Course description: 

Anton Chekhov was the last of the major writers from the “classic” period of Russian literature, producing his distinctive short stories and plays during the twilight years of the Russian empire. Chekhov was formed by this cultural-historical moment, and he depicted the effects of modernity on Russia of his own time, treating a wide range of characters from different backgrounds. But Chekhov has long since transcended this original context. He is celebrated as one of the greatest short story writers of all time, and his plays are performed more frequently around the world than those of any other playwright, excepting Shakespeare. Once you’ve spent time with Chekhov, he will stay with you forever.

Chekhov’s work can be funny or very sad, and sometimes it is both at the same time. Much of Chekhov’s meaning lies in the details, and in what is not said as much as what is made explicit. This seminar seeks to sharpen your skills as a discerning reader and interpreter. We will also go beyond the page to explore Chekhov’s work as produced on stage and screen, beginning with his partnership with Konstantin Stanislavsky, the director of the Moscow Art Theater, where Chekhov’s plays were first enthusiastically received. Since then, Chekhov’s plays have been produced across a diverse range of approaches, which we’ll sample. More broadly, we will consider Chekhov’s life and times and explore his on-going reception inside Russia and around the world.

Course site

Course description: 

Introduction to Russian phonetics, phonemics, morphophonemics, and inflectional and derivational morphology. Course goal is to give a deeper understanding and appreciation of the regularities and complexities of Russian through a close study of its sounds and words.

Recommended prep: 

Russian B, BAB, BT or placement at the third-year level. No knowledge of linguistics required.

Course description: 

Explores major works of imperial Russian culture (1703-1917), including literature, drama, opera, ballet, music, visual arts, and architecture. At the center of this course stand the works themselves, their artistic qualities, and cultural-historical contexts, as well as the intentions of their creators, and the responses of their initial audiences. What mythologies of national identity did these works propose? In what ways were these works radical: formally, aesthetically, ideologically? How did these now-famous works achieve canonical status beyond their own time? How have these works been variously reinterpreted since then? Works by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and others.

Course notes: 

All readings in English. Students who wish to read Russian texts in the original may attend a special weekly section with the instructor. Enrollment is limited to 25 students. Please submit a petition describing your reasons for wanting to take Slavic 132. There will be waitlist for those not initially enrolled.

Related sections: 

Discussion section Th 4:30-5:30pm, TBA

Course description: 

This course on the major fiction of Vladimir Nabokov begins with his major Russian novels in English translation, including The Defense, Laughter in the Dark (Camera Obscura), Invitation to a Beheading, and Despair, and concludes with classic English works, Speak, Memory, Lolita, and Pnin. Topics in the course include emigration and cross-cultural translation, literary modernism, metafiction, nostalgia and stories of childhood, as well as the literary representations of tyranny, violence, and abuse. We will pay additional attention to Nabokov’s interest in film and film aesthetics, and we will consider four screen versions of his novels (Luzhin’s Defense, Laughter in the Dark, Despair, and Lolita). 

Course notes: 

No knowledge of Russian required.

Related sections: 

Discussion sections T 3:00-4:00pm, W 3:00-4:00, 6:00-7:00pm, TBA.

Course description: 

This course will provide an overview of Ukrainian multicultural literature through the lens of the poetics of resistance. Our exploration will span the period from the genesis of modern Ukrainian literature in the 17th century to contemporary works emerging in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Starting from the discussion of Ivan Kotliarevsky’s travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid, Nikolai Gogol/ Mykola Hohol’s hybrid identities and Taras Shevchenko’s resolutely anti-imperial poetry we will go on to discuss the groundbreaking feminist writing of Lesia Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska. A significant part of the course will be dedicated to the Soviet period: we will study how Ukrainian modernists both reflected Soviet culture and subverted it; we will look at how Ukrainian dissidents defied the Soviet order and managed to create outstanding literary works even in the extreme circumstances of the Gulag. Finally, we will analyze some of the poetry, prose, and film that seek to articulate the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, shedding light on its causes and stakes. In studying some of Ukraine’s literary masterpieces, we will tunnel to the heart of the phenomenon of resistance: its philosophy, aesthetics, cultural practices, and historical reverberations. Fundamentally, we will reflect on the nexus between literature and ethics, focusing on themes such as resistance against political violence and oppression, human rights discourse, feminist struggle as well as justice and solidarity.

Course notes:

No prior knowledge of Ukrainian literature is required or expected. All materials will be provided in English.

Course description:

This course will introduce you to the history of Polish literature and Polish cultural imagination, focusing on several questions that remain resonant to this day, such as Poland’s entangled relations with Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Jewish, German, and Russian cultures. Critical discussions of Polish literature and film (including readings of Polish Nobel Prize winners: Tokarczuk, Szymborska, Milosz, and Sienkiewicz) will be confronted with Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Yiddish texts. Polish culture offers examples of both the colonized and colonizing voices, offering unique insights into the study of racialization, forced displacement, dual identity, complicity, resistance, and genocide. We will discuss why Poland’s national epic poem begins with the words “Lithuania! My homeland!” and was written in France by a poet born in the area of today’s Belarus. We will consider East-Central Europe’s often-changing borders, contested memories, and the ways in which the region’s complicated past is reworked and discussed today, in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. 

Note: All readings in English. It is an introductory course – no background in Polish literature is required. Students who take this course are eligible to apply for the Slavic Department’s Jurzykowski grants for the summer language study in Poland.

Class notes:

No prior knowledge of Poland required. All readings will be in English.

Course description: 

No novel can be reduced to a set of political beliefs, and yet we often feel that novels speak to our political theories and practices. What makes a novel “political”? Can the novel make a contribution to political theory? How does our understanding of political power change when we imagine detailed and dramatic confrontations between individuals and the state, individuals and empire, or individuals and global ideologies? How does narrative form reinforce or undermine ideology? What archetypal dramas—protest against authority, the loss of political innocence, the battle between tolerance and conviction—have shaped the political novel in its various traditions from the nineteenth century to the present? We will consider these questions through some classic and lesser-known political novels from the nineteenth century to the present day, with readings from Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Olbracht, Arthur Koestler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Don Delillo, Léonora Miano, and others. Although we will have occasional short readings in theory, our main focus will be on the attentive reading of complex literature that cannot be reduced to allegories of political conflict or unlocked through primarily "ideological" reading.

Course notes: 

All readings are in English, and there are no prerequisites for the course. This course will have an additional discussion section; if you have a scheduling conflict during the course’s currently scheduled discussion section (Thursday 3-4 p.m.), please enroll in the second placeholder section. We will schedule this second section, based on student availability, during registration. Please see the course website for details

Related sections:

Discussion section Th 3:00-4:00pm, TBA

Course description:

 A survey of major authors and key questions in 18th-century Russian literature: (r)evolutions in literary language; syllabo-tonic reform; style and genre systems; the status of literature in the Imperial state, etc. Studies Prokopovich, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, Bogdanovich, Karamzin.

Course notes: 

Good reading knowledge of Russian required.

Course description: 

Russia is in the news these days: grotesque war in Ukraine, election interference in the US, violent repressions of free speech and countless arrests at home. But Russian culture has a long history of channeling creative forms of resistance through literature, drama, and film. How have the stories, poems, plays, movies, memoirs, and documentaries of the last thirty years set up current cultural activists to find their voices and use them effectively? What has diaspora come to mean, and how have cultural figures in far-flung places created a sense of shared identity?  

Our course will ask how we got to this place, and how to read its ethics and aesthetics. We will trace the chaotic transitions of the 1990s, the disparities of wealth and polarized politics of the 2000s, and the protests of the 2000s and 2010s, and the complex rise of religious thinking (Orthodox, Islam, Jewish). 

We will read works set within Russia’s borders, in former Soviet republics, and much further afield, in sites of emigration and self-exile. Themes of historical trauma and reconciliation, of war and rebellion, of sexual expression and sexual freedom, and feminist and LGBTQ resistance will be explored. 

Writings by Svetlana Aleksievich, Joseph Brodsky, Keti Chukhrov, Elena Fanailova, Alisa Ganieva, Linor Goralik, Boris Khersonsky, Vladimir Sorokin, Maria Stepanova, Lida Yusupova, and others. Films include The Blockade, Leviathan, Four, Alexandra, My Joy, and Beslan, Remember.

Class notes: 

All readings in English, with added section for those able to read in Russian.

Related Sections:

Discussion section F 1:30-2:45PM

Course description: Introduction to graduate study in Slavic. Selected topics in literary analysis, history, theory, and professional development. Students must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year to receive credit.

Course notes: Reading knowledge of Russian required.