Fall 2022

Agnieszka Makles

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

Polish 101 is an introductory course designed for students with little to no prior experience with the Polish language. This course focuses on building foundational skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing while introducing key linguistic concepts such as phonetics, semantics, morphology, and syntax. Students will learn to communicate in everyday situations, engage with Polish culture, and explore the similarities and differences between their own cultural perspectives and those of Polish speakers. Through interaction with authentic multimodal texts, students will develop their ability to interpret and engage with real-world language use. The course also emphasizes basic pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of Polish, preparing students for meaningful communication and cultural understanding.

Agnieszka Makles

Prerequisite: 787:102 or placement.

Polish 201 is an intermediate course designed for students who have some experience with the Polish language. This course focuses on building foundational skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing while introducing key linguistic concepts such as phonetics, semantics, morphology, and syntax. Students will learn to communicate in everyday situations, engage with Polish culture, and explore the similarities and differences between their own cultural perspectives and those of Polish speakers. Through interaction with authentic multimodal texts, students will develop their ability to interpret and engage with real-world language use. The course also emphasizes basic pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of Polish, preparing students for meaningful communication and cultural understanding.

Professor Cori Anderson

Prerequisite: 01:860:102 or placement.

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 the life, culture, history, geography, and traditions of the Russian-speaking world through authentic target-language texts, websites, media (including films and music) and other supplementary materials. It is highly recommended that all 860:201 students also take Russian Conversation (860:211, T 10:35-11:30).

Prerequisite: Placement.Credit not given for both this course and 860:201.

Elementary Russian for Russian Speakers is intended for students who learned to speak Russian in the home or from family members, with little or no formal study or experience with reading or writing Russian. Students will master reading and writing in the Russian alphabet, solidify their knowledge of Russian grammar, including case endings and verbal forms, and increase their vocabulary. This course also introduces students to the culture, literature and history of the Russian-speaking world through authentic target-language texts, websites and media (including films and music) and other supplementary materials.

 Professor Cori Anderson

Prerequisite: 860:202, 860:208, or placement.

Advanced Russian is 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. They will also study complex grammatical structures, such as participles and gerunds, and syntactic constructions, such as subordination. These skills are practiced in conjunction with the viewing, discussion and analysis of contemporary Russian-language films and television programs. Students will also increase their intercultural competence by exploring the cultural products and practices of the Russian-speaking world in the 21st century.

Professor Pavel Khazanov

Prerequisite: 860:202 or 860:207 

This course is required of all Russian majors and counts as a literature course for minors in Russian Language & Literature and in Russian Language. 

This course introduces students to critical issues involved in reading literary texts in the original Russian. We aim for a refined understanding of how meaning is conveyed by grammar, syntax, stylistic register, and the techniques of Russian versification. We learn about the development and traditions of Russian poetry and prose while encountering some of the most distinctive Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries (Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Bulgakov, Brodsky, and others). The course is useful to all students who wish to improve their reading, language, interpretive, and analytical skills. It is required of all majors and counts as a literature course for minors in Russian Language and Literature and in Russian Language. All readings in Russian. Discussions and written assignments in English. 

Sergei Erofeev

crosslisted with Political Science 01:790:369:02

This course explores the conflict in Ukraine in the context of Slavic history, geography, natural resources, and culture.  We will spend time exploring identity and nationality, as well as the politics of grievance, the struggle for independence, and the realities of cultural ownership.  The course explains what is happening in Ukraine and Russia, with ramifications for all of Europe. This course will be taught in English.

Instructor: Dr. Laura Matthews [to be confirmed]

In English. No prerequisites.

Love and death push at the edges of the human experience, and writers of every era take up the challenge of depicting these ideas afresh. Our class will trace the evolution of love and death within the Russian-language short story form over almost two centuries, produced by writers like Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Zinaida Gippius, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Trifonov, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and Lyudmila Ulitsakaya, among others. We will consider how together, “love” and “death” drive storytelling and forge bonds between stories and readers. Why do we ‘believe’ in love or death in a given story? Do we seek to be inspired by stories of ‘ideal love’ or ‘beautiful death’? Do we prefer to follow realistic depictions of human desire, violence, and tragedy? Or might we be drawn to grotesque or surreal renderings of these existential forces? And what cultural-historical situations might lead writers and readers towards preferring one form over another? 

All readings and discussion in English. No prerequisites. Fulfills SAS core goals AH o, p; WC d.

Chloë Kitzinger / Lauren Goodlad

This course explores serial narrative as a contemporary mode of storytelling, from the emergence of the serialized novel in nineteenth-century Europe up through the multimedia serials of our own digital age. Working across centuries, media, and new technologies for delivery, we will investigate the enduring power of this versatile narrative form — in particular, 1) how serial narratives interweave fiction with familiar events and the shared rhythms of everyday life, and 2) how they address audiences shaped by cultural, social, and geographic differences. In a contemporary moment marked by anxieties about race, nationality, rising inequality, looming environmental crisis, and political partisanship, we will consider the potential of serial narratives, past as well as present, to bring diverse audiences together. We will also reflect actively on seriality in a final course assignment that takes the form of collaboratively created podcasts. Core texts include Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) ,and True Detective, Season 1 (HBO, 2014). Occasional critical readings also suggested or assigned.

Cross-listed in English, REELL, and Comparative Literature.

All readings and discussions in English; no prerequisites.

Svetlana Bogomolny

Prerequisite: 01:860:302 or placement. May be taken out of sequence with 860:402, 860:403, 860:404, or 860:407.

This course fulfills a literature course requirement for the Russian Language minor.

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 in conjunction with the viewing, discussion and analysis of contemporary Russian-language films and television programs. Students will also increase their intercultural competence by exploring the cultural products and practices of the Russian-speaking world in the 21st century.