Introductory and Survey Courses, Conducted in English
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in English
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in Russian
Courses for Students Who Speak Russian at Home
(See also: Courses for Students who Speak Russian at Home)
RUSS001 Elementary Russian I
Offered fall semester
Alley, Oleinichenko
This course develops elementary skills in reading, speaking, understanding and writing the Russian language. We will work with an exciting range of authentic written materials, the Internet, videos and recordings relating to the dynamic scene of Russia today. At the end of the course students will be comfortable with the Russian alphabet and will be able to read simplified literary, ‘commercial’, and other types of texts (signs, menus, short news articles, short stories) and participate in elementary conversations about daily life (who you are, what you do every day, where you are from, likes and dislikes).
RUSS002 Elementary Russian II
Prerequisite: RUSS001 or placement exam
Offered spring semester
Alley, Oleinichenko
Continuation of RUSS001. Further work developing basic language skills using exciting authentic materials about life in present-day Russia. At the conclusion of the course, students will be prepared to negotiate most basic communication needs in Russia (getting around town, ordering a meal, buying goods and services, polite conversation about topics of interest) and to comprehend most texts and spoken material at a basic level.
RUSS003 Intermediate Russian I
Prerequisite: RUSS002 or placement exam
Offered fall semester
Oleinichenko, Thorstensson
This course will develop your ability to use the Russian language in the context of typical everyday situations, including university life, family, shopping, entertainment, etc. Role-playing, skits, short readings from literature and the current press, and video clips will be used to help students improve their language skills and their understanding of Russian culture. At the end of the semester you will be able to read and write short texts about your daily schedule and interests, to understand brief newspaper articles, films and short literary texts, and to express your opinions in Russian. In combination with RUSS 004, this course prepares students to satisfy the language competency requirement.
RUSS004 Intermediate Russian II
Prerequisite: RUSS003 or placement exam
Offered spring semester
Oleinichenko, Thorstensson
A continuation of RUSS003. This course will further develop your ability to use the Russian language in the context of everyday situations (including relationships, travel and geography, leisure activities) and also through reading and discussion of elementary facts about Russian history, excerpts from classic literature and the contemporary press and film excerpts. At the end of the course you will be able to negotiate most daily situations, to comprehend most spoken and written Russian, to state and defend your point of view. Successful completion of the course prepares students to satisfy the language competency requirement.
RUSS005 Intermediate Russian Across the Curriculum (RAC)
Prerequisite: RUSS003 or equivalent language competence
0.5 CU
Staff
May be taken in conjunction with courses taught in translation as designated (varies each semester, not offered every semester). Provides additional coursework in Russian at the intermediate level on related topics.
RUSS107 Russian Outside the Classroom I
Prior language experience required
May not be counted towards major, minor or certificate in Russian
Offered each semester
0.5 CU
Staff
The goal of RUSS107 is to provide students of Russian language and students who spoke Russian at home with formalized opportunities to improve their conversation and comprehension skills while experiencing various aspects of Russian culture. There will be no weekly assignments or readings, but all students will be expected to contribute at a level equivalent to their Russian-speaking abilities both in class and on the newsletter final project. The course consists of attending regular conversation hours in addition to a tea-drinking hour in the department (F 4-5pm), film viewings, and a single outside cultural event (e.g., a concert of Russian music at the Kimmel Center).
RUSS108 Russian Outside the Classroom II
Prerequisite: RUSS107
May not be counted towards major, minor or certificate in Russian
Offered each semester
0.5 CU
Staff
Continuation of RUSS107.
RUSS311 Advanced Russian Conversation and Composition I
Prerequisite: RUSS004 or placement exam
Offered fall semester
Thorstensson
This course develops students' skills in speaking and writing about topics in Russian literature, contemporary society, politics, and everyday life. Topics include women, work and family; sexuality; the economic situation; environmental problems; and life values. Materials include selected short stories by 19th and 20th century Russian authors, video-clips of interviews, excerpts from films, and articles from the Russian media. Continued work on grammar and vocabulary building.
RUSS312 Advanced Russian Conversation and Composition II
Prerequisite: RUSS311 or placement exam.
Offered spring semester
Thorstensson
Primary emphasis on speaking, writing, and listening. Development of advanced conversational skills needed to carry a discussion or to deliver a complex narrative. This course will be based on a wide variety of topics from everyday life to the discussion of political and cultural events. Russian culture and history surveyed briefly. Materials include Russian TV broadcast, newspapers, Internet, selected short stories by contemporary Russian writers. Offered each spring.
RUSS390 Advanced Russian Across the Curriculum
Prerequisite: RUSS311 or equivalent language competence
0.5 CU
Staff
May be taken in conjunction with courses taught in translation as designated (varies each semester). Provides additional coursework in Russian at the advanced level on related topics.
RUSS399 Supervised Work
Hours and credits on an individual basis.
For more advanced Russian language instruction, see: Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in Russian
SLAV590 Elementary Ukrainian I
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
An introduction to the fundamentals of the Ukrainian
language, acquisition of
conversational, reading and writing skills.
SLAV591 Elementary Ukrainian II
Prerequisite: SLAV590 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
A continuation of SLAV590.
SLAV592 Intermediate Ukrainian I
Prerequisite: SLAV591 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
Emphasis on vocabulary building, conversation and reading skills. Grammar review.
SLAV593 Intermediate Ukrainian II
Prerequisite: SLAV592 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
A continuation of SLAV593.
SLAV594 Advanced Ukrainian I
Prerequisite: SLAV593 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
Emphasis on advanced vocabulary building, conversation and reading skills. Advanced grammar review.
SLAV595 Advanced Ukrainian II
Prerequisite: SLAV594 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Rudnytzky
Continuation of SLAV594.
SLAV530 Elementary Czech I
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
An introduction to the fundamentals of the Czech language, acquisition of conversational, reading and writing skills.
SLAV531 Elementary Czech II
Prerequisite: SLAV530 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
Continuation of SLAV530.
SLAV532 Intermediate Czech I
Prerequisite: SLAV531 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
Emphasis on vocabulary building, conversation and reading skills. Grammar review.
SLAV533 Intermediate Czech II
Prerequisite: SLAV532 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
Continuation of SLAV532.
SLAV534 Advanced Czech I
Prerequisite: SLAV533 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
Emphasis on advanced vocabulary building, conversation and reading skills. Advanced grammar review.
SLAV535 Advanced Czech II
Prerequisite: SLAV534 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Stejskal
Continuation of SLAV534.
SLAV501 Elementary Polish I
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Staff
No prerequisite. This course is for students who want to acquire the linguistic skills necessary for communication in everyday situations and that would constitute a solid base for further study of the Polish language. In addition students will become acquainted with various aspects of Polish culture (including Polish films), history and contemporary affairs. Students will learn through classroom exercises based on a modern textbook, completion of individual and group assignments and work with various audio and video materials. The textbook Hurra - Po Polsku 1 is written in the spirit of the communicative approach, which makes it possible to communicate from the very beginning of the learning process. The special attention, however, will be paid on systematic development of all language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing.
SLAV502 Elementary Polish II
Prerequisite: SLAV501 or placement exam
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Staff
PREREQUISITE: SLAV 501 680 OR INSTRUCTOR’S APPROVAL.
This course is a continuation of the SLAV501 680. This is for students who want to acquire the linguistic skills necessary for communication in everyday situations and that would constitute a solid base for further study of the Polish language. In addition students will become acquainted with various aspects of Polish culture (including Polish films), history and contemporary affairs. Students will learn through classroom exercises based on a modern textbook, completion of individual and group assignments and work with various audio and video materials. The textbook Hurra - Po Polsku 1 is written in the spirit of the communicative approach, which makes it possible to communicate from the very beginning of the learning process. The special attention, however, will be paid on systematic development of all language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing.
SLAV503 Intermediate Polish I
Prerequisite: SLAV502 or placement exam.
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Staff
This is a first-semester intermediate -level language
course that emphasizes the development of the four basic skills (reading,
writing, listening, and speaking) within a culturally based context.
Class time will focus on communicative activities that combine grammatical
concepts, relevant vocabulary, and cultural themes. Students will learn
through classroom exercises based on a modern textbook: Hurra Po Polsku
2, completion of individual and group assignments and work with various
audio and video materials. Major course goals include: the acquisition
of intermediate-level vocabulary, the controlled use of the Polish cases;
the aspect of the verbs, the development of writing skills.
SLAV504 Intermediate Polish II
Prerequisite: SLAV503 or placement exam.
Offered through the Penn Language Center
Staff
This course is a continuation of the SLAV503 680. This is a second-semester intermediate -level language course that emphasizes the development of the four basic skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) within a culturally based context. Class time will focus on communicative activities that combine grammatical concepts, relevant vocabulary, and cultural themes. Students will learn through classroom exercises based on a modern textbook: Hurra Po Polsku 2, completion of individual and group assignments and work with various audio and video materials. Major course goals include: the acquisition of intermediate-level vocabulary, the controlled use of the Polish cases; the aspect of the verbs, the development of writing skills.
SLAV505 Polish for Heritage Speakers I
Offered through Penn Language Center
Staff
The course is addressed to students who have spoken Polish at home and seek to achieve proficiency in the language. The main goal of this course is to provide instruction directed at students continued development of existing competencies in the Polish language. Students will acquire skills that range from learning grammar and spelling, and developing vocabulary, to interpretation and analysis of different literary genres. Students will explore a broad variety of cultural themes. Topics will include: Polish literature - classic and modern, social life, contemporary affairs and films.
STUDENTS WHO COMPLETE TWO SEMESTERS OF THIS COURSE SATISFY THE PENN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT.
Polish is used exclusively in the classroom.
Upon completion of the Polish for Heritage Speakers course, students are expected to confidently understand, read, write and speak Polish with an increased vocabulary and a better command of Polish grammar. They will increase their reading skills through interpretation and analysis of different Polish literary genres. Students will be able to organize their thoughts and write in a coherent manner. They will increase their writing skills by writing personal essays, compositions and others. Students will further their knowledge of the Polish language and will engage in class discussion on various topics. Students will gain a better understanding of the Polish culture.
SLAV506 Polish for Heritage Speakers II
Offered through Penn Language Center
Staff
Continuation of SLAV505.
SLAV390 Serbo-Croatian I
Offered through Penn Language Center
Scepanovic-Uliano
The course level is basic, starting with the alphabet (both versions of it, the Latin and the Cyrillic), moving on to the grammar basics, then some communication and other forms of interaction.
Introductory and Survey Courses, Conducted in English
RUSS048 The Rise and Fall of the Russian Empire
All readings and lectures in English
History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: HIST048
Nathans/Holquist
How and why did Russia become the center of the world's largest empire, a single state encompassing eleven time zones and over a hundred ethnic groups? To answer this question, we will explore the rise of a distinct political culture beginning in medieval Muscovy, its transformation under the impact of a prolonged encounter with European civilization, and the various attempts to re-form Russia from above and below prior to the Revolution of 1917. Main themes include the facade vs. the reality of central authority, the intersection of foreign and domestic issues, the development of a radical intelligentsia, and the tension between empire and nation.
RUSS049 The Soviet Century: 1917-1991
All readings and lectures in English
History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: HIST049
Nathans/Holquist
Out of an obscure, backward empire, the Soviet Union emerged to become the great political laboratory of the twentieth century. This course will trace the roots of the world's first socialist society and its attempts to recast human relations and human nature itself. Topics include the origins of the Revolution of 1917, the role of ideology in state policy and everyday life, the Soviet Union as the center of world communism, the challenge of ethnic diversity, and the reasons for the USSR's sudden implosion in 1991. Focusing on politics, society, culture, and their interaction, we will examine the rulers (from Lenin to Gorbachev) as well as the ruled (peasants, workers, and intellectuals; Russians and non-Russians). The course will feature discussions of selected texts, including primary sources in translation.
SLAV100 Slavic Civilization
All readings and lectures in English
History and Tradition Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: HIST 231; RUSS103
Verkholantsev
This introductory course examines selected topics in the cultural and political history of Slavic peoples. Topics include: the origins and pre-history of the Slavs, Slavic languages and literary culture, religions of the Slavs (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam), the origins of Slavic nationalism and Pan-Slavism and the formation of “Eastern/Central Europe.” The course combines lectures with discussions of literary texts in translation, film, music and art.
RUSS100 Figuring Out Russia: Introduction to Russian Culture
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of ‘10 and after)
Verkholantsev
The course introduces students to major topics in Russian history, literature, art and religion. Students will learn about Russia’s past and present, its myths and beliefs, about its Czars and peasants, its heroes and rebels, about its artists, musicians and intellectuals, about its cities and society. Course materials include short works of major Russian authors, as well as films, musical scores and works of art. This introductory course will prepare students for more advanced and specialized courses in Russian literature and history.
SLAV109 Central European Culture and Civilization
All readings and lectures in English
Steiner
This course is normally offered through Penn-in-Prague during summer. The reappearance of the concept of Central Europe is one of the most fascinating results of the collapse of the Soviet empire. The course will provide an introduction into the study of this region based on the commonalties and differences between Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Germany. The topics will include the history of arts and literature, as well as broader cultural and historical patterns characteristic of this part of Europe.
RUSS125 The Adultery Novel
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: COML127; GSOC125; CINE125
Platt
The object of this course is to analyze narratives of adultery from Shakespeare to the present and to develop a vocabulary for thinking critically about the literary conventions and social values that inform them. Many of the themes (of desire, transgression, suspicion, discovery) at the heart of these stories also lie at the core of many modern narratives. Is there anything special, we will ask, about the case of adultery--once called "a crime which contains within itself all others"? What might these stories teach us about the way we read in general? By supplementing classic literary accounts by Shakespeare, Pushkin, Flaubert, Chekhov, and Proust with films and with critical analyses, we will analyze the possibilities and limitations of the different genres and forms under discussion, including novels, films, short stories, and theatre. What can these forms show us (or not show us)about desire, gender, family and social obligation? Through supplementary readings and class discussions, we will apply a range of critical approaches to place these narratives of adultery in a social and literary context, including formal analyses of narrative and style, feminist criticism, Marxist and sociological analyses of the family, and psychoanalytic understandings of desire and family life.
RUSS130 Russian Ghost Stories
All readings and lectures in English
Vinitsky
In this course, we will read and discuss ghost stories
written by some of the most well-known Russian writers. The goal of
the course is threefold: to familiarize the students with brilliant
and thrilling texts which represent various periods of Russian literature;
to examine the artistic features of ghost stories and to explore their
ideological implications. With attention to relevant scholarship (Freud,
Todorov, Derrida, Greenblatt), we will pose questions about the role
of the storyteller in ghost stories, and about horror and the fantastic.
We will also ponder gender and class, controversy over sense and sensation,
spiritual significance and major changes in attitudes toward the supernatural.
We will consider the concept of the apparition as a peculiar cultural
myth, which tells us about the "dark side" of the Russian
literary imagination and about the historical and political conflicts
which have haunted Russian minds in previous centuries. Readings will
include literary works by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov,
and Bulgakov, as well as works by some lesser, yet extremely interesting,
authors. We will also read excerpts from major treatises regarding spiritualism,
including Swedenborg, Kant, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mme Blavatsky. The
course consists of 28 sessions ("nights") and includes film
presentations and horrifying slides.
RUSS136 Portraits of Russian Society: Art, Fiction, Drama
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-listing: HIST 047
Platt
This course covers 19C Russian cultural and social history. Each week-long unit is organized around a single medium-length text (novella, play, memoir) which opens up a single “scene” of social history—birth, death, duel, courtship, tsar, and so on. Each of these main texts is accompanied by a set of supplementary materials—paintings, historical readings, cultural-analytical readings, excerpts from other literary works, etc. The object of the course is to understand the social codes and rituals that informed nineteenth-century Russian life, and to apply this knowledge in interpreting literary texts, other cultural objects, and even historical and social documents (letters, memoranda, etc.). We will attempt to understand social history and literary interpretation as separate disciplines—yet also as disciplines that can inform one another. In short: we will read the social history through the text, and read the text against the social history.
RUSS145 Russian Literature before 1870
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Steiner
Major Russian writers in English translation: Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, early Tolstoy, and early Dostoevsky.
RUSS155 Russian Literature after 1870
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Steiner
Major Russian writers in English translation: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pasternak, Babel, Solzhenitsyn, and others.
RUSS164 Russian and East European Film from the October Revolution
to World War II
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE164
Todorov
This course presents the Russian contribution to world cinema before WWII - nationalization of the film industry in post revolutionary Russia, the creation of institutions of higher education in filmmaking, film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, and the social and political reflex of cinema. Major themes and issues involve: the invention of montage, Kuleshov effect, the means of visual propaganda and the cinematic component to the communist cultural revolutions, party ideology and practices of social-engineering, cinematic response to the emergence of the totalitarian state. Great filmmaker and theorist in discussion include Vertov, Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Medvedkin and others.
RUSS165 Russian and East European Film after
World War II
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE165; SLAV165
Todorov
This course examines the Russian and East European contribution to world cinema after WWII - Stalinist aesthetics and desalinization, WWII in film, the installation of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and the Cold War in film, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the post-soviet condition, cinematic representations of Yugoslavia's violent breakup; the new Romanian waive. Major filmmakers in discussion include Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Wajda, Polanski, Forman, Mentzel, Sabo, Kusturitsa, Konchalovsky, Mikhalkov and others.
RUSS187 Portraits of Soviet Society: Literature,
Film, Drama
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities & Social Science Sector
Cross-listing: HIST046
Platt
This course covers 20C Russian cultural and social history. Each week-long unit is organized around a medium-length film, text or set of texts (novella, play, memoir, set of short stories) which opens up a single “scene” of social history—work, village, apartment, war, Gulag, and so on. Each of these cultural texts is accompanied by a set of supplementary materials—historical readings, paintings, cultural-analytical readings, excerpts from other literary works, etc. The object of the course is to understand the social codes and rituals that informed twentieth-century Soviet life, and to apply this knowledge in interpreting literary texts, other cultural objects, and even historical and social documents (letters, memoranda, etc.). We will attempt to understand social history and cultural interpretation as separate disciplines—yet also as disciplines that can inform one another. In short: we will read the social history through culture, and read cultural works against the social history.
RUSS189 Soviet and Post-Soviet Economy
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: ECON062
Vekker
The course will cover the development and operation of the Soviet centrally planned economy--one of the grandest social experiments of the 20th century. We will review the mechanisms of plan creation, the push for the collectivization and further development of Soviet agriculture, the role of the Soviet educational system and the performance of labor markets (including forced labor camps--GULags). We will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet system and the causes of its collapse. Privatization, called by some "piratization," will be one of the central issues in our consideration of the transition from central planning to a market economy in the early 1990s. Even though our main focus will be on the Soviet economy and post-Soviet transition, we will occasionally look back in time to the tsarist era and even further back to find evidence to help explain Soviet/Russian economic development.
RUSS190 Terrorism: Russian Origins and 21st Century Methods
All readings and lectures in English
Todorov
This course studies the emergence of organized terrorism in nineteenth-century Russia. It examines the philosophy of the terrorist struggle through its methods, causes, various codes, and manifestoes that defined its nature for the times to come. We critique intellectual movements such as nihilism, anarchism, and populism that inspired terrorism defining the political violence and disorder as beneficial acts. The issue of policing terrorism becomes central when we study a police experiment to infiltrate, delegitimize and ultimately neutralize terrorist networks in late imperial Russia. The discussions draw on the ideology and political efficacy of the conspiratorial mode of operation, terrorist tactics such as assassination and hostage-taking, the cell structure of the groups and underground incognito of the strikers, their maniacal self-denial, revolutionary asceticism, underground mentality, faceless omnipotence, and other attributes-intensifiers of its mystique. We analyze the technology and phenomenology of terror that generate asymmetrical disorganizing threats to any organized form of government and reveal the terrorist act as a sublime end as well as a lever for achieving practical causes. Our study traces the rapid proliferation of terrorism in the twentieth century and its impact on the public life in Western Europe, the Balkans, and America.
RUSS193 War and its Representation in Russia, Europe and the
US
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-listing: COML150; HIST149
Platt
Representations of war have been created for as many reasons as wars are fought: To legitimate conflict, to celebrate military glory, to critique brutality, to vilify an enemy, to mobilize popular support, to generate national pride, etc. In this course we will examine a series of representations of war drawn from the literature, film state propaganda, memoirs, visual art, etc. of Russia, Europe and the United States of the twentieth century.
RUSS194 Russian Music: Concert Hall to Dance
Club
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: MUSC194
Amico
Russia’s history has been one not only of violent wars and turbulent revolutions, but also one of a vibrant cultural creation. In this course we will examine Russian music from an ethnomusicological perspective, in relation to these historical, social and cultural contexts. Our studies will take us from the nineteenth century to the present, and from the elite music of the concert hall, to the various rural sites of music making, up to the contemporary urban dance club. Among the topics to be considered: the relationships between art music and movements in both literature and the visual arts; how music supports, subverts or simply "avoids" contributing to political life; how gender is performed in music; and how globalization, technological advances, and piracy change the ways music is created and used.
RUSS196 Russian Short Story
All readings and lectures in English
Todorov
This course studies the development of 19th and 20th century Russian literature through one of its most distinct and highly recognized genres—the short story. The readings include great masters of fiction such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others. The course presents the best works of short fiction and situates them in a literary process that contributes to the history of a larger cultural-political context. Students will learn about the historical formation, poetic virtue, and thematic characteristics of major narrative modes such as romanticism, utopia, realism, modernism, socialist realism, and post-modernism. We critique the strategic use of various devices of literary representation such as irony, absurd, satire, grotesque, anecdote, etc. Some of the main topics and issues include: culture of the duel; the role of chance; the riddle of death; anatomy of madness; imprisonment and survival; the pathologies of St. Petersburg; terror and homo sovieticus.
RUSS197 Madness and Madmen in Russian Culture
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-listing: COML197
Vinitsky
This course will explore the theme of madness in Russian literature and arts from the medieval period through the October Revolution of 1917. The discussion will include formative masterpieces by Russian writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Bulgakov), painters (Repin, Vrubel, Filonov), composers (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky), and film-directors (Protazanov, Eisenstein), as well as non-fictional documents such as Russian medical, judicial, political, and philosophical treatises and essays on madness.
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in English
RUSS201 Dostoevsky
All readings and lectures in English
Frequently offered as Benjamin Franklin Seminar
Vinitsky
This course explores the ways Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) portrays the "inner world(s)" of his characters. Dostoevsky's psychological method will be considered against the historical, ideological, and literary contexts of middle to late nineteenth-century Russia. The course consists of three parts — External World (the contexts of Dostoevsky), "Inside" Dostoevsky's World (the author's technique and ideas) and The World of Text (close reading of “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov”). Students will write three essays on various aspects of Dostoevsky's "spiritual realism."
RUSS202 Tolstoy
All readings and lectures in English
Benjamin Franklin Seminar
Vinitsky
This course consists of three parts. The first, “How to read Tolstoy?” deals with Tolstoy’s artistic stimuli, favorite devices, and narrative strategies. The second, “Tolstoy at War,” explores the author’s provocative visions of war, gender, sex, art, social institutions, death, and religion. The emphasis is placed here on the role of a written word in Tolstoy’s search for truth and power. The third and the largest section is a close reading of Tolstoy’s masterwork “War and Peace” (1863-68) – a quintessence of both his artistic method and philosophical insights.
RUSS203 Legal Imagination: Criminals and Justice Across Literature
All readings and lectures in English
Benjamin Franklin Seminar
Cross-listing: LAW-967
Vinitsky
This seminar will focus on the legal, moral, religious, social, psychological, and political dimensions of crime, blame, shame, and punishment as discussed in great works of literature. The first part of the course will compare and contrast visions of justice in Eastern and Western Europe and emphases on divine versus human justice. The second part will move to the psychology of the individual person, the criminal. Part three of the course will focus on the state institutions of criminal justice. Readings include Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Dickens' Oliver Twist, Tolstoy's Resurrection, Kafka's The Trial, and especially Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and selection from The Brothers Karamazov.
RUSS213 Saints and Devils in Russian Literature and Tradition
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: COML213; RELS 218
Verkholantsev
This course is about Russian literature, which is populated with saints and devils, believers and religious rebels, holy men and sinners. In Russia, where people’s frame of mind had been formed by a mix of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and earlier folk beliefs, the quest for faith, spirituality and the meaning of life has invariably been connected with religious matters. How can one find the right path in life? Is humility the way to salvation? Should one live for God or for the people? Does God even exist?
In “Saints and Devils,” we will examine Russian literature concerning the holy and the demonic as representations of good and evil, and we will learn about the historic trends that have filled Russia’s national character with religious and supernatural spirit. In the course of this semester we will talk about ancient cultural traditions, remarkable works of art and the great artists who created them. All readings and films are in English. Our primary focus will be on works by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov.
SLAV220 Poets, Priests and Politicians: An Intellectual History
of Modern Ukraine
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: HIST218
Rudnytzky
The course is a one-semester survey of literary, philosophical, political and socio-religious issues in Ukraine from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 21st century. Its goal is to introduce students to an understanding of individual and collective thought in Ukrainian history and enable them to determine Ukraine's role in the making of contemporary Europe. Interdisciplinary in nature and comparative in methodology, the survey focuses on the principal works of imaginative literature and philosophical writings. Following a theoretical and historical introduction and placing the subject matter within the European context, selected works of Ukrainian classicism and romanticism will be analyzed and interpreted as roots of modern Ukrainian identity. An attempt will be made to point out the elective affinities of Ukrainian intellectuals with their European counterparts and to demonstrate the organic unity of Ukraine's culture with that of Western Europe. The survey will conclude with an analysis of post-modernistic intellectual currents and intellectual life in Ukraine following the “Orange Revolution” of 2004/05.
RUSS220 From the Other Shore: Russia and the West
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: HIST 220; COML220
Vinitsky
This course will explore the representations of the West in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Russian literature and philosophy. We will consider the Russian visions of various events and aspects of Western political and social life — Revolutions, educational system, public executions, resorts, etc. — within the context of Russian intellectual history. We will examine how images of the West reflect Russia's own cultural concerns, anticipations, and biases, as well as aesthetic preoccupations and interests of Russian writers. The discussion will include literary works by Karamzin, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Tolstoy, as well as non-fictional documents, such as travelers' letters, diaries, and historiosophical treatises of Russian Freemasons, Romantic and Positivist thinkers, and Russian social philosophers of the late Nineteenth century. A basic knowledge of nineteenth-century European history is desirable. The class will consist of lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, and two in-class tests.
RUSS234 Medieval Russia: Origins of Russian Cultural Identity
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: HIST 219; COML235; SLAV517
Verkholantsev
This course offers an overview of the cultural history of Rus’ from its origins to the eighteenth century, a period which laid the foundation for the Russian Empire. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the evolution of the main cultural paradigms of Russian Orthodoxy viewed in a broader European context. Although this course is historical in content, it is also about modern Russia. The legacy of Medieval Rus’ is still referenced, often allegorically, in contemporary social and cultural discourse as the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian societies attempt to reconstruct and reinterpret their histories. In this course, students learn that the study of the medieval cultural and political history explains many aspects of modern Russian society, its culture and mentality.
RUSS260 USSR after Stalin
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: HIST413
Platt and Nathans
How are human behaviors and attitudes shaped in a socialist society? What forms do conformity and dissent take under a revolutionary regime? This course will explore the cultural history of the Soviet Union from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of communism in 1991. We will investigate a variety of strategies of resistance to state power as well as the sources of communism’s enduring legitimacy for millions of Soviet citizens. Above all, we will be concerned with the power of the word and image in Soviet public and private life. Assigned texts will include memoirs, manifestos, underground and officially approved fiction & poetry, films, works of art, and secondary literature.
RUSS273 Development, Democracy, and Postsocialism: Processes
and Outcomes of Decentralization Reforms
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: PSCI315
Amelina
Fiscal, administrative, and political decentralization have become the centerpiece of governance reforms throughout both the developed and developing worlds. The main arguments for adoption of these governance practices include the demand driven nature, greater openness and economic effectiveness of local administrations. Are these expectations getting empirical confirmations? The course will examine the pros and cons of the increasing power of the local against the existing evidence of actual decentralization reforms, putting both theory and practice into specific political, historical, and economic contexts. National case studies of successes and failures of the main recent decentralization reforms and arrangements will be presented; special attention will be paid to the role of international agencies in rendering decentralization more or less effective and sustainable. Case studies will be drawn primarily from Russia and Eastern Europe; the main other recent cases of dramatic decentralization (e.g. India, Indonesia) will be examined as well.
RUSS275 Russian History in Film
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE275
Todorov
This course draws on fictional, dramatic and cinematic representations of Russian history based on Russian as well as non-Russian sources and interpretations. The analysis targets major modes of imagining, such as narrating, showing and reenacting historical events, personae and epochs justified by different, historically mutating ideological postulates and forms of national self-consciousness. Common stereotypes of picturing Russia from "foreign" perspectives draw special attention. The discussion involves the following themes and outstanding figures: the mighty autocrats Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great; the tragic ruler Boris Godunov; the brazen rebel and royal impostor Pugachev; the notorious Rasputin, his uncanny powers, sex-appeal, and court machinations; Lenin and the October Revolution; images of war; times of construction and times of collapse of the Soviet Colossus.
SLAV290 Cinema of the Balkans
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE290, COML287, ENGL295
Offered through CLPS
Mazaj
This course will be a study of Balkan cinema, with a focus on a wide range of films that were made in response to the 1990s crisis in the Balkans. While the Balkans may be familiar as one of Hollywood's favorite fantasy nightmares – the bloodthirsty Transylvanian count and vampire, Vlad Tepes-Dracula, or Cat People's horrific historical Serbs who morphed into ferocious black panthers now living in the heart of Manhattan-Balkan cinema is an often overlooked but one of the richest and most significant cinemas of Europe today. While tracing the history of Balkan cinema, the main focus of the course will be on films made during and after the Balkan war in the 1990s, by filmmakers such as Milcho Manchevski, Emir Kusturica, Srdjan Dragojevic, Goran Peskaljevic, and Danis Tanovic. These directors achieved great success in their native countries as well as abroad, and started appearing regularly at all major international film festivals. As such they not only mark a significant moment in thinking about the nation, but also show how a nation has come to depend on the persuasive power of cinema to articulate itself. As we recognize the difficulties in asserting Balkan culture as a unified one, the aim of the course will be to explore an astonishing thematic and stylistic consistency in the cinematic output of the Balkan region. Looking at these shared issues-the turbulent history and volatile politics, a semi- Orientalist positioning sometimes seen as marginality and sometimes as a bridge between East and West, encounters between Christianity and Islam, a legacy of patriarchy and economic dependency--we will examine how cinema of the Balkans testifies to a specific artistic sensibility that comes from a shared socio-cultural space.
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in Russian
RUSS409 Politics of Russian History
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
Platt
This course continues developing students’ advanced skills in Russian. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union twenty years ago, Russians have been intensively “re-digesting” their history. Both the more distant past (the era of princes, tsars and emperors) and the recent past (the times of communist leaders Lenin and Stalin) have gained new meanings in light of the post-Soviet transformation of Russian politics. What is the meaning of Russia’s religious heritage in the twenty-first century? What is the nature of Russia’s relationship to Europe? Was Stalin’s murderous suppression of millions a fair price for the modernization of Russia into the Soviet superpower? Who in the present day should bear the guilt for Soviet-era abuses and war crimes? These are some of the questions we will study, by means of examinations of contemporary Russian journalism, literature and film. All class discussions and primary sources will be in Russian. Some secondary readings will be in English.
RUSS410 Russian Folk and Literary Tale
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
Verkholantsev
This course continues developing students’ advanced skills in Russian. It focuses on the language, style, and narrative techniques of Russian tales. Course materials include written, animated, and cinematic versions of folk fairy tales, epic songs, and literary tales by major Russian authors, such as Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, and Leo Tolstoy. The course aims to improve students’ knowledge of idiomatic language and to expand their knowledge of Russian popular culture.
RUSS412 19th Century: Romantics and Realists
Prerequisite: RUSS 312 or placement exam
Verkholantsev
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian, and combines advanced study of the Russian language with an examination of the fundamental literary movements and figures of nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture. Course materials include prosaic and poetic texts by Pushkin, Gogol', Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, as well as films and art. Language work will be devoted to writing, syntactical and stylistic analysis, vocabulary, academic speech, and listening comprehension.
RUSS413 Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, Film and Culture:
Utopia, Revolution and Dissent
Prerequisite: RUSS312 or placement exam
Bourlatskaya
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian, and introduces students to major movements and figures of twentieth-century Russian literature and culture. We will read the works of modern Russian writers, and watch and discuss feature films. The course will introduce the first Soviet films and works of the poets of the Silver Age and beginning of the Soviet era as well as the works from later periods up to the Perestroika and Glasnost periods (the late 1980s).
RUSS416 Business and Democracy in the New Russia
Prerequisite: RUSS312 or placement exam
Bourlatskaya
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian, and is designed to familiarize students with contemporary Russian society, its historical background and its present political and economic structure, and to develop functional proficiency in speaking, writing, reading and listening. The course will focus on a variety of issues central to Russian society since the fall of the Soviet Union, including changing values, political parties and movements, the business climate and businessmen, various nationalities within Russia, women in the family and at work. Course materials will include interviews, articles, essays by leading Russian journalists and statesmen, and contemporary Russian movies.
RUSS417 Russian Modernism: Literature, Music & Visual Arts
Prerequisite: RUSS312 or placement exam
Staff
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian, while closely studying a representative selection of texts from the modernist period. The course will explore central issues of the period, such as the relationship between literature and revolution, reconceptualizations of society, history and the self. Of particular interest will be authors' experimentation in form and language in order to present afresh the experience of life. Textual study is combined with a general overview of the period, including reference to parallel trends in the visual arts, architecture and music, as well as contemporary intellectual movements. Principal writers studied will include Belyi, Sologub, Remizov, Andreev, Artsybashev, Gorky, Zamiatin, Pilnyak, Platonov, Zoshchenko, Babel, Olesha, and Kharms.
RUSS418 Russian Culture and Society Now
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
Staff
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian, while surveying main social, political and cultural developments in Russia since 1991. In these two turbulent decades Russia has undergone colossal changes ranging from disintegration of the Soviet Empire to the rapid development of new gastronomical tastes and new trends in literature and culture. The course will explore diverse and often conflicting cultural sensibilities in contemporary Russian fiction, poetry, journalism, scholarly writing, performance art, as well as in pop-culture and film. Topics under consideration will include reassessing Russia's luminous cultural heritage as well as traumatic periods in Soviet history; search for identity and the recent drift towards neo-nationalism; gender issues and the contemporary focus on fatherlessness; changing attitudes towards former cultural taboos; dealing with Russia's current political and cultural dilemmas. The course also incorporates two advanced Russian colloquiums with guest appearances of Prof. Kevin Platt and Ilya Vinitsky.
RUSS419 Russian Song and Folklore
Prerequisite: RUSS312 or placement exam
Verkholantsev
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian. Song and, in particular, folk song is an essential and exciting component of Russian culture and social life, and an important language learning tool. The course offers a general introduction to the history of Russian folklore, song and musical culture. Students will explore the historical trajectory of Russian song and its various genres (from folk to the modern Estrada), examine the poetic and literary principles of song, discuss its aesthetic properties, and analyze the educational, community-building and ideological roles of song in Russian society.
RUSS420 Contemporary Russia Through Film
Prerequisite: RUSS312 or placement exam
Bourlatskaya
This course continues developing students' advanced skills in Russian and offers intensive study of Russian film, arguably the most powerful medium for reflecting changes in modern society. This course will examine Russia's transition to democracy and market economy through the eyes of its most creative and controversial cinematographers. The course will focus on the often agonizing process of changing values and attitudes as the country moves from Soviet to Post-Soviet society. Russian films with English subtitles will be supplemented by readings from contemporary Russian media sources. The course provides an excellent visual introduction to the problems of contemporary Russia society.
RUSS485 Russian Poetics (formerly
RUSS401 and RUSS505)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and After)
Literatures of the World
Prerequisite: RUSS312, RUSS361 or comparable language competence. This
course is open to all advanced students of Russian, including students
who speak Russian at home.
Steiner
Introduction to the analysis of poetic texts, based on the works of Batyushkov, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Mandel’shtam, and others.
RUSS506 Pushkin (formerly RUSS402)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and After)
Literatures of the World
Prerequisite: RUSS312, RUSS361 or comparable language competence. This
course is open to all advanced students of Russian, including students
who speak Russian at home.
Steiner
The writer's lyrics, narrative poems, and drama.
RUSS508 Advanced Russian for Business
Prerequisite: any 400-level course, or comparable language competence
Bourlatskaya
This advanced language course focuses on developing effective oral and written communication skills for working in a Russian-speaking business environment. Students will discuss major aspects of Russian business today and learn about various Russian companies using material from the current Russian business press. In addition, students will be engaged in a number of creative projects, such as business negotiation simulations, and simulation of creating a company in Russia.
Courses for Students Who Speak Russian at Home
RUSS360 Literacy in Russian I
Prior language experience required
Korshunova
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to achieve proficiency in the language. Topics will include an intensive introduction to the Russian writing system and grammar, focusing on exciting materials and examples drawn from classic and contemporary Russian culture and social life. Students who complete this course in combination with RUSS361 satisfy the Penn Language Requirement.
RUSS361 Literacy in Russian II
Prior language experience required
Korshunova
This course is a continuation of RUSS360. In some cases, students who did not take RUSS360 but have basic reading and writing skills may be permitted to enroll with the instructor's permission. Students who complete RUSS361 with a passing grade will satisfy the Penn Language Requirement.
RUSS460 Post-Soviet Russia in Film
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of ‘10 and after)
Prerequisites: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Bourlatskaya
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. Film is arguably the most powerful medium for reflecting changes in modern society. This course will examine Russia's transition to democracy and market economy through the eyes of its most creative and controversial cinematographers. The course will focus on the often agonizing process of changing values and attitudes as the country moves from Soviet to Post-Soviet society. Russian films with English subtitles will be supplemented by readings from contemporary Russian media sources. The course provides an excellent visual introduction to the problems of contemporary Russia society.
RUSS461 Twentieth Century Russian Literature: Fiction and Reality
Prerequisites: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Bourlatskaya
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. Russian 461 introduces the major movements and figures of twentieth-century Russian literature and culture, works of modern Russian writers, and feature films. In studying the poetry of Mayakovsky, Block, and Pasternak, students will become familiar with the important literary movements of the Silver Age. The reality of the Soviet era will be examined in the works of Zamyatin, Babel, and Zoshchenko. There will be a brief survey of the development of Soviet cinema, including films of Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, and Mikhalkov. Literary trends in the later Soviet period will be seen in war stories, prison-camp literature, village prose, and the writings of female authors of that time.
RUSS462 Masterworks of Russian Visual Art
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Korshunova
What does an educated Russian know about the Russian visual art? Which works constitute a national canon? What was the role of these works in the Russian history and society? The goal of the course is to familiarize the Russian heritage students with the most prominent works of Russian visual art which represent various periods of Russian culture; to examine the artistic features of these works, and to explore their ideological implications. Each session of this course will be dedicated to a discussion of a single masterpiece of the Russian visual art considered within its historical, cultural, and aesthetic contexts. The discussion will include, among other works, masterpieces by Andrey Rublev, Dmitry Levitsky, Karl Briullov, Ilya Repin, Vasily Vereshchagin, Mikhail Vrubel, and Kazimir Malevich.
RUSS464 Russian Humor
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of ‘10 and after)
Prerequisites: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Korshunova
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. One of the most fascinating and most difficult things for a student of foreign culture is to understand “national humor,” as it is presented in various stories and films, jokes and shows. To an extent, humor is a gateway to national mentality. In the present course we will examine Russian cultural history, from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries, through the vehicle of Russian humor. How does Russian humor depend on religion and history? What was considered funny in various cultural trends? What are the peculiarities of Russian humorist tradition? Students will be familiarized with different Russian theories of humor (Bakhtin, Likhachev, Panchenko, Tynianov, etc.) and, of course, with a variety of works by Russian “kings of humor” – Pushkin and Gogol, Chekhov and Zoshchenko, Bulgakov and Il’f and Petrov, Erofeev and Kibirov, etc. Class lectures will be supplemented by frequent video and musical presentations ranging from contemporary cartoons to “high” comedies and from comic songs (Chaliapin’s “The Flea”) to the music of Shostakovich (“The Nose”).
RUSS465 Singing in the Snow: The History of Russian Song
Prerequisites: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Verkholantsev
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. Song is an essential and exciting component of Russian culture and social life, and an important language learning tool. The course offers a general introduction to the history of Russian song. Students will explore the historical trajectory of Russian song and its various genres (from folk to the modern Estrada), examine the poetic and literary principles of song, discuss its aesthetic properties, and analyze the educational, community-building and ideological roles of song in Russian society. Among the wide-ranging topics and genres that we will discuss and work with are lyrics of folk songs, romances, Soviet and patriotic songs, Anti-Soviet songs, Russian/Soviet anthems, bard song, film and theater songs, children’s songs, Soviet and Russian Rock and Pop.
RUSS467 Classic Russian Literature Today
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of ‘10 and after)
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Korshunova
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. A study of classic Russian literature in the original. Readings will consist of some of the greatest works of 19th and 20th-century authors, such as Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov. Students will examine various forms and genres of literature, learn basic techniques of literary criticism, and explore the way literature is translated into film and other media. An additional focus of the course will be on examining the uses and interpretations of classic literature and elitist culture in contemporary Russian society. Observing the interplay of the "high" and "low" in Russian cultural tradition, students will develop methodology of cultural analysis.
RUSS468 Post-Soviet Russian Society: People, Business, Democracy
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Bourlatskaya
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. It offers an introduction to contemporary Russian society, its historical background and its present political and economic structure. The course will focus on the political, economic and sociological developments in Russia from Perestroika (late 1980s) to Putin. The course will discuss the society's changing values, older and younger generations, political parties and movements, elections, the business community and its relations with the government, common perceptions of Westerners and Western society, and the role of women in the family and at work. Emphasis will be placed on the examination, interpretation and explanation of people’s behavior and their perception of democracy and reforms, facilitating comparison of Western and Russian social experience.
RUSS469 Russian Utopia in Literature, Film, and Politics
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Korshunova
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. In this course we will undertake a fascinating journey to the Dreamland of Russian culture. Students will read and discuss Russian utopian imagination as presented in a variety of literary texts, paintings, musical works, films, as well as philosophical texts and economic theories. Topics for discussion will include Russian fairy tales and legends, religious prophesies and communist projects, history and imagination, technological and patriarchal utopias.
RUSS470 Russian History in Animation
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
Cross-listing: CINE470
Korshunova
This course is intended for students who have spoken Russian at home and seek to improve their capabilities in formal and professional uses of the Russian language. This course examines the developments of Russian animation from 1912 to 2007. We will discuss Russian cartoons as a specific cultural phenomenon which tells us of aesthetic, ideological, social, and psychological issues in the Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Students will watch and discuss various films, genres, and artistic styles considered within their actual historical context.
For a more advanced course open to students who speak Russian at home, see above: RUSS485 Russian Poetics, RUSS 506 Pushkin, and RUSS508 Advanced Russian for Business
SLAV526 In Defiance of Babel: The Quest for a Universal Language
All readings and lectures in English
Undergraduates require permission to register
Cross-listing: COML526, HIST526, and ENGL705
Verkholantsev
This is a course in intellectual history. It explores the historical trajectory, from antiquity to the present day, of the idea that there once was, and again could be, a universal and perfect language to explain and communicate the essence of human experience. The idea that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was a language which perfectly expressed the essence of all possible objects and concepts has occupied the minds of scholars for more than two millennia. In defiance of the myth of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, they strived to overcome divine punishment and discover the path back to harmonious existence. For philosophers, the possibility of recovering or recreating a universal language would enable apprehension of the laws of nature. For theologians, it would allow direct experience of the divinity. For mystic-cabalists it would offer access to hidden knowledge. For nineteenth-century philologists the reconstruction of the proto-language would enable a better understanding of human history. For contemporary scholars, linguistic universals provide structural models both for human and artificial languages. For writers and poets of all times, from Cyrano de Bergerac to Velimir Khlebnikov, the idea of a universal and perfect language has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Above all, the course examines fundamental questions of what language is and how it functions. Among the course readings are works by Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Dante, Horapollo, Bacon, Giordano Bruno, John Wilkins, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jonathan Swift, and Zamenhof.
RUSS541 Russian Awakenings: Western Mysticism and 19th-Century Russian Culture
Undergraduates require permission to register
All readings will be available in English, although reading in the original is encouraged. Discussion will be in English.
This course will consider the role of western mystical legacy (from Jakob Bohme to Madame Blavatsky) in 19th-Century Russian literature and culture. From the late 18th to early 20th century, Russia witnessed several surges (or “awakenings”) of mysticism. As a rule, these mystical waves came from the West (usually through German intermediacy) and tended to coincide with critical historical junctures, such as the moral crisis at the end of the reign of Catherine the Great (the rise of Russian Free Masonry), the Russian victory over Napoleon and the establishment of a new European order (the emergence of Russian mystical/political circles of the 1810s), a deep ideological schism in the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s (the rise of Russian spiritualism), and finally, the revolutionary period in the first decade of the 20th century.
In this course, we will interpret these "awakenings" as a particular kind of cultural historical text which symbolically expresses and performs certain tendencies that are typical for the intellectual and psychological life of a given historical period. Our reading list inlcudes works by Western mystics, such as Bohme, Guyon, Swedenborg, Jung-Stilling, Kardec, and Madame Blavatsky, and Russian writers, including Pushkin, Odoevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solovyov.
RUSS544 Russian Realism in European Context
All readings and lectures in English
Undergraduates require permission to register
Cross-listing: COML541
Vinitsky
SLAV620 Europe: from Idea to Union
All readings and lectures in English. Undergraduates need permission.
Steiner
Employing the methods from the humanities and social sciences this interdisciplinary seminar will explore the variety of factors that contributed to dividing and uniting Europe. The continent will be considered as a geographical and cultural space and the construction of its identity will be examined through several historical periods—from the Middle Ages to Modernism--comprising the rich layer of pan-European civilization across the ethnic or national borders. Finally, the structure of the European Union will be scrutinized including its institutions, decision-making mechanism, shared currency, collective security, and Europe’s changing relationship with the USA. Participants will be encouraged to select a particular topic in European studies and research it through assigned readings, film, literature, and other media. The individual projects will be developed through consultations with the instructor into a class presentation leading to a final paper (about 6,000 words).
SLAV623 Historiography of Imperial and Soviet Russia
Undergraduates require permission to register
Cross-listing: HIST620
Platt
The course is designed for graduate students with at least advanced reading knowledge of Russian: seminar discussion will be conducted in English, but a fair amount of reading will be assigned in Russian. We will cover the development of Russian historical research and writing from the start of the eighteenth century to the present, focusing on major texts, schools and figures. Alongside this traditional historiographical architecture, segments of the course will be devoted as well to a variety of theoretical models and approaches to research, including: institutional history, cultural history, poetics of history, philosophy of history, "invention of tradition," trauma studies, and others.
SLAV651 Theories of Representation
All readings and lectures in English
Undergraduates require permission to register
Cross-listing: COML650
Steiner
The course will examine major Western theories of sign and representation from Socrates to Derrida. Primary focus will be on twentieth-century trends including phenomenology, structuralism, and Marxism. Readings will include: Plato, St. Augustine, Pierce, Husserl, Jakobson, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, Eco, Derrida and others.
SLAV655 History, Memory, Trauma
All readings and lectures in English
Undergraduates require permission to register
Cross-listing: COML654; HIST656
Platt
This course will be devoted to study of the theory and practice of representation of the past in major European traditions during the modern era, with special emphasis on three topics of broad concern: revolution, genocide, and national becoming. The object of inquiry will be construed broadly, to include all manner of historiographic, artistic, filmic, literary and rhetorical representation of the past. Each of the three segments of the course will begin with examination of important theoretical readings in conjunction with case studies in major European traditions that have been among the central foci of this theoretical work (French Revolutionary history, Holocaust, English nationalism). Next we will add analogous Russian cases to the picture (Russian Revolution, Gulag memory, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great as national myths). Finally, at the conclusion of each segment students will bring theoretical tools to bear on the national traditions and contexts relevant to their own work. Our readings in the theory and philosophy of history and historiography will include works by: Anderson, Caruth, Guha, Hegel, LaCapra, Putnam, Ricoeur, White and others.
RUSS426 Chekhov on Stage and Screen
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE365
Zubarev
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. “What’s so funny, Mr. Chekhov?” This question is often asked by critics and directors who still are puzzled with Chekhov’s definition of his four major plays as comedies. Traditionally, all of them are staged and directed as dramas, melodramas, or tragedies. Should we cry or should we laugh at Chekhovian characters who commit suicide, or are killed, or simply cannot move to a better place of living? Is the laughable synonymous to comedy and the comic? Should any fatal outcome be considered tragic? All these and other questions will be discussed during the course. The course is intended to provide the participants with a concept of dramatic genre that will assist them in approaching Chekhov’s plays as comedies. In addition to reading Chekhov’s works, Russian and western productions and film adaptations of Chekhov’s works will be screened. Among them are, Vanya on 42nd Street with Andre Gregory, and Four Funny Families. Those who are interested will be welcome to perform and/or direct excerpts from Chekhov’s works.
RUSS430 Ethnic Conflict in Film
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE430
Todorov
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. This course studies the cinematic representation of civil wars, ethnic conflicts, nationalistic doctrines, and genocidal policies. The focus is on the violent developments that took place in Russia and on the Balkans after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and were conditioned by the new geopolitical dynamics that the fall of communism had already created. We study media broadcasts, documentaries, feature films representing the Eastern, as well as the Western perspective. The films include masterpieces such as "Time of the Gypsies", "Underground", "Prisoner of the Mountains", "Before the Rain", "Behind Enemy Lines", and others.
RUSS432 Fate and Chance in Literature and Culture
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE432; COML196
Zubarev
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. In Fate and Chance in Literature and Culture, we will explore these two interrelated concepts in comparative perspective over a broad historical range. As a result, the students will learn how the philosophy of fate and chance has been reflected in works of different Russian authors and in different cultural and political environments. In Russian as well as western systems of belief fate and chance represent two extreme visions of the universal order, or, perhaps, two diametrically opposed cosmic forces: complete determinism, on the one hand, and complete chaos or unpredictability, on the other. These visions have been greatly reflected by various mythopoetic systems. In this course, we will investigate religious and folkloric sources from a series of Russian traditions compared to other Indo-European traditions (Greek, East-European). Readings will include The Song of Prince Igor’s Campaign, The Gambler by Dostoevsky, The Queen of Spades by Pushkin, Vij by Gogol, The Black Monk by Chekhov, The Fatal Eggs by Bulgakov, and more.
RUSS434 Media and Terrorism
All readings and lectures in English
Todorov
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. This course draws on fictional, cinematic and mass-media representation of terrorism based on Russian as well as Western examples. We study how the magnitude of the political impact of terrorism relates to the historically changing means of production of its striking iconology. The course exposes students to major modes of imagining, narrating, showing, reenacting terrorism and forging its mystique. We examine the emergence of organized terrorism in nineteenth-century Russia as an original political-cultural phenomenon. We trace its rapid expansion and influence on the public life in the West, and on the Balkans. Historical, political, and aesthetic approaches converge in a discussion of several case studies related to intellectual and spiritual movements such as nihilism, anarchism, populism, religious fundamentalism, and others. The public appearance of the terrorist activism and its major attributes are viewed as powerful intensifiers of its political effect: self-denial, ascetic aura, and stratagem of mystification, underground mentality, and martyrdom. The pedagogical goal of this course is to promote and cultivate critical view and analytical skills that will enable students to deal with different historical as well as cultural modes of (self-)representation of terrorism. Students are expected to learn and be able to deal with a large body of historical-factual and creative-interpreted information.
RUSS436 Film and Art of the Russian Revolution
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE436
Todorov
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. This course examines cutting edge trends and artistic experimentation in Russian film, theater, visual arts, and architecture in the context of the October Revolution (1917). Themes include: inventing the Kino-eye; reflexology, bio-mechanics and performance theory; staging the revolution; proletarian culture and sexuality; social engineering of the new man; bodies and machines; cosmism, rocketry and the emergence of the Soviet outer-space doctrine; city planning and constructivist design of the new social condensers; Lenin's mummy and the communist psyche; the Mausoleum and symbolic system of the Red Square.
RUSS449 Winners and Losers in Film and Literature
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: CINE449
Zubarev
Forms a part of the CGS Masters in Liberal Arts Program. We will explore a concept of decision making as applied to a wide range of characters in literature and cinematography. In modern approach, the question of one's success and failure is linked to the decision makers' capability, their inner qualities, their ability to set goals, as well as their skills in elaborating strategy and tactics that would prevent them from disasters. In this course, we will refer to folkloric sources from a series of Indo-European traditions (Greek, Russian, East-European), considering different approaches to success and failure in them. Subsequently, we will examine characters from major European literary and dramatic works-and especially Russian works that exploited the topic of decision making to structure the plot and narrative and to illuminate the role of an individual. Analysis will be informed by classical and contemporary theoretical tools (from ancient philosophers to Upenn's own Prof. Aron Kastenelinboigen). Our investigations will lead ultimately to analytical insight into major works of the western literary and filmic canon.
