Spring 2023

Agnieszka Makles

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

In Elementary Polish II, the continuation of the introductory course, students further develop proficiency in listening, reading, speaking, and writing with a focus on conversational language. The basics of grammar and core vocabulary are expanded. The course emphasizes Polish culture, including geography, history, literature, and customs, through authentic texts, songs, videos, maps, websites, and other supplementary materials.

Agnieszka Makles

Prerequisite: 787:201 or placement or permission.

Intermediate Polish II is intended for students who have completed Intermediate Polish I or have been placed into the course. Students continue developing their proficiency in listening, reading, speaking, and writing, with an emphasis on conversational language. The course provides opportunities to apply grammatical knowledge in practice. Students engage with authentic literary texts, discuss current events in Poland, and watch Polish films, further deepening their understanding of Polish language, history, and culture. Fulfills SAS core goal AHq. 

Prerequisite: 860:101 or placement.

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 strongly recommended that students also take Russian Conversation II: Novice to Intermediate (860:112/212)

Prerequisite: 01:860:201 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 Russian life, culture, history, geography, and traditions through authentic target-language texts, websites, media (including films and music) and other supplementary materials. 

It is strongly recommended that students also take Russian Conversation II: Novice to Intermediate (860:112/212). Fulfills SAS core goal AHq.

Taught by Mi E Li

Prerequisite: 860:207 or placement. Not for students who have taken 860:102.

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-lengthy 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 AHq.

Professor Pavel Khazanov

In English. No prerequisites.

cross-listed with Art History 01:082:204:01 and Comparative Literature 01:195:265:01

Can art transform life? How do artists and writers advance concepts of “reality” and who gets to pass judgment on their claims? To what extent can creative elites flex their political power through their creations? To what extent is an appearance of power a fiction that conveniently serves another, far more powerful master? And what happens to art if the state itself starts thinking of itself as an artist, which is what, according to some theorists, the USSR began to do under Stalin?

We will engage with the above questions by examining the interaction of art and politics in Soviet culture. We will reflect on the history of Soviet artists’ direct attempts to intervene in social life– via exhibitions, via politics at the Soviet Artists’ and Writers’ Unions, via newspapers, magazines and ‘agitation and propaganda’ (agitprop) materials, etc. By closely analyzing a wide cross-section of both mainstream and underground Soviet aesthetic artifacts that this historical context produced– including sculptures, paintings, literature, film, and theoretical writings about art, such as manifestos and critical interpretations— we will reflect on some of the biggest issues that concern art, such as the idea of ‘representation’ and ‘reality,’ the possibility of ‘making it new,’ or the notion of artistic autonomy. Visits to the Dodge collection of Nonconformist Art at the Zimmerli Museum will form an integral part of course curriculum. No prerequisites; all readings and discussions in English.

Fulfills SAS Core goals AHo, AHp.

Professor Pavel Khazanov

In English. No prerequisites.

cross-listed with Comparative Literature 01:195:272:01 and History 01:510:277:01

The Russian tsars called Moscow the New Jerusalem. The Russian emperors preferred Third Rome or Great European Power. Soviet leaders called it the Friendship of the Peoples. Putin calls it Russky mir or “Russian World.” Over the course of several centuries some idea of imperial dominance has been used to define how Russia has related to its many borderlands and its external neighbors and how the periphery has related to the metropole. Meanwhile, for successive generations of cultural elites, Russia’s vast territory has constantly presented a problem, inspiring pride, confusion, and resentment—sometimes all at once, in the very same people. Our course will try to understand why that is, by examining how literatures and art of the peoples from the former Russian and Soviet empires have engaged with Russia’s complicated territorial identity, focusing especially on the last two hundred years. One of the objectives of the course is to provide foundations for better understanding Russia’s orientation in the world today as concerning to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. No prerequisites; all readings, films, and class discussions in English.

Fulfills SAS Core goals CC, AHp

Prerequisite: 01:860:301 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. They 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.

Pavel Khazanov

In English. No prerequisites.

Cross-listed with Comparative Literature 01:195:484:01 and History 01:510:484:01

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.