Fall 2023

RUS 549 

Russian for Academic Purposes I

This course focuses instruction on skills required to perform in a Russian-speaking academic context across core subject areas of literary analysis and cultural studies. The targeted language skills - reading, writing, speaking, and listening - will be tied with the specific needs of students (e.g., reading and writing proposals, presentations for conferences, academic articles, and correspondence). In addition, students get acquainted with various academic sub-styles and genres as well as differences in academic standards (citation, bibliography). The course includes a comprehensive review of Russian grammar and syntax.

SLA 513

History and Literature of 18th Century Russia

This seminar covers significant works of Russian eighteenth-century literature (poetry, drama, and prose) in their historical context. Major themes include: empire, church and state; Russia and the West; Peter and Catherine as cultural legislators; Patronage; Censorship; Political Dissent; Women's Life and Letters. Some attention will be given to European connections and influences.

SLA 535 

Methods of Teaching Russian

A practical course required of graduate students who are teaching beginning Russian. The course covers all issues relevant to the teaching of the language: phonetics, grammar presentation, efficient use of class time, class and syllabus planning, writing quizzes and tests. In addition to weekly meetings with the instructors, students are expected to meet as a group to develop best practices for covering each week's material. An important part of the course is instructor supervision of teaching.

SLA 545 

The Ukrainian literature of Catastrophe: Revolution, War, and the Chornobyl disaster

The course offers an overview of the Ukrainian literature of catastrophe as a way of representing the dramatic events of the twentieth century. The aim of the course is to examine how trauma influences the literary imagination and to consider the role of tragic consciousness and aesthetic sublimation in presenting catastrophic events. The students read and discuss texts of different Ukrainian authors from Vasyl Stefanyk (1871-1936) to Serhiy Zhadan (born in 1974).

SLA 547

Worlds of Form: Russian Formalism and Constructivism 

The seminar explores key texts of the Russian avant-garde, looking specifically at the ways Russian Formalists and Constructivists theorized the importance of form for their art and scholarship. Essays written by Shklovsky, Jakobson, Rodchenko, Vertov, Lissitzky, and Tatlin are contextualized within the field of contemporary critical theory. This is an interdisciplinary seminar, and during the semester, we oscillate between literature and cinema, linguistics and photography, architecture and painting. No Russian language skills are required.