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
RUSS002 Elementary Russian II
Prerequisite: RUSS 001 or placement exam
001 MTWRF 11am - 12pm Vinokour
002 MTWRF 3 - 4pm Oleinichenko
See "Courses Offered Through CLPS" below for additional times.
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.
RUSS004 Intermediate Russian II
Prior language study required
Prerequisite: RUSS 003 or placement exam
001 MWF 10am - 11pm, T 9:30am - 10:30am Alley
002 MTWR 5 - 6pm Oleinichenko
See "Courses Offered Through CLPS" below for additional times.
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.
RUSS312 Advanced Conversation & Composition II
Prior language study required
Prerequisite: RUSS311 or placement exam
TR 10:30am -12pm Korshunova
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.
RUSS361 Literacy in Russian II
Prior language experience required
MWF 11am -12pm 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.
RUSS418 Russian Culture and Society Now
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
MW 3:30 - 5pm Alley
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.
SLAV593 Intermediate Ukrainian II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 5 - 6:30pm Rudnytzky
SLAV502 Elementary Polish II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 2 - 3:30pm Gallaher
Continuation of SLAV501
This course is a continuation of Elementary Polish I. You will learn grammar structures and develop vocabulary related to everyday-life situations. While working on authentic materials, which reflect contemporary Poland, you will further develop your listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. You will participate in diverse activities outside of the classroom through Blackboard. You are expected to attend Polish cultural events during the semester.
SLAV506 Polish for Heritage Speakers II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 3:30 - 5pm Gallaher
Continuation of SLAV505.
This course is designed for students who have spoken Polish at home. This course focuses on mastering your writing and reading skills. You will further develop your grammar and expand your vocabulary based on a variety of sources, such as newspapers, literary texts and articles from the Internet. You will also learn about different aspects of Polish culture though Polish literature and movies. You are expected to participate in Polish cultural events during the semester.
RUSS222 Imagining Asia: Russia and the East
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: NELC222; COML217
MW 12 - 1:30pm Yountchi FRESHMAN SEMINAR
This course examines the important role of the East in Russian literature and nationalism. Focusing specifically on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, and Turkey, this course will analyze how Russian writers connected the East to Russian identity, and how their approaches implicate different artistic periods (Romanticism, Realism, Socialist Realism, Post-Modernism) and different political atmospheres (Tsarist Russia, Soviet Union, Post-Soviet).
Students will also ascertain how Russian literature on the East has affected and influenced literature and political movements produced in the East. In particular, students will analyze how Soviet Central Asian writers, Iranian Socialists, and contemporary Turkish writers were influenced by Russian literature and Soviet ideology. Ultimately, this course examines the impact of Russia's cultural and political history in 20th century Central Asia and the Middle East. Readings will include works by: Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Platonov, Chingiz Aitmatov, Sadek Hedayat, Orhan Pamuk, and others.
Introductory and Survey Courses, Conducted in English
RUSS125 The Adultery Novel and Film Adaptation (offered through LPS)
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: COML127; GSWS125; CINE125
T 5:30 - 8:30pm Whitbeck
The course examines a series of 19C and 20C novels (and a few short stories) about adultery, film adaptations of several of these novels, and several original adultery films in their own right. Our reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the period in question, about the relationship of Russian literature to the European models to which it responded, as well as about adaptation and the implications of filmic vs. literary representation. Course readings may include: Laclos' “Dangerous Liaisons,” Flaubert's “Madame Bovary,” Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina,” Milan Kundera's “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and other works. Films may include: Frears' “Dangerous Liaisons,” Vadim's “Dangerous Liaisons,” Nichols' “The Graduate,” Mikhalkov's “Dark Eyes,” and others. Students will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/ Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, and Feminist work on the construction of gender.
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)
TR 1:30 - 3pm Steiner
Major Russian writers in English translation: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pasternak, Babel, Solzhenitsyn, and others.
RUSS165 Russian and Eastern European Film
II
All readings and lectures in English
Distribution III, Arts & Letters (Class of '09 and prior)
Cross-listing: CINE265; SLAV165
MW 2 - 3:30pm Todorov
The purpose of this course is to present the Russian and East European contribution to world cinema in terms of film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, and social and political reflex. We discuss major themes and issues such as: the invention of montage, 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 in Russia and its subsequent installation in Eastern Europe after World War II; repression, resistance and conformity under such a system; legal and illegal desires; the nature of the authoritarian personality, the mind and the body of homo sovieticus; sexual and political transgression; treason and disgrace; public degradation and individual redemption; the profane and the sublime ends of human suffering and humiliation; the unmasking of the official "truth" as a general lie.
RUSS175 The Peripheral Empire: Nation and Empire in Russian Literature and Film
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: COML175
CANCELED
TR 10:30 - 12pm Djagalov
,Cultural products such as novels and films not only reflect existing trends in nationalist and imperial thought of its time: they often offer the space where those are first formulated and then popularized. Such an assertion rings even truer in the Russian context, where starting from the second half of the nineteenth-century, literature achieved an unprecedented position of social authority. Over the course of the twentieth century film assumed a similar
,role. And even though the relationships between the two kept changing as did that between nation and empire, this dialectical perspective-of culture as both a reflection and agent of social change-will inform our discussion of a number of canonical Russian films, novels, and short stories. Helping us contextualize them will be some classical theoretical contributions on nationalism and imperialism.
RUSS187 Portraits of Soviet Society: Literature, Film, Drama
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-listing: HIST 046
MW 2 - 3:30pm 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.
RUSS188 The Devil's Pact Reloaded: Goethe's Faust & Bulgakov's Master i Margarita
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
TR 1:30 - 3pm Vinitsky and Richter
Two World Class Authors: Goethe and Bulgakov Two Classics of World Literature: Faust and The Master and Margarita Two Award-Winning Professors: Simon Richter and Ilya Vinitsky One Time Only!
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in English
RUSS222 Imagining Asia: Russia and the East
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-listing: NELC222; COML217
MW 12 - 1:30pm Yountchi FRESHMAN SEMINAR
This course examines the important role of the East in Russian literature and nationalism. Focusing specifically on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, and Turkey, this course will analyze how Russian writers connected the East to Russian identity, and how their approaches implicate different artistic periods (Romanticism, Realism, Socialist Realism, Post-Modernism) and different political atmospheres (Tsarist Russia, Soviet Union, Post-Soviet).
Students will also ascertain how Russian literature on the East has affected and influenced literature and political movements produced in the East. In particular, students will analyze how Soviet Central Asian writers, Iranian Socialists, and contemporary Turkish writers were influenced by Russian literature and Soviet ideology. Ultimately, this course examines the impact of Russia's cultural and political history in 20th century Central Asia and the Middle East. Readings will include works by: Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Platonov, Chingiz Aitmatov, Sadek Hedayat, Orhan Pamuk, and others.
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
W 2 - 5 pm 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.
RUSS275 Russian History in Film
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: CINE275
MW 3:30 - 5pm 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.
RUSS430 Ethnic Conflict in Film
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: CINE430
Offered through CLPS
M 5:30 - 8:30pm Todorov
Forms a part of the CLPS 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.
Intermediate and Advanced Seminars, Conducted in Russian
RUSS418 Russian Culture and Society Now
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
MW 3:30 - 5pm Alley
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.
RUSS460 Post-Soviet Russia in Film
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of ‘10 and after)
Prerequisites: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
TR 1:30 - 3 pm Bourlatskaya SYLLABUS
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.
RUSS485 Russian Poetics (formerly RUSS401/RUSS505)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and After)
Literatures of the World
Cross-listing: COLL224
Prerequisite: RUSS312, RUSS361 or comparable language competence. This course is open to all advanced students of Russian, including students who speak Russian at home.
TR 12 - 1:30pm Steiner
Introduction to the analysis of poetic texts, based on the works of Batyushkov, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Mandel’shtam, and others.
Courses for Students Who Speak Russian at Home
RUSS361 Literacy in Russian II
Prior language experience required
MWF 11am -12noon 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.
TR 1:30 - 3 pm Bourlatskaya SYLLABUS
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.
RUSS485 Russian Poetics (formerly RUSS401/RUSS505)
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and After)
Literatures of the World
Cross-listing: COLL224
Prerequisite: RUSS312, RUSS361 or comparable language competence. This course is open to all advanced students of Russian, including students who speak Russian at home.
TR 12 - 1:30pm Steiner
Introduction to the analysis of poetic texts, based on the works of Batyushkov, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Mandel’shtam, and others.
RUSS528 From Late-Soviet to Non-Soviet Literature and Culture
Cross-listing: COML528
R 2 - 5 pm Platt and Djagalov
The aims of this course are threefold: to introduce students to some signature literary and cultural texts form roughly the post-Stalin era to the present, to equip them with relevant theoretical approaches and concerns, and finally, to offer a space where they can develop their own research projects. A major theme will be the relations between "Russian" literature and history, in which literature is not only a mimesis of the historical process but often an active agent. Throughout, we will be particularly attentive to the periphery of literature. In the first place, this means an expanded geography, the inclusion of non-Russian Soviet and emigre writers before and after 1991, as well as an effort to theorize their structural position. Secondly, we will adopt the late Formalists' understanding of literary periphery as the genres, cultural forms, institutions, and phenomena that abutted the literary field and affected its processes. Depending on student interest, our attention to these objects of inquiry could be directed toward bardic song and the later lyric-centric Russian rock, samizdat and literary internet, thick journals and literary prizes, Soviet-era dissidence and today's protest culture.
RUSS618 Cultural History of Medieval Rus' (800 - 1700)
Cross-listing: COML618 and HIST620
T 3 - 6 pm Verkholantsev
Russian 618 offers an overview of the literary, cultural, and political history of Medieval Rus' from its origins up to the Petrine reign (early 18th century), the period that laid the foundation for the Russian Empire. The focus of the course is on the Kievan and Muscovite traditions but we also look at the cultural space of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland (the territory of today's Belarus and Ukraine). The course takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the evolution of the main cultural paradigms of Russian Orthodoxy viewed in a broader European context (vis-à-vis Byzantium and the Latin West). We learn about the worldview of medieval Orthodox Slavs by examining their religion, ritual, spirituality, art, music, literature, education, and popular culture. Classes are conducted in English. Readings are in Russian and English. English translations of primary sources are available for those with no or limited Russian competence.
RUSS002 Elementary Russian II
Non-CLPS Students need permission from CLPS. Prerequisite: RUSS 001 or
placement exam.
MW 6:30 - 9pm Oleinichenko L
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.
RUSS004 Intermediate Russian II
Non-CLPS Students need permission from CLPS. Prerequisite: RUSS003 or
placement exam.
TR 5 - 7pm Oleinichenko L
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.
RUSS125 The Adultery Novel and Film Adaptation
All readings and lectures in English
Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes)
Cross-listing: COML127; GSWS125; CINE125
T 5:30 - 8:30 pm Whitbeck
The course examines a series of 19C and 20C novels (and a few short stories) about adultery, film adaptations of several of these novels, and several original adultery films in their own right. Our reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the period in question, about the relationship of Russian literature to the European models to which it responded, as well as about adaptation and the implications of filmic vs. literary representation. Course readings may include: Laclos' “Dangerous Liaisons,” Flaubert's “Madame Bovary,” Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina,” Milan Kundera's “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and other works. Films may include: Frears' “Dangerous Liaisons,” Vadim's “Dangerous Liaisons,” Nichols' “The Graduate,” Mikhalkov's “Dark Eyes,” and others. Students will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/ Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, and Feminist work on the construction of gender.
RUSS430 Ethnic Conflict in Film
All readings and lectures in English.
Cross-Cultural Analysis (Class of '10 and after)
Cross-listing: CINE430
M 5:30 - 8:30pm 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.
