the 1920-30s: What makes Russian modernist prose special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernist prose? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by Babel, Mandelstam, Zoshchenko, Platonov, Olesha and Bulgakov. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English. (This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 348:
Slavic Literature and Cultures since the Death of Stalin (SLAVIC 148)
The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 356:
Nabokov in the Transnational Context (COMPLIT 115, COMPLIT 315, SLAVIC 156)
Nabokov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel "The Gift," "Lolita" (the novel and screenplay), and "Pale Fire." Readings in English. Russian speakers will be encouraged to read Russian texts in original.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 360:
Cultural Hybridity in Central-Eastern Europe (SLAVIC 160)
Historically shaped by shifting borders and mixing of various cultures and languages, identities in-between have been in abundance in Central-Eastern Europe. This course offers a comprehensive study of the oeuvre of several major Central-European authors of modernity: the Ukrainian-Russian Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), the Czech-German-Jewish Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Austrian-Galician-Jewish Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), the Ukrainian-Galician Olha Kobylyans¿ka (1863-1942), the Russian-German Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), the Jewish-Polish-Galician Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), and the Polish-Argentinean Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969). Performing their selves in two or more cultures, these writers were engaged in identity games and produced hybrid texts with which they intervened into the major culture as others. In the course, we will apply post-structuralist and post-colonial concepts such as minor language, heterotopia, in-betweenness, mimicry, indeterminacy, exile, displacement, and transnationalism to the study of the writers oeuvres. We will also master the sociolinguistic analysis of such multi-lingual phenomena as self-translation, code-switching, and calquing and examine various versions of the same text to uncover the palimpsest of hybrid identities.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 365:
City Myth: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sites of Memory (SLAVIC 165)
How does memory work in Soviet and post-Soviet space? How do cities create and transform memory? This course uncovers the layers of cultural history in four Russian and Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. All four cities were imagined as utopian projects and all underwent transformation and destruction in the 20th century; their earlier layers exist only in literary texts and films. Readings combine literary and critical theory (Benjamin,Foucault, Barthes, Lotman) with fiction and films (Akhmatova, Andrukhovych, Babel, Bitov, Bulgakov, Bunin, Paradzhanov, Sokurov, Trifonov, Zhabotinsky, Vertov, Zeldovich) that display the ongoing collective memory work on the Soviet legacy. Students will create cartographic projects with Google Maps, Earth and Tour Builder, and HyperCities that visualize the urban palimpsest of cities undergoing major transformations.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 369:
Folklore Theory and Slavic Folklore
Why do educated elites care about popular or folk culture, and how do they use it? An intellectual history of two centuries of folklore theory, with examples drawn from Eastern European (Slavic and Jewish) lore; students collect other folklore themselves and analyze it. Separate section for Russian readers.
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 1-3
SLAVIC 370:
Pushkin
Pushkin's poems, prose, and drafts in dialogue with contemporaries and cultural milieu. Emphasis on innovation and controversy in genre, lyrical form and personal idiom, shaping a public discourse. Taught in English.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 2
SLAVIC 372:
Osip Mandelstam In Context and the Russian Experience: 1891-1991
Osip Mandelstam from Symbolism to Acmeism, to Post-Modernism: poetry, thought, culture, politics, reception. Russian Symbolism (Baudelaire, Mallarme, Ivanov, Bely, Blok, Annensky, Kuzmin); Acmeism/Futurism; reception; Mandelstam in Soviet civilization; poet's social function; memory, biography and cultural theory; Acmeist paradigm in the late Soviet/post-Soviet poetry: Sots-Art, Kibirov, Gandlevsky, Rubinshtein, et al. Prerequisite: Advanced Russian strongly recommended.
Last offered: Autumn 2014
| Units: 1-4
SLAVIC 379:
Literature from Medieval Rus' and Early Modern Russia (SLAVIC 179)
This course offers a survey of the culture of the East Slavs from the 9th to the 17th centuries. The emphasis will be on written literature, visual arts, and religion. Most of the texts that the East Slavs had produced during the time period were influenced and borrowed from Byzantium therefore we will examine the regional variations in the adopted culture of early Rus', as well as its response to Mongol Rule, the impact on culture of political consolidation around Moscow beginning in the 15th century, and the responses to "Westernization" in the 15th-17th centuries. We will pay special attention to stylistics, poetics, and language transformation through the reading of the texts in the original Old Rus¿ian language. Knowledge of Old-Church Slavonic is required.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 384:
Word & Image: From the Soviet Avant-Garde to the Late Soviet Post-Modernism (SLAVIC 184)
The course investigates the interaction and tension between visual and textual components present in the early Soviet avant-garde and the late Soviet postmodernism. It explores a broad range of materials: futurist books (Mayakovsky-Rodchenko; Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh), photo-montage experiments of the 1930s, Ilya Kabakov's art, Andrei Monastyrsky's performances, Vladimir Sorokin's experimental novels and Dmitrii Prigov media projects. Taught in English. (This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units to satisfy a Ways requirement.)
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
SLAVIC 387:
Russian Poetry of the 18th and 19th Centuries (SLAVIC 187)
A survey of Russian poetry from Lomonosov to Vladinmir Solov'ev. Close reading of lyrical poems. Prerequisite: 3rd Year Russian Language
Terms: Win
| Units: 2-4
SLAVIC 388:
20th century Russian Poetry: From Aleksandr Blok to Joseph Brodsky (SLAVIC 188)
Developments in and 20th-century Russian poetry including symbolism, acmeism, futurism, and literature of the absurd. Emphasis is on close readings of individual poems. Taught in Russian.
Last offered: Winter 2016
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 390:
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophical, Social, and Ethical Thought (COMPLIT 190, COMPLIT 390, SLAVIC 190)
Anna Karenina, the novel as a case study in the contest between "modernity" and "tradition," their ethical order, ideology, cultural codes, and philosophies. Images of society, women and men in Tolstoy v. those of his contemporaries: Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Freud. Open to juniors, seniors and graduate students. Requirements: three interpretive essays (500-1000 words each). Analysis of a passage from the novel; AK refracted through a "philosophical" prism and vice versa (30% each); class discussion and Forum (10%).
Last offered: Winter 2014
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 394:
Russia: Literature, Film, Identity, Alterity (SLAVIC 194)
How do Russian literature and film imagine Russian identity ¿ and, in contrast, the ethnic or national Other? Does political and literary theory analyzing national identity and the literary imagination elsewhere hold true in the Russian context? Texts include works by Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Blok, Mayakovsky, Platonov; Soviet and post-Soviet films; theory and history. Recommended for returnees from Moscow, Slavic majors, and CREEES MA students. Accepted for IR credit. Readings in English and films subtitled; additional section for Russian readers. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2012
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 395:
Russian and East European Theater (SLAVIC 195)
Evolution of modernist Russian/EEur. dramaturgy, theatrical practices, landmark productions from Chekhov-Meyerhold-Grotowski to present; re-performance of classics; techniques of embodiment. Taught in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2015
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 398:
Writing Between Languages: The Case of Eastern European Jewish Literature (JEWISHST 148, JEWISHST 348, SLAVIC 198)
Eastern European Jews spoke and read Hebrew, Yiddish, and their co-territorial languages (Russian, Polish, etc.). In the modern period they developed secular literatures in all of them, and their writing reflected their own multilinguality and evolving language ideologies. We focus on major literary and sociolinguistic texts. Reading and discussion in English; students should have some reading knowledge of at least one relevant language as well.
Last offered: Spring 2014
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 399:
INDIVIDUAL WORK
Open to Russian majors or students working on special projects. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-15
| Repeatable
for credit
Terms: Sum
| Units: 0
| Repeatable
for credit
SLAVIC 802:
TGR Dissertation
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 0
| Repeatable
for credit
