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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Staff. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 001 and 002 or placement exam. This course will develop your ability to use the Russian language in the context of typical everyday situations, including university life, family, shopping, entertainment, etc. Role-playing, skits, short readings from literature and the current press, and video clips will be used to help students improve their language skills and their understanding of Russian culture. At the end of the semester you will be able to read and write short texts about your daily schedule and interests, to understand brief newspaper articles, films and short literary texts, and to express your opinions in Russian. In combination with RUSS 004, this course prepares students to satisfy the language competency requirement.
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3.00 Credits
Staff. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 003 or placement exam. 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.
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3.00 Credits
History & Tradition Sector. All classes. Nathans. How and why did Russia become the center of the world's largest empire, a single state encompassing eleven time zones and over a hundred ethnic groups To answer this question, we will explore the rise of a distinct political culture beginning in medieval Muscovy, its transformation under the impact of a prolonged encounter with European civilization, and the various attempts to re-form Russia from above and below prior to the Revolution of 1917. Main themes include the facade vs. the reality of central authority, the intersection of foreign and domestic issues, the development of a radical intelligentsia, and the tension between empire and nation.
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3.00 Credits
History & Tradition Sector. All classes. Nathans. Out of an obscure, backward empire, the Soviet Union emerged to become the great political laboratory of the twentieth century. This course will trace the roots of the world's first socialist society and its attempts to recast human relations and human nature itself. Topics include the origins of the Revolution of 1917, the role of ideology in state policy and everyday life, the Soviet Union as the center of world communism, the challenge of ethnic diversity, and the reasons for the USSR's sudden implosion in 1991. Focusing on politics, society, culture, and their interaction, we will examine the rulers (from Lenin to Gorbachev) as well as the ruled (peasants, workers, and intellectuals; Russians and non-Russians). The course will feature discussions of selected texts, including primary sources in translation.
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3.00 Credits
Verkholantsev. The course provides an introduction to Russian culture and society through the prism of fairy tale narratives. We will approach Russian culture by studying how classic tales have been retold in a variety of contexts: folklore, literature, art, music, opera, ballet, film, political propaganda, etc. The appeal of fairy tales is universal. Do they seduce our imagination through magic and the pleasure of escapism, or do they fulfill some important social function, reflecting the national psyche and giving it shape Are they an escape from reality or a fundamental part of it The course also provides a general introduction to the study of folklore, fairy tales and mythology from a variety of theoretical and comparative perspectives. We will begin with the study of the classic Russian fairy tales and the examination of the religious background of Russian culture. We will then study how the Russian classic authors in the nineteenth century incorporated and enriched these tales and legends. Finally, we will learn how the genre of fairy tale was used in the twentieth century, both by the Soviet authorities in their efforts to educate the masses, and by critical and dissident voices who turned these "innocent" stories into tools for disguised criticism and satire. Like Russians, we will "read between the lines" of a thought-provoking history of fairy tales, fantastic stories, legends and myths as we will learn about cultural and social values of the society that created them.
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3.00 Credits
Yakubova. Prerequisite(s): At least four semesters of Russian. The goal of RUSS107 is to provide students of Russian language and students who spoke Russian at home with formalized opportunities to improve their conversation and comprehension skills while experiencing various aspects of Russian culture. There will be no weekly assignments or readings, but all students will be expected to contribute at a level equivalent to their Russian-speaking abilities both in class and on the newsletter final project. The course consists of attending regular conversation hours in addition to a tea-drinking hour in the department (F 4-5pm), film viewings, and a single outside cultural event (e.g., a concert of Russian music at the Kimmel Center).
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3.00 Credits
Yakubova. Prerequisite(s): At least four semesters of Russian, and RUSS107. This is a half-credit course that consists of a variety of fun and entertaining non-classroom Russian language activities. Students who have taken at least one semester of Russian will take part in: 1. Russian lunch and dinner table; 2. Russian Tea and conversation, featuring cartoons, poetry readings, music listening, news broadcast, games, cooking lessons, and informal visits by guests; 3. The Russian Film Series; 4. field trips to Russian cultural events in the area (symphony, drama, film, etc.); 5. other Russian Program events.
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3.00 Credits
Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes. Platt. All readings and lectures in English. 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. In our coursework we will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its 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 transgresssive sexuality, Feminist work on the construction of gender. In general, we will see the ways in which human identity is tied to gender roles, and the complex relationship tying these matters of the libido and the family to larger issues of social organization.
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3.00 Credits
Distribution Course in Arts & Letters. Class of 2009 & prior only. Vinitsky. All readings and lectures in English. In this course, we will read and discuss ghost stories written by some of the most well-known Russian writers. The goal of the course is threefold: to familiarize the students with brilliant and thrilling texts which represent various periods of Russian literature; to examine the artistic features of ghost stories and to explore their ideological implications. With attention to relevant scholarship (Freud, Todorov, Derrida, Greenblatt), we will pose questions about the role of the storyteller in ghost stories, and about horror and the fantastic. We will also ponder gender and class, controversy over sense and sensation, spiritual significance and major changes in attitudes toward the supernatural. We will consider the concept of the apparition as a peculiar cultural myth, which tells us about the "dark side" of the Russian literary imagination and about the historical and political conflicts which have haunted Russian minds in previous centuries. Reading will include literary works by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, and Bulgakov, as well as works by some lesser, yet extremely interesting, authors. We will also read excerpts from major treatises regarding spiritualism, including Swedenborg, Kant, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mme Blavatsky. The course consists of 28 sessions ("nights") and includes film presentations and horrifying slides.
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3.00 Credits
Humanities & Social Science Sector. Class of 2010 & beyond. Platt. No prior language experience required. 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 historybirth, death, duel, courtship, tsar, and so on. Each of these main texts is accompanied by a set of supplementary materialspaintings, 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 disciplinesyet 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.
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