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 Alley
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.
RUSS419 Russian Song and Folklore
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
MW 3:30 - 5pm 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.
RUSS508 Advanced Russian for Business
Prerequisite: any 400-level course, or comparable language competence
TR 1:30 - 3pm 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.
SLAV591 Elementary Ukrainian II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 5 - 7pm Rudnytzky L
SLAV504 Intermediate Polish II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 6 - 8pm Moskala
Continuation of SLAV503.
SLAV506 Polish for Heritage Speakers II
Offered through Penn Language Center
MW 4 - 5:30pm Moskala
Continuation of SLAV505.
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 6 - 9pm Pagan - Mattos
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.
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
MW 2 - 3:30pm Verkholantsev
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.
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.
RUSS197 Madness and Madmen in Russian Culture
All readings and lectures in English
Humanities and Social Sciences Sector (New Curriculum Only)
Cross-listing: COML197
TR 1:30 - 3pm Thorstensson
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
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
MW 12 - 1:30pm Thorstensson
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.
RUSS240 Napoleonic Era and Tolstoy
All readings and lectures in English
Cross-Cultural Analysis
Cross-listing: COML236, HIST333
TR 1:30 - 3pm Holquist/Vinitsky
In this course we will read what many consider to be the greatest book in world literature. This work, Tolstoy's War and Peace, is devoted to one of the most momentous periods in world history, the Napoleonic Era (1789-1815). We will study both the novel and the era of the Napoleonic Wars: the military campaigns of Napoleon and his opponents, the grand strategies of the age, political intrigues and diplomatic betrayals, the ideologies and human dramas, the relationship between art and history. How does literature help us to understand this era? How does history help us to understand this great novel?
This semester marks the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia and achieve world domination, the campaign of 1812. Come celebrate this Bicentennial with us! Because we will read War and Peace over the course of the entire semester, readings will be manageable – and very enjoyable.
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
RUSS419 Russian Song and Folklore
Conducted in Russian
Prerequisite(s): RUSS 312 or placement exam
MW 3:30 - 5pm 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.
RUSS469 Russian Utopia in Literature, Film, and Politics
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
TR 10:30am - 12noon Thorstensson
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.
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.
RUSS508 Advanced Russian for Business
Prerequisite: any 400-level course, or comparable language competence
TR 1:30 - 3pm 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
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.
RUSS469 Russian Utopia in Literature, Film, and Politics
Prerequisite: RUSS361 or comparable language competence.
TR 10:30am - 12noon Thorstensson
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.
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.
RUSS508 Advanced Russian for Business
Prerequisite: any 400-level course, or comparable language competence
TR 1:30 - 3pm 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.
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 6 - 9pm Pagan - Mattos
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.
