The following graduate courses (subject to revision) will be offered by the Russian School in the summer of 2008:
Language and Linguistics
RU 6502 Advanced Conversation Practicum (Elena Yakovlevna Shmeleva)
Students in this class will focus on expanding their lexicon and their syntactical repertoire in scholarly and journalistic speech and on preparing scholarly presentations in their area of interest. Main themes will be political, economic, cultural, and social life in Russia, with reference to interesting and sometimes controversial topics concerning contemporary Russian society and culture. We will also focus on differences in culture and everyday life, as reflected in speech, to determine ‘what Russians know that Americans don’t.’ Students will read assigned articles from scholarship and press, watch videos on Russian politics, society, and culture, discuss these materials, and write compositions. Students will be required to discern and analyze the author’s point of view and then formulate their own opinion. Grades will be determined according to participation in class discussions, weekly compositions, an oral presentation, and a final oral examination. (1 Unit)
RU 6506 Advanced Grammar (Valentina Yakovlevna Troufanova)
This course is intended for students who want to have a thorough knowledge of Russian grammar. Attention will be paid mainly to those themes which usually proved to be the most difficult for students of Russian as a foreign language: meanings and uses of cases, productive and non-productive types of Russian verbs, verbal aspect, verbs of motion, the use of pronouns and the meanings and uses of conjunctions and conjunctive words in compound and complex sentences. Reading and analysis of novels and newspaper articles, as well as assigned grammar exercises and essays, will help students use correct grammar forms and constructions automatically. Final exam has three papers: grammar test, writing and use of Russian. Textbooks: Pulkina, Zakhava-Nekrasova. Russian. A Practical Grammar with Exercises. Moscow, 1994; Andrews, Averianova, Piadusova, Russkii glagol: Formy i funktsii, Moscow, 2003; and others. (1 Unit)
RU 6511 Readings in the Contemporary Russian Press (Svetlana Borisovna Stepanova)
Cross-listed with Civilization.
This course will focus on the development of vocabulary related to Russian media, and of reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills through reading, viewing, and discussion of various materials in the journalistic and popular press. We will discuss the political, economic, social, and cultural life of Russia as represented in the media. At home students will read assigned press materials and do grammatical and lexical exercises to develop vocabulary. In class we will watch television programs thematically linked with the assigned readings. Students will be required to convey the author’s opinion and their own, to participate in debates, and to give and respond to oral reports. Grades will be assessed according to class participation, homework, an oral report, weekly compositions, and a final examination. (1 Unit)
RU 6515 Advanced Composition & Stylistics (Valentina Yakovlevna Troufanova)
This course will focus on helping students improve their command of written Russian. Students will read short prose texts in a variety of genres and analyze them for style before using them as models for their own expository prose. In class discussion, we will focus on stylistic issues in the prose written by Russian authors in various genres and styles and in the students’ own prose. Students will write short compositions two-three times a week in various genres and styles (personal letters, scientific papers, business correspondence, various genres of journalism, etc.), will collaborate with one another to edit their work, and will present finished papers publicly, including in the context of our school newspaper, graduate symposium, and radio programming. Grades will be based on class participation and compositions written throughout the 6-week program. (1 Unit)
RU 6614 New Trends in Russian (Aleksei Dmitrievich Shmelev)
The aim of the course is to give students tools and methods for understanding Russian as it is spoken today. Since the end of the Soviet era, almost every aspect of the Russian language has been affected by social and political change, from grammar to lexicon, from syntax to speech etiquette. A variety of classroom activities, both creative and analytical, helps students develop confidence and skill in reading Russian newspapers, watching TV and movies, enjoying songs and jokes. The course grade will be based on student homework (analysis of new texts of various genres), participation in class discussion and two exams (midterm and final). (1 Unit)
RU 6648 Russian Speech Etiquette (Aleksei Dmitrievich Shmelev)
The course introduces the speech formulas of every day life in Russia (set expressions, forms of speech etiquette, and conversational formulae of greeting, apologies, gratitude, congratulating, etc.). Students will become acquainted with etiquette behavior in speech, the vocabulary of etiquette clichés; etiquette rules of communication in various life situations. Prerequisite: RU 6502 (Advanced Conversation Practicum) or permission. (1 Unit)
Literature
RU 6620 Great Love in Small Genres: 19th and 20th Centuries (Oleg Anatolievich Proskurin)
This course will focus on lyric poetry and short stories of great 19th- and 20th-century writers on the theme of love. We will see how these writers treat various aspects of love – psychological, moral, social, and even political. We will examine how this theme is connected with the individual creative characteristics of each writer and thus with the evolution of Russian literature. Prose works under study will include those of Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Leskov, Chekhov, and Bunin; we will also read lyric poetry by Pushkin, Baratynsky, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Fet, Nekrasov, Blok, and Akhmatova. Students will write three short papers and a final exam. (1 Unit)
RU 6625 The Supernatural in Russian Literature, Music, and Painting
(Ilya Iurievich Vinitsky)
Cross-listed with Civilization.
The goal of the course is threefold: to familiarize the students with brilliant and thrilling works of art which represent various periods of Russian culture; to examine the artistic features of “fantastic” works and to explore their ideological implications. With attention to relevant scholarship, we will pose questions about the role of the storyteller and about horror and the fantastic. We will also ponder gender and class, controversy over sense and sensation, the spiritual significance and major changes in attitudes toward the supernatural which tell 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. Works under discussion will include tales by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Turgenev, Briusov, and other writers, musical works by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, paintings by Ivanov and Vrubel’. Writing assignments include three short essays (3-4 pages each) and a final paper (7 pages). (1 Unit)
RU 6735 Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (Ilya Iurievich Vinitsky)
This course deals with a close reading of Dostoevsky’s final and perhaps greatest novel and focuses on the ways the writer portrays/investigates the “inner worlds” of its major characters. Dostoevsky’s unique psychological method will be considered against the ideological, scientific, and literary contexts of the 1870s, including political, philosophical, and religious polemics, developments of modern psychology, paradoxes of fashionable modern spiritualism, and the psychological prose of Dostoevsky’s contemporaries and immediate predecessors. Students will participate in three debates and write a final essay on the writer’s “spiritual realism.” (1 Unit)
RU 6740 Russian Prose 2007: What Russian Students Read (Oleg Anatolievich Proskurin)
This course will focus on prose works that were 2007 ‘short list’ nominees for the Russian Booker Prize, the most prestigious Russian literary prize today. Parallel with this short list prepared by an expert jury, student representatives from several Russian universities prepared their own ‘short list’, the so-called Student Booker. Student choices corresponded with the expert jury’s selections by half. Thus the Student Booker provides a sense of what current Russian books have attracted the attention of student-age readers today. For this course we will read Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein – perevodchik (Daniel Stein – Translator), which just won the prestigious Russian Great Book award; Maya Kucherskaya’s Bog dozhdia (Rain God); and other leading prose works from 2007. Students will write three short response papers and a final exam.
Civilization
RU 6639 Stalinism and the Cold War (Aleksandr Petrovich Logunov)
This course, a continuation of last year’s course on early Twentieth-Century Russian History: Revolutions, will focus on the period from the Civil War to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, one of the most significant periods in twentieth-century Russian history: these were the formative years for the creation of the Soviet system of government, values, and the basis for its dialogue with the outer world. The course will prompt students to explore why Stalinism in the Soviet Union could take the form of a stable and efficiently working system whose domestic characteristics and trends contributed to the prolonged existence of its values among Soviet citizens. Though broad in its coverage of social, cultural, economic and ethnic deformations characteristic of the Stalinist system, the course will focus on the reasons why ‘Stalinism’ turned out to be so appealing to the society of that time. This issue is even more important in light of rising public interest in both Stalin’s personality and the processes which characterized his time. A great deal of this course will be devoted to international issues, since this period includes both the World War II period and the first steps towards bipolar confrontation. The course will be accompanied by literary texts and documentary films and will include a thorough study of transformations in political vocabulary and colloquial Russian. Students will be required to participate actively in class discussions and comment on assigned readings, to make an in-class presentation, and to write brief assignments and a final exam or paper. (1 Unit)
RU 6613 The Ethnic and Religious Design of Modern Russia (Aleksandr Petrovich Logunov)
Ethnic and religious processes in the USSR and subsequently in Russia have been particularly striking since the end of the 1980s. After the demise of the Soviet Union, followed by the crisis in Soviet identity, ethnic and religious factors have become key elements in the emergence of a new system. Various political groups began to take advantage of this situation. At the same time, as the state gradually gained strength, its role in these processes grew. Thus comprehension of peculiarities and features of these trends is crucial to an understanding of today’s Russia. The aims of this course include providing information on major religious and ethnic groups and denominations in today’s Russia, as well as major terms and concepts related to these issues used in publications and colloquial Russian; studying the most pressing problems of ethnic and religious culture, as well as patterns of cross-cultural communication influencing the quality of life in present-day Russia; and examining the influence of various political, fiction and nonfiction texts on multi-ethnic and religious dialogue in Russia. The course will be accompanied by literary texts and documentary movies and will employ interactive methods. Students will be required to participate actively in class discussions and comment on assigned readings, to make an in-class presentation, and to write brief assignments and a final exam or paper. (1 Unit)
RU 6602 History of Animation (Galina Gennadievna Aksenova)
This course examines the history of Russian animation from 1912 to the beginning of the 21st century in the context of the development of Russian cinema. Students will watch and analyze various animated films, from the first works of Vladislav Starevich to the films of Andrei Khrzhanovsky, Iurii Norstein, and Aleksandr Petrov, who won an Oscar for his work. We will discuss various forms of animation, and we will analyze the work of artists and animation filmmakers in the context of changes in the production structure: the emergence and collapse of state film studios. There will be required film showings outside class meetings. Students will write one research paper. (1 Unit)
RU 6511 Readings in the Contemporary Russian Press (Svetlana Borisovna Stepanova)
Cross-listed with Language/Linguistics.
This course will focus on the development of vocabulary related to Russian media, and of reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills through reading, viewing, and discussion of various materials in the journalistic and popular press. We will discuss the political, economic, social, and cultural life of Russia as represented in the media. At home students will read assigned press materials and do grammatical and lexical exercises to develop vocabulary. In class we will watch television programs thematically linked with the assigned readings. Students will be required to convey the author’s opinion and their own, to participate in debates, and to give and respond to oral reports. Grades will be assessed according to class participation, homework, an oral report, weekly compositions, and a final examination. (1 Unit)
RU 6625 The Supernatural in Russian Literature, Music, and Painting
(Ilya Iurievich Vinitsky)
Cross-listed with Literature.
The goal of the course is threefold: to familiarize the students with brilliant and thrilling works of art which represent various periods of Russian culture; to examine the artistic features of “fantastic” works and to explore their ideological implications. With attention to relevant scholarship, we will pose questions about the role of the storyteller and about horror and the fantastic. We will also ponder gender and class, controversy over sense and sensation, the spiritual significance and major changes in attitudes toward the supernatural which tell 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. Works under discussion will include tales by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Turgenev, Briusov, and other writers, musical works by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, paintings by Ivanov and Vrubel’. Writing assignments include three short essays (3-4 pages each) and a final paper (7 pages). (1 Unit)
Seminar Courses
RU 6888 Independent Study (Staff)
This course consists of a thesis written in Russian, for which an advisor will be assigned, and is a requirement for MA candidates. The course can only be taken for the completion of the master’s thesis and may be taken only once. (1 Unit)
DM 6903 Research Paper (Evans-Romaine)
This research paper is a requirement for DML candidates during their summer of application. (1 Unit)