Spring 2021 Course Descriptions

SAS Core Courses

Intermediate Russian (AHq)
Intermediate Russian for Russian Speakers (AHq)
Art and Power (AH o and p)
Special Topics: Russian and Soviet Science Fiction (WCr)
Russia's Wars on Page and Screen (WCr)
Intermediate Polish (AHq)

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Considering a major or minor in Russian?

Russian Language Courses

Elementary Russian II
01:860:102:01/Index: 10903/Online
Instructor: Cori Anderson

Open only to students with NO prior knowledge of Russian. Students with prior knowledge must take a placement test.

Elementary Russian is an intensive introductory course in spoken and written contemporary standard Russian, intended for students with no prior experience in the language. It develops proficiency in all four skills: speaking, reading, listening, and writing, as well as the basics of Russian grammar. It also introduces students to Russian life, culture, history, geography, and traditions through authentic target-language texts, websites, various media, and other supplementary materials. It is highly recommended that all 860:102 also take Elementary Russian Conversation.

01:860:102:01 (Cori Anderson) is being delivered in an online format known as “asynchronous remote”. This means that the class does not have regularly scheduled meeting times; rather you will complete activities and assignments by the indicated due dates, and attend periodic synchronous (live) class sessions. In addition, you will have flexible opportunities to meet with the instructor and classmates via Zoom. This format provides flexibility for students who have difficulty being logged in at a particular time while we are operating in this remote environment including those that are now in other time zones. This course still requires the same number of hours per week as more traditional course formats and meet the same learning goals. This course is NOT self-paced; there is a weekly schedule of assignments and work submission beginning the first week of classes and opportunities for live, remote interaction. All course materials will be posted to Canvas (https://tlt.rutgers.edu/canvas).

Elementary Russian Conversation II
01:860:104:01
Index: 10904
Instructor: Cori Anderson

This one-credit supplementary course helps students improve their pronunciation, intonation, listening, and conversation skills in standard Russian. Students navigate Russian language websites, watch excerpts of Russian film and television, and listen to Russian music and radio broadcasts. Only open to students who are currently enrolled in Russian 102.

In Spring 2021, this course is being delivered in an online format known as “asynchronous remote”. This means that the class does not have regularly scheduled meeting times; rather you will complete activities and assignments by the indicated due dates, and attend periodic synchronous (live) class sessions. In addition, you will have flexible opportunities to meet with the instructor and classmates via Zoom. This format provides flexibility for students who have difficulty being logged in at a particular time while we are operating in this remote environment including those that are now in other time zones. This course still requires the same number of hours per week as more traditional course formats and meet the same learning goals. This course is NOT self-paced; there is a weekly schedule of assignments and work submission beginning the first week of classes and opportunities for live, remote interaction. All course materials will be posted to Canvas (https://tlt.rutgers.edu/canvas).

Intermediate Russian II
01:860:202:01, MTTh2
Index: 10906
Instructor: Cori Anderson

Intermediate Russian is an intensive intermediate course in spoken and written contemporary standard Russian, intended for students who have completed Russian 102 or placed into the course by exam. This course is not for students who have completed Russian 107 or those who speak Russian at home with their family. The course develops proficiency in all four skills: speaking, reading, listening, and writing. It includes a review and expansion of Russian grammar and vocabulary. It deepens students’ understanding of Russian life, culture, history, geography, and traditions through authentic target-language texts, websites, media (including films and music) and other supplementary materials. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.

In Spring 2021, this course will be taught fully online, with synchronous meetings during the scheduled time of the class. However, the instructor may decide to replace certain portions of synchronous instruction in the course with asynchronous instruction.

Intermediate Russian Conversation II
01:860:204:01, W4
Index: 10907
Instructor: Cori Anderson

This one-credit course continues to aid students in improving pronunciation, intonation, listening, and conversation skills in standard Russian. Students will navigate Russian language websites, watch excerpts of Russian film and television, and listen to Russian music and radio broadcasts. Only open to students who are currently enrolled in Russian 202.

Intermediate Russian for Russian Speakers
01:860:208:01, MTTh5
Index: 10908
Instructor: Svetlana Bogomolny

Intermediate Russian for Russian Speakers is designed for students who learned Russian at home or from family members, and have had some formal study, including Russian 207. This course focuses on improving grammatical control, and expanding active vocabulary for discussing abstract topics. Students will improve their reading skills, through literary and non-literary texts of increasing length and difficulty, and their writing skills, working towards the goal of creating cohesive and organized paragraph-length texts. Students will also increase their knowledge of Russian history, culture, geography and traditions through authentic materials, such as texts, films, music and other supplementary materials. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.

Advanced Russian II
01:860:302:01, TTh4
Index: 10909
Instructor: Cori Anderson

This is an advanced course in spoken and written contemporary standard Russian, intended for students who have completed the equivalent of four semesters of college-level Russian, or have placed into the course by exam. The course strengthens grammatical control and develops proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Students will learn to summarize, develop narration, and create connected paragraphs in speech and writing. The will also study complex grammatical structures, such as participles and gerunds, and syntactic constructions, such as subordination. They will broaden their vocabulary through the study of word-formation. This course covers many elements of modern Russian life, such as education, employment, leisure and youth culture, through authentic target-language texts, websites, media (including films and music) and other materials.

Russian Film and Media
01:860:402:01, TTh6
Index: 10913
Instructor: Svetlana Bogomolny

Taught primarily in Russian, the course fosters advanced language skills of conversational fluency, listening comprehension, writing and composition, expanded vocabulary, recognition of stylistic registers, and advanced syntax. These skills are practiced while engaging with current events in mass media, and Russian culture as depicted in film. Prerequisite: 01:860:302, 01:860:306, 01:860:401 or placement.

Russian Literature Courses

Art and Power: The Visual and Literary Culture of the Soviet Century
01:860:268:01, TTh4
Index: 07377
Instructor: Pavel Khazanov and Jane Sharp

Can art transform individual and public life? How do artists and writers relate to “reality,” and who gets to pass judgment on their claims? To what extent can art flex its own political power and to what extent is that appearance of power a fiction that conveniently serves another, far more powerful master? All of these questions greatly concerned the development of art and the discourse about art that unfolded for over 70 years in Soviet Russia. Making use of the unique art holdings at the Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art at the Zimmerli Museum, we will examine a wide cross-section of both mainstream and underground Soviet aesthetic artifacts– including sculptures, paintings, film, and literature, as well as theoretical writings about art, including manifestos and critical interpretations. Altogether, we will see how Soviet culture–often called “totalitarian”–provided a model for the interaction of art and politics in the 20th century, and how the legacy of this encounter between art and power continues to be consequential today. All readings and discussions in English. No prerequisites. Cross-listed with Art History as 01:082:204:01 and with Comparative Literature as 01:195:265:01. Fulfills SAS for Core Goal AH o and p.

Special Topics: Russian and Soviet Science Fiction
01:860:320:01, TTh5
Index:10911
Instructor: Chloe Kitzinger

What does it mean to build utopia? What new worlds and creatures — and what new ways of being human — could our encounters with alien spaces reveal? How will new technologies transform moral, social, and political norms in everyday life on Earth, and how will they change our ideas about who and what we are? Since its first origins, the genre now known as science fiction has been driven by such questions. In Russia and the Soviet Union, it evolved alongside a massive real-world experiment in creating utopia and the new human being, in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. This course explores the great 19th-21st-century tradition of Russian and East European science fiction in literature and film — from pre-revolutionary visionaries, to early Soviet zealots and skeptics, to Space-Age masters, and up through the post-Soviet aftermath of the present day. Artists whose work we will discuss include (among others) Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeny Zamiatin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Stanislaw Lem. Tracing the particular story these works tell about the potentials, promises, and dangers of the scientific imagination, we will also step outside the Slavic tradition to reflect on literary and historical crossing-points with selected works in English, including Octavia Butler’s classic story “Blood Child” and an episode of the contemporary television series Black Mirror. Throughout the course, synchronous class discussions and ongoing writing assignments will help you delve into these texts and the foundational questions they raise. Fulfills Core requirement WCr. No prerequisites; all readings and discussions in English.

Russia's Wars on Page and Screen
01:860:349:01, MW4
Index: 10912
Instructor: Emily Van Buskirk

In this course we study the Russian experience of war through short stories, novellas, poetry, diaries, memoirs, and film from the nineteenth century to the present. Narrative and war go together for, as historian Drew Faust has noted, “Only a story of purpose and legitimation can transform random violence into what human convention has designated as war.” Russian authors and filmmakers have used storytelling both to create and to question the meaning of war and its official versions and heroes. A special focus of the course will be the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union triumphed while suffering unspeakable losses (roughly 26 million deaths), and which continues to occupy the public consciousness today through commemoration in personal and state rituals. The topic of war will serve as a window onto Russian and Soviet culture, values, memory, and literary politics. Fulfills Core requirement WCr. All readings and discussions in English. No prerequisites.

Russian After Stalin: Literature, History, Theory
01:860:484:01, MTh3
Index:08369
Instructor: Pavel Khazanov

The death of the Soviet utopian project has been one of the most consequential events in the history of the twentieth century. But when did it start to die? In 1956, within three years of his demise, Khrushchev denounced Stalin as a mass murderer and the would-be demonic undertaker of the Soviet political dream. How was post-Stalinist society supposed to make sense of its bloody past? This question defined late Soviet culture and was partly responsible for the Soviet collapse. Today, the legacy of Stalinism continues to haunt post-Soviet Russia. Our seminar will engage with the problem of post-Stalinism in Russia by approaching it in two modules. In the first half of the course, we will examine several powerful fictional texts and films that have defined the post-Stalin era, from 1950s onwards. In the second half of the course, we will examine a number of non-fictional and theoretical texts on Stalinism and its aftermath. These dual lines of inquiry will allow us to flesh out the recent past of Russian culture and politics, and to trace the limits of the post-Stalin era’s influence in Russia today. All readings and discussions in English. No prerequisites. Cross-listed with Comparative Literature as 01:860:484:01 and with History as 01:510:484:01.

787 - Polish Courses

Elementary Polish II
01:787:102:01, MTWTh 8:45-9:35am
Index: 10584
BTAA Course Share

Elementary Polish is an introductory course intended for students with no or minimal prior experience in the language. Students will learn the Polish sound and spelling system. They will develop proficiency in listening, reading, speaking, and writing. The basic of grammar and core vocabulary are introduced. In addition, the course provides an introduction to Polish culture, including geography, history, literature and practices through authentic texts, maps, websites and other supplementary materials.

Intermediate Polish II
01:787:202:01, MTTh5
Index: 10585
Instructor: Wanda Mandecki

Intermediate Polish is intended for students who have completed Elementary Polish or have placed into the course. Students will continue to develop proficiency in four skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Orthography drills reinforce the sound and spelling system. This course will broaden students’ grammatical understanding and vocabulary. Students will read an authentic literary text, view a Polish film, and discuss current events in Poland, which will deepen students' knowledge of Polish history and culture. Fulfills SAS core goal AH q.

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