Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Individualized study of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language at the intermediate level, conducted as a tutorial. Contact hours with language coach. Emphasis on literacy.

An introductory course in modern Czech language and culture, designed for students without previous knowledge who would like to speak Czech or use the language for reading and research. All four major communicative skills (speaking, listening comprehension, reading, writing) are stressed. Students are exposed to Czech culture through work with film and literature and gain some familiarity with the major differences between literary and spoken Czech as they learn to use the language both as a means of communication and as a tool for reading and research. This year-long full course satisfies the foreign language requirement and prepares students for continued study of Czech in intermediate-level courses and for study or travel abroad in the Czech Republic.

Individualized study of the Czech language at the advanced level. Emphasis on reading with some practice in speaking and writing for professional and academic purposes. Conducted as a tutorial.

An intermediate course in modern Polish language and culture for students with previous study of the language. Further development of vocabulary and oral expression within a comprehensive review of Polish grammar. All four major communicative skills (speaking, listening comprehension, reading, writing) are stressed as students learn to use the language both as a means of communication and as a tool for reading and research. Introduction to Polish literature through fiction and poetry, history and contemporary events, including readings from literary masterpieces from Polish literature from the era of the Renaissance to contemporary times including Jan Kochanowski, Wisla-awa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Czesla-aw Mila-osz and others. Film clips and newspaper articles will introduce students to a variety of styles of contemporary Polish. Systematic study of word formation and other strategies are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading. This year-long full course prepares students for continued study of Polish in advanced-level courses and for study or travel abroad in Poland.

An introductory course in modern Russian language and culture, designed for students without previous knowledge of Russian who would like to speak Russian or use the language for reading and research. All four major communicative skills (speaking, listening comprehension, reading, writing) are stressed. Students are introduced to Russian culture and the etiquette of social exchanges, and expand their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary through readings (including stories, biography, and poetry), videos, and class discussions. This year-long full course satisfies the foreign language requirement and prepares students for continued study of Russian in intermediate (B-level) courses and for study or travel abroad in Russian-speaking countries.

Grammar and vocabulary review for students with a Russian-speaking family background. The course covers the entire case system, verb conjugation, aspect, motion constructions, and other essential grammar topics. Emphasis on reading, writing, spelling, and word formation.

An intermediate course in modern Russian language and culture for students with previous study of the language. Further development of vocabulary and oral expression within a comprehensive review of Russian grammar. All four major communicative skills (speaking, listening comprehension, reading, writing) are stressed as students learn to use the language both as a means of communication and as a tool for reading and research. Systematic study of word formation and other strategies are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading. Vocabulary is thematically organized to include such topics as self and family, education, work, human relationships, politics, and national attitudes and is reinforced through film and the reading of classical and contemporary fiction and history. Practice in the etiquette of common social situations (sociolinguistic competence). Computer exercises on selected topics. This year-long full course prepares students for continued study of Russian in advanced-level courses and for study or travel abroad in Russian-speaking countries.

An intermediate course in Russian language and culture through reading of what is arguably 20th-century Russia's greatest novel, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. This literary and linguistic approach to Intermediate Russian has a strong emphasis on reading authentic Russian, but all four major communicative skills (speaking, listening comprehension, reading, writing) are stressed as students learn to use the language both as a means of communication and as a tool for reading and research. Further development of vocabulary and oral expression within a comprehensive review of Russian grammar. Systematic study of word formation and other strategies are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading. This year-long full course prepares students for continued study of Russian in advanced-level courses and for study or travel abroad in Russian-speaking countries.

Introduction to the language of Russian newspapers, journals, and historical writing. Basic vocabulary for such areas as current events, including politics, history, economics, military issues, society, and the environment. Systematic study of word formation and other strategies are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading. Intended for students who desire a professional level of reading proficiency in the social sciences. Intensive work on morphology and supplementary work on oral comprehension.

Reading and discussion of topics in the areas of history, economics, politics, and current events. Continued work on grammar and vocabulary with written exercises and compositions. TV viewing for comprehension development.

Reading and discussion of classic and contemporary Russian literature. Continued work on vocabulary expansion and composition. Written exercises for reinforcement. Readings from authors such as Gogol, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Pasternak, Brodsky, and Bitov.

Emphasis on close reading and stylistic analysis of the Russian language with continued development of grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competencies at an advanced level. Emphasis on reading with considerable practice in speaking, presenting, and writing for professional and academic purposes.

Intended for students who have already taken other department offerings. Reading, discussion, and writing on special topics not addressed in other courses. Conducted as a tutorial. Requires a course proposal to apply; acceptance is not automatic. Applications may be found on the department website under Resources.

An interdisciplinary introduction to major authors and themes of Slavic history and literature, focusing on relationships between literature, power, history, and myth. Theories of literary interpretation (including Russian Formalism and semiotics) as well as different approaches to placing literature in its social and political contexts. Readings introduce students to major figures in the Slavic literary traditions, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Platonov, Kundera, Hrabal, and others.

For senior concentrators in Slavic Literature and Culture. Students work with a faculty advisor on a senior thesis or capstone project.

Introduction to Russian phonetics, phonemics, morphophonemics, and inflectional and derivational morphology. Course goal is to give a deeper understanding and appreciation of the regularities and complexities of Russian through a close study of its sounds and words.

Investigates performance and theatricality in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet contexts, in both art and life, through broad exploration of theoretical underpinnings (classical dramatic theory to contemporary performance studies) and case studies from drama, opera, ballet, film, musicals, performance art, religious ritual and folk festival, monarchy and court, mass spectacles, Cold War competitions and diplomacy, subcultures, and contemporary assertions of new orders.

Studies Russia's rebels, deviants, martyrs, loners, and losers as emblems of national identity. Stories, films and poems that project Russia's distinctive obsessions with history and religion. Includes Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov, Kharms, Platonov, Nabokov, Petrushevskaya, Prigov; films by Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Askoldov, Sokurov.

A survey of the lyrics, narrative poems, fiction, and critical prose of Russia's "national poet." Close reading of the texts; attention to contemporary cultural issues. Lecture and discussion.

Examines Nabokov's poetry, novels, short stories and essays from Russian, European and American periods. Attention to issues of literary modernism, play, cultural translation and memory in the wake of the Cold War. Additional readings from Chekhov, Proust, Borges, and others.

Close reading of Gogol's short fiction, read in the original, with special attention to humor and narrative structure. We will also explore contextual issues and possible critical approaches.

A survey-style course that recreates several major moments of intersection between Polish and Jewish literatures. Both of these categories can be understood as placeholders for larger constellations of culture: from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Ashkenazic Pale. Starting with the medieval ghetto, the presence/absence of Polish Jews in Polish cultural memory forms one line of inquiry; Polin as a present/absent homeland in Jewish thought from the 16th through 21st centuries forms another. These two cultures have been intertwined for longer than they have been considered separately; we read them in order to place them once again in dialogue.

Focus on Ukrainian avant-garde literature and film, in the context of modernism, socialist realism, the impact of Stalinism, the famine (Holodomor), WWII and the Holocaust, late Sovietism and dissent, Crimea and the Tatars, collapse of the USSR and independence, varieties of post-modernism, and the present conflict with Russia. Also forays into visual art.

Overview of the major artistic and intellectual trends and close reading of key works by the major writers: Malczewski, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Krasinski, and others. Focus also on the central role of Romanticism in Polish culture.

The major themes and modes of Russian poetry from pre-Romanticism to "pure art." Selections from Zhukovsky, Batiushkov, Baratynsky, Yazykov, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Nekrasov, Fet, and others.

Examines key works of Russian prose and drama between the turn of the twentieth century and the onset of the Second World War through the lens of the era's revolutionary upheavals. Special attention to questions of imagining and representing historical cataclysms as existential catastrophes that lay bare utopian aspirations and cultural anxieties about the possibilities of artistic innovation and esthetic tradition in times of trouble. Shorter works by Bely, Soloviev, Sologub, Gippius, Pilniak, Babel, Shklovsky, Zoshchenko, Trotsky, Platonov, Bulgakov, Olesha, Vsev. Ivanov, Erdman, Krzhizhanovsky.

A study of literary production, dissemination, and reception in selected periods of Russian literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Readings in social theory, cultural studies, literary criticism, and imaginative literature.

Introduction to the structure and history of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.

History of Prague and Bohemian culture from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, including Kosmas's Chronicle of the Czechs, the medieval court of Charles IV, Jan Hus and the Hussite war, Renaissance learning under Rudolf II, Baroque literature and art, and the changing fates of Prague Jewish culture. Special emphasis on the development of Czech literature and the Czech literary language.

This seminar reviews the standard texts and topics of pre-Revoluationary Russian intellectual history. Course readings include works by Chaadaev, Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Bakunin, Solovyov, and others.The seminar also considers methodological problems and how approaches to writing Russian intellectual history have evolved from the last half of the twentieth century to the post-Soviet era.

Year-long bi-weekly interdisciplinary seminar on the production of social, cultural, and political space in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Physical and urban space will receive particular attention. Includes individual and collaborative work with digital tools for research, analysis, and presentation. Key questions: How can diverse mapping practices (geographical, scholarly and disciplinary, discursive, artistic) illuminate Eurasian cultural politics? How can we analyze cultural space as a dynamic product of cultural activity, as well as a framework for the evolution and transmission of beliefs, behaviors, memories, and values?

Examines poetry, prose and visual arts together with cultural theory. Explores issues of innovation and cultural memory, art and politics, bilingualism and exile. Works by Mayakovsky, Malevich, Mandelshtam, Tsvetaeva, Babel, Shklovsky, Nabokov, Vertov, and Eisenstein.

Examines how poems create self-images for poets working in and after Russian modernism, including Khlebnikov, Vvedenskii, Mandel'shtam, Tsvetaeva, Barkova, Brodsky, Sedakova, Shvarts, Dragomoshchenko. Relies on literary and psychoanalytic theories of identity.

Examines Kievan and early Ukrainian literature. Topics include the system of genres of Kievan literature, the Renaissance and interaction with Polish literature, the confraternities, Vyshens'kyj, the Baroque, the Mohyla Academy, Skovoroda.

Introduction to graduate study in Slavic. Selected topics in literary analysis, history, and theory.

Individualized study of the Ukrainian language at the Intermediate level. Emphasis on reading with some practice in speaking and writing for professional and academic purposes. Conducted as a tutorial.