This is an introductory course, conducted entirely in English, on the classics of nineteenth-century Russian literature. No previous knowledge of Russian language, literature, culture, or history is expected. The focus of the course is on close readings of individual works. At the same time, we will pay close attention to the way a distinctively Russian national tradition takes shape, in which writers consciously respond to their predecessors. All of these works have a firm position in the Russian cultural memory, and they have significantly contributed to Russian national identity.
Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky: Introduction to the Great Russian Novel
Professor/Instructor
Michael Alex WachtelThe Great Russian Novel and Beyond: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Others
Professor/Instructor
Ellen Bell ChancesA survey in English of Russian literature from mid-19th century to Soviet literature. Authors read include, among others, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov, and Bely. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Knowledge of Russian not required.
Soviet Culture, Above and Below Ground
Professor/Instructor
Katherine M.H. ReischlA survey in English of Soviet literature from 1917 to 1965 against the background of major social and political developments. Readings include works by Zamyatin, Babel, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, and other representative authors. Two lectures and preceptorial. Knowledge of Russian not required.
Communism and Beyond: China and Russia
Professor/Instructor
Deborah A. KapleA review of the stages of communism, including reform and dismantling. Comparisons of social classes and ethnic groups under the old system and their readiness for recent changes. Treatment of workers, farmers, intellectuals, officials, and new entrepreneurs. Comparative approach to China, Russia, and other countries formed from the Soviet Union. Two ninety-minute classes.
The Russian Short Story
Professor/Instructor
Ksana BlankIn Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment a character says about St. Petersburg: "It's rare to find a place where so many murky, sharp and strange influences have their effect on human soul as in Petersburg." We will read Gogol and Dostoevsky's Petersburg stories, focusing on all kinds of influences the city has on its inhabitants: physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and moral. Additionally, we will explore Gogol's literary influence on Dostoevsky. The entire course is conducted in Russian and special emphasis is placed on active use of the language. All readings are in Russian. Prerequisite: RUS 208; for heritage speakers RUS 108
Russian Drama
Professor/Instructor
Olga Peters HastyIntroduction to major dramatic works of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, Shvarts, and Vampilov. Readings, discussions, oral and written reports in Russian. Two 90-minute seminars. Prerequisite: RUS 207 or instructor's permission.
Ethical Dimensions of Contemporary Russian Cinema
Professor/Instructor
Exploration of the quest for moral values in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian cinema of the 1960s to the present. Topics include, among others, the effects of Stalinism; the struggle for freedom of individual conscience under totalitarianism; the artist's moral dilemmas in Soviet and post-Soviet society; materialism versus spirituality. Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Nikita Mikhalkov, and others. One three-hour seminar. Knowledge of Russian not required.
The Russian Empire: State, People, Nations
Professor/Instructor
Ekaterina PravilovaEighteenth-century enlightened absolutism: reforms of Peter and Catherine the Great, shaping of national identity and a modern state. Nineteenth-century tensions between reform from above and revolution from below, with a focus on the political role of social groups and special attention to the origins of revolutionary conflict in 1905 and 1917. Two 90-minute classes.
The Soviet Empire
Professor/Instructor
An examination of the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Empire. Topics include: the unfolding of single-party revolutionary politics, the development of Stalin's personal despotism, the violent attempt to create a noncapitalist society, the monumental war with Nazi Germany, and the nature of everyday life. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Selected Topics in Russian Literature and Culture
Professor/Instructor
Topics include: Russian literature and the city; Russian literature and the intellectual; the search for moral value in post-Communist literature; satire; Russian literature and music; 20th-century Russian poetry, Russian emigre literature.
Pushkin and His Time
Professor/Instructor
Michael Alex WachtelAn introduction to Pushkin's works with attention to a number of genres (lyric, long poem, drama, short story). Readings in Russian with discussions in Russian or English, depending on students' preference. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: RUS 207 or instructor's permission.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace: Writing as Fighting
Professor/Instructor
Ilya VinitskyThe course is primarily about War and Peace, framed by some earlier and later fiction and by Tolstoy's essays on art and religion. Tolstoy's radical ideas on narrative have a counterpart in his radical ideas on history, causation, and the formation of a moral self. Together, these concepts offer an alternative to "The Russian Idea," associated with Dostoevsky and marked by mysticism, apocalypse, and the crisis moment. To refute this idea, Tolstoy redefined the tasks of novelistic prose. Seminar.
Dostoevsky
Professor/Instructor
Ellen Bell ChancesA consideration of Dostoevsky's major works with particular emphasis upon their relation to the political, social, religious, and literary currents of his time. Knowledge of Russian not required. One three-hour seminar.
Vladimir Nabokov
Professor/Instructor
Yuri LevingAn examination of Nabokov's major accomplishments as a Russian/American novelist in the context of the Russian literary tradition and the cultural climate of emigration. Two lectures, one preceptorial.
Seminar on Andrei Bitov
Professor/Instructor
Ellen Bell ChancesAnalysis of works of one of Russia's most important contemporary writers. Focus on major novels, including "Pushkin House," the first Russian postmodernist novel. We explore his wide-ranging concerns, such as psychology; philosophy; science; other arts (including jazz and cinema); people's relationship to other biological species; integrity and societal and psychological obstacles to it. We examine him as a Petersburg writer. Focus also on his relationship to time, history, and other writers; his place in Russian and Soviet literature and culture.