Fall 2024

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 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.

Professor Cori Anderson (Section 02)

Professor Semyon Leonenko (Section 01)

Only open 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 860:101 students also take Russian Conversation I (01:860:111).

In Fall 2025, we will offer two sections of Elementary Russian I, 01:860:101:01 and 01:860:101:02. They will meet in the hybrid format, which means that two class sessions each week will meet in person, and additional work will be completed asynchronously online.

Professor Semyon Leonenko

This one-credit course supplements work in Elementary Russian I (01:860:101), providing extra practice with the pronunciation, phonetics, intonation, and grammar of Russian, while also introducing students to additional products and practices of Russian culture as well as history. Students will navigate the Russian internet, watch excerpts of Russian film and television, listen to Russian music, etc. as a means of enhancing the material of language courses. Students will frequently work in groups based on their proficiency levels to focus on specific topics and grammatical constructions. This course may be taken multiple times for credit, as the content changes.

This course takes a slow journey through one famous Russian novel. It guides students in the basics of reading a literary text from a culture different than our own, providing the rudimentary cultural and historical context. Some of the questions we will tackle are: how to keep track of many characters whose names have multiple versions? What exactly is a religious “icon,” and why do people carry them around? What was unique about daily life in the Soviet Union? How do Russian attitudes towards money, family, faith, and art differ from our own? Our novel this semester will be Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (1940) – a fantastic account of 1930s Russia under Stalin. Its primary characters include an imprisoned novelist, his witch-like lover, a talking cat who wields a gun, and Satan himself. The novel blends magical elements with Soviet history, philosophy, and slapstick comedy, making it an enjoyable and accessible entry point into Russian culture.  This course is taught in English and has no prerequisites. No knowledge of Russian is required.

Professor Cori Anderson

Prerequisite: 01:860:102 or placement. Not for students who have taken 01:860:107.

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 I (01:860:211)

 Professor Mi E Li

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 Semyon Leonenko

This one-credit course supplements work in Intermediate Russian I (01:860:201), providing extra practice with the pronunciation, phonetics, intonation, and grammar of Russian, while also introducing students to additional products and practices of Russian culture as well as history. Students will navigate the Russian internet, watch excerpts of Russian film and television, listen to Russian music, etc. as a means of enhancing the material of language courses. Students will frequently work in groups based on their proficiency levels to focus on specific topics and grammatical constructions. This course may be taken multiple times for credit, as the content changes.

Professor Chloë Kitzinger

In English. No prerequisites. 

In this course, we have the rare chance to spend a semester reading just one book: Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865–69). War and Peace tells the story of Russia’s military struggles with Napoleon between 1805 and 1812, but it is also a story about many other things: friendship, love, violence, and death; parents and children, imperialism, nationalism, and strategy, and the search for one’s place in the world. As we read the novel, we will pause to explore in depth some of the big questions it raises: the atrocities of war; how history gets written; the uses of art and literature; and the problems of causality, moral responsibility, free will, and time. We will discuss the place of War and Peace in Tolstoy’s life and career, the book’s afterlife in film and stage adaptations, and the complications of reading it in a new era of Russian expansionism and war. Through all these topics, the course combines immersion in the world of War and Peace with an investigation of how and where the novel leads beyond its covers.

Fulfills SAS Core goal WCd.

 Professor Cori Anderson

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

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 life in the Russian-speaking world, such as education, employment, leisure and youth culture, through authentic target-language texts, websites, media (including films and music) and other materials.

Professor Cori Anderson

This one-credit course supplements work in Advanced Russian I (01:860:301), providing extra review of topics in Russian grammar and syntax. These topics include case declension & usage, verb conjugation, verbal aspect, verbs of motion, time expressions, participles, gerunds, and compound sentences. Students will frequently work in groups based on their proficiency levels to focus on specific grammatical constructions. This course may be taken multiple times for credit, as the content changes every semester.

Professor Emily Van Buskirk

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.

Svetlana Bogomolny

Prerequisite: 01:860:302, or 01:860:306, 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 while exploring the topic of Russian attitudes to America in the course of the last century.

Professor Cori Anderson

This one-credit course supplements work in  400-level courses taught in Russian, providing extra review of topics in Russian grammar and syntax. These topics include case declension & usage, verb conjugation, verbal aspect, verbs of motion, time expressions, participles, gerunds, and compound sentences. Students will frequently work in groups based on their proficiency levels to focus on specific grammatical constructions. This course may be taken multiple times for credit, as the content changes every semester.