An overview of the cinematic tradition in Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria from the 1960s to the present. Topics include revolution and socialism; cinema as activism; ideology and politics; sex and gender; war and trauma. Taught in English. All films with subtitles.

This course examines the presentation of women and women's themes in works of Ukrainian literature. The subjects covered include: role models, freedom, socialism, nationalism, feminism, and sexuality.

An exploration of the elements of the short story through close readings of works by 19th and 20th century writers. Stories in translation by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Olesha, Babel, and others. All readings in English.

A survey of key periods and foundations of Russian and Ukrainian societies and cultures. Explores common elements, differences, and factors (social structure, religion, art, and literature) that shaped the Ukrainian-Russian historical encounter from the Middle Ages to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Taught in English, all readings in English. No background knowledge required.

An introduction to the comparative study of folk narratives – fairy-tales, legends, epics, from Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Baltic Region. Topics include the structural and psychological analysis and interpretation of oral folk traditions; the cultural specificity of Slavic and Baltic folklore; its adaptation and treatment in literature, music, and visual arts. Taught in English, all readings in English.

Systematic study of morphology and syntax. Intermediate composition and oral practice. Reading and translation of contemporary and more complex texts in BCS.

Chronologically organized and covering a period of ten centuries, from the eleventh to the twenty-first, the course has a special focus, the rendering of space and perspective. Beginning with the so-called “reverse perspective” of Russian Icons and the devotional world of churches and cathedrals, continuing with the geometrically organized, rational space of the 18th century and St. Petersburg, and moving on to the distorted reality of the Russian avant-garde and Socialist Realism’s attempt at reproducing reality “as it is,” the course concludes by asking where this oscillating acceptance and rejection of illusion leaves us in the 21st century. Consideration of paintings, buildings, sculptures, selected literary texts and films.

A survey of Russian-French intellectual, literary, and artistic contacts and mutual influences, from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Topics may include: transnational circulation of genres, styles, aesthetic programs, philosophical concepts, and political ideas; cultural tourism; cultural appropriation and misreading; direct contacts between French and Russian intellectual and artistic elites. Lectures in English. Students taking the course from the French Department will read the texts in French, have tutorials in French, and write assignments in French. All others will read texts in English, have tutorials in English, and write assignments in English.

Poland and Europe 1914-1945. As we commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of WWI, this cataclysmic event that launched the 20th century and was followed by another total war soon after still defines our view of the world and understanding of it. It may be time now to look anew at how various forms of expression, including literature, film, theatre, painting and sculpture produced during the two wars, between them or many decades later deal with the extreme and everyday experiences, with shattered worlds of individuals, ethnicities, and nations.

How are Cossacks depicted in literary and visual works? Were they the agents of a repressive Russian government, the hirelings of Polish kings, the tormentors of Eastern European Jews, the protectors of Europe from the Ottomans, or the liberators of the Ukrainian nation? We read works from the Jewish, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian cultural traditions.

The course examines the role of language, religion, art, and geopolitics – from Classical Antiquity to the present – in shaping the cultural identities of national communities in the Caucasus region which has long been the site of struggle between ancient and modern empires. Examining the cultural, linguistic, confessional, and social diversity of the Caucasus, this interdisciplinary course provides foundations for engaging with the region’s cultural history, the evolving self-conception of its peoples, and the historical place of the Caucasus in the imagination of European and Asian outsiders. We will study a broad variety of documentary and fictional sources including folklore, political and religious thought, literary fiction, autobiography, film, painting, architecture. Taught in English, all readings in English, no preparation is required.

Continuation of SLA257H1. Systematic study of morphology and syntax. Intermediate composition and oral practice. Reading and translation of contemporary texts in BCS.

Introduction to geography, languages, people, literature, and the history of Russian Asia. Includes readings in history, exile narratives, articles on the linguistic geography of the languages of Russia including Russian, Siberian languages such as Yakut and Tungus, Turkic languages of Central Asia, Korean and Chinese as minority languages, with a special focus on language contact and language politics.

Science fiction from Russia and Eastern Europe combines radical aesthetics, thought experiments, and engagement with socio-political conditions, censorship, and technological innovation. This course will study Russian and East European science fiction's cultural, historical, and political contexts, examining how the genre comments upon the texts’ present historical moment and imagines new possibilities.

Survey of major movements and institutions, familiar and less studied writers and intellectuals of the first half of the nineteenth century. Imperial culture between and within Europe and Asia. Romanticism as literary movement, cultural ideology, and lifestyle. Emergence of literature as profession and public sphere. Literature and nationalism. Taught in English, all readings in English.

This course examines the genesis and evolution of the image of “the jews,” central to all European cultures, from the theology and psychology of Christian anti-Judaism to their reflection in arts and folklore, and to the survival of the “jewish” vocabulary of difference, in secular form, in post-Christian cultures. Special attention is given to “the jews” of the East European imagination. The final part of the course will explore the experience of Jewish cultural assimilation in European societies, which forced individuals of Jewish extraction to confront the Christian and post-Christian discourse of “jewish” difference. All readings are in English.

An exploration of Central and East European authors writing in different languages but united by Jewish ancestry. We examine the responses of artists and intellectuals of Jewish extraction (Sholem Aleichem, Babel, Bialik, Heine, Kafka, Mandelshtam, Sforim, Zhabotinskii, etc.) to cultural secularization and modernity. Taught in English. Readings in English.

Through a series of thematic modules based on everyday communicative situations in contemporary Poland students develop Polish language skills in the four linguistic competencies: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. The course is based on a communicative-functional approach to language. It means that even though students are regularly exposed to new grammatical structures, their work focuses primarily on practical, diverse uses of language in real-life situations.

Development of advanced speaking, reading, listening, and writing skills on a wide range of topics by engaging with a variety of media: literature, film, popular culture, and social media. Building mastery of the fundamentals of grammar and syntax, expanding vocabulary, and mastering oral and written communication.

Survey of major movements and institutions, genres, familiar and less studied writers and intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century. Imperial culture in the reform era. Realism as literary movement, professionalization of literature and criticism, the novel and serialization, the short story and drama. Taught in English, all readings in English.

Fantastic and grotesque works by the most hilarious, obsessive, and delusional character in Russian literature, who teased, fascinated, and polarized readers. Gogol’s writings are examined through various theoretical approaches. Includes cinematic (Taras Bulba, Viy, Overcoat) and musical (Shostakovich’s “Nose”) re-creations of Gogol’s works. Taught in English, all readings in English.

A study of Vladimir Nabokov's novels written in Europe and the United States. Special attention is paid to the nature and evolution of Nabokov's aesthetics; the place of his novels in European and American literary traditions; Nabokov's creative uses of exile to artistic, philosophical and ideological ends; the aesthetic and cultural implications of the writers' switch from Russian to English. Novels studied: Defense, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire. Taught in English, all readings in English.

Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and short works. Dostoevsky's political, psychological, and religious ideas as they shape and are shaped by his literary art. Readings in English. Taught in English, all readings in English.

War and Peace or Anna Karenina, and some shorter works. Tolstoy's political, psychological, and religious ideas as they shape and are shaped by his literary art. Taught in English, all readings in English.

Captivating and elusive: the "new Jerusalem," Yehupets, a "Slavic Pompeii" and frontier city. This course examines Kyiv through works of literature, visual arts, architecture, and popular culture that reveal Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, and Polish versions of the city. Gogol, Sholem Aleichem, Bulgakov, Vynnychenko, and many others. Taught in English, all readings in English.

A survey of Russian culture and history of the 20th century through non-adapted readings and film. Development of advanced speaking, reading, listening and writing skills on a wide variety of topics. Work on grammar and vocabulary building. Subordinate and relative clauses, aspect, verbs of motion, participles and gerunds. Class is conducted primarily in Russian.

Expansion of vocabulary and development of conversational skills. Discussion of a variety of topics (history, culture, art, politics, law, social and economic problems, contemporary events). Class is taught in round-table format.

Language, life and the media in Russian. The course will be based on reading newspapers, listening to media, and discussing contemporary events in Russian.

This course introduces Russian's sounds, structures, and alternations. Russian’s tricky morphologic alternations and their historical causes are explored while students master the hidden encoding of forms through study of the writing system, root structures, and variation.

Inspired by Angelo Ripellino’s “Magic Prague,” this class explores Prague as a palimpsest of different genres in works by Jan Neruda, Franz Kafka, R.M. Rilke, G. Meyrink, G. Apollinaire, B. Hrabal and others. Selected secondary texts illuminate questions of literary cityscapes, center and margins, multiculturalism and nationalism and magic. Readings in English and for the specialists in the original.