Results for SLAVIC

Preference to sophomores. An investigation of the works and life of Nikolai Gogol, the most eccentric of Russian authors and the founder of what is dubbed Fantastic Realism. Our investigation will be based on close reading of works written in various genres and created in various stages of Gogol's literary career. Taught in English.

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.

This course offers a short survey of the main stages of the history of Russian statehood from Kievan Rus' to the present, post-Soviet situation. It also covers most important trends in Russian intellectual and religious life, as well as major developments in Russian literature, music, and visual arts from medieval age to 20th century avant-garde, socialist realism and current tendencies in culture. Offered as a part of the "Gateways to the World" program.

The history and theory of Russian versification from the 17th to the 20th century. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of Russian.

The course investigates the transition from poetry to prose and the rise of Russian novel and discusses Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin", his "Tales of Belkin" and "The Captain's Daughter", Mikhail Lermontov's psychological novel, "A Hero of Our Time", and Nikolay Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" and "Dead Souls". Taught in English. Graduate students will have the opportunity to work with texts in original.

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.

Surveys major authors (may include: Mayakovsky, Babel, Kharms, Platonov, Bunin, Nabokov, Bulgakov, and Pasternak) and artistic tendencies in 20th century Russian literature and culture in the context of social and political turmoil in Russia from the 1917 revolution to the demise of Stalinism. An emphasis is placed on close reading and detailed analysis of artistic qualities of the literary works. Taught in English.

Russian culture and society since 1953 through literature (in English translation). Topics: opposition and dissent; generational conflict; modernization; everyday life, gender, ethnicity, class, citizenship, exit from communism. Literature of the "Thaw," state-published and samizdat, "village" and "cosmopolitan," the new emigration, Sots-Art, and the Russian "post-modern." Solzhenistyn, Shalamov, Trifonov, Siniavsky-Tertz, Erofeev, Dovlatov, Brodsky, Petrushevskaya, Pelevin, Ulitskaya, Sorokin. Requirements: three reaction papers and final exam (UG); research paper for graduate credit (extra section for graduate students; may register for SLAVLIT 399)

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.

From earliest times through the 17th century. The development of literary and historical genres, and links among literature and art, architecture, and religious culture. Readings in English; graduate students read in original.

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. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

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.

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%).

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.

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.

Open to Russian majors or students working on special projects. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The history and theory of Russian versification from the 17th to the 20th century. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of Russian.

The course investigates the transition from poetry to prose and the rise of Russian novel and discusses Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin", his "Tales of Belkin" and "The Captain's Daughter", Mikhail Lermontov's psychological novel, "A Hero of Our Time", and Nikolay Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" and "Dead Souls". Taught in English. Graduate students will have the opportunity to work with texts in original.

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.

Surveys major authors (may include: Mayakovsky, Babel, Kharms, Platonov, Bunin, Nabokov, Bulgakov, and Pasternak) and artistic tendencies in 20th century Russian literature and culture in the context of social and political turmoil in Russia from the 1917 revolution to the demise of Stalinism. An emphasis is placed on close reading and detailed analysis of artistic qualities of the literary works. Taught in English.

Russian culture and society since 1953 through literature (in English translation). Topics: opposition and dissent; generational conflict; modernization; everyday life, gender, ethnicity, class, citizenship, exit from communism. Literature of the "Thaw," state-published and samizdat, "village" and "cosmopolitan," the new emigration, Sots-Art, and the Russian "post-modern." Solzhenistyn, Shalamov, Trifonov, Siniavsky-Tertz, Erofeev, Dovlatov, Brodsky, Petrushevskaya, Pelevin, Ulitskaya, Sorokin. Requirements: three reaction papers and final exam (UG); research paper for graduate credit (extra section for graduate students; may register for SLAVLIT 399)

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.

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.

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.

From earliest times through the 17th century. The development of literary and historical genres, and links among literature and art, architecture, and religious culture. Readings in English; graduate students read in original.

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.

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%).

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.

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.

Open to Russian majors or students working on special projects. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required of majors in Russian language and literature; open to undergraduates who have completed three years of Russian, and to graduate students. The major poetic styles of the 19th century as they intersected with late classicism, the romantic movement, and the realist and post-realist traditions. Representative poems by Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Zhukovskii, Pushkin, Baratynskii, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Nekrasov, Fet, Soloviev. Taught in Russian. Prerequisites: 2nd-year Russian

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.

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. Reading in Russian; discussion in English.

`Time flows in a film not by virtue but in defiance of montage-cuts,¿ wrote the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. An exploration of 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 Russian/Soviet auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Paradzhanov and Aleksandr Sokurov will be used as case studies and read through the prism of film theory (Gilles Deleuze, Andre Bazin and Jean Epstein). Taught in English.

The first written language of the Slavic people. Grammar. Primarily a skills course, with attention to the historical context of Old Church Slavic.

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.

Focus on three major figures of Russian modernism: Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Marina Tsvetaeva. An analysis of experimental Futurist poetic language and techniques in the context of the polemics of various modernist movements. Taught in Russian. Prerequisites: 3rd-year Russian

"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.

Required of majors in Russian language and literature; open to undergraduates who have completed three years of Russian, and to graduate students. The major poetic styles of the 19th century as they intersected with late classicism, the romantic movement, and the realist and post-realist traditions. Representative poems by Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Zhukovskii, Pushkin, Baratynskii, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Nekrasov, Fet, Soloviev. Taught in Russian. Prerequisites: 2nd-year Russian

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.