The department’s graduate courses meet once a week, usually in the evening. Most of the courses listed below are offered every year, but some are offered less frequently. Detailed information about the courses given in any term may be obtained from the director of graduate studies. Some courses in the department are conducted in Russian; term papers and final examinations must be written in English. The department offers special studies and research courses that permit students to pursue individual interests under the supervision of a faculty adviser.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Seminar in 19th-Century Russian Literature
G91.1006  Lounsbery. 4 points.

Seminar in 20th-Century Russian Literature
G91.1092  Borenstein. 4 points.

Special Studies in Literary Genres
G91.2006  Staff. 4 points.

Theory of the Avant-Garde, East and West, 1890-1930
G91.2103  Identical to G65.1142. Groys. 4 points.
Examines movements of the avant-garde—cubism, futurism, imagism, vorticism, constructivism, dadaism, and surrealism—in their international and interdisciplinary perspectives. Attention is given to the interrelation and mutual influence of visual and verbal art.

Russian Painting in the 1920s
G91.2105  Seminar. Douglas, Groys. 4 points.
Surveys painting in Moscow and Leningrad after the Revolution. Considers styles ranging from constructivism to surrealism, expressionism, and realism and political and social critical issues.

Special Studies in Literary Movements
G91.2106  Staff. 2-4 points.

Russian Utopian Fiction
G91.2112  Borenstein. 4 points.
Survey of the development of the utopian tradition in Russia, within the context of the larger European utopian tradition. Special attention is paid to 20th-century works and to questions of genre.

Russian Popular Culture
G91.2114  Borenstein. 4 points.
Broad survey of the main trends in Russian film, radio, television, poster art, pop music, and pulp fiction throughout the 20th century, providing an in-depth analysis of the forces and ideologies that helped shape these trends.

Russian Modernism
G91.2115  Borenstein. 4 points.
Russian fiction from the years immediately prior to the Revolution through the early 1930s. Particular emphasis is placed on the interplay between art and ideology.

Russian Postmodernist Fiction
G91.2116  Borenstein. 4 points.
Examination of the experimental and self-referential novels and stories of the last decades of the 20th century. Addresses the question of Russian postmodernism’s relation to postmodernism in the West and also to Soviet socialist realism.

Authorship and Authority in the Russian Tradition
G91.2120  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Critical examination of literary works reflecting the Russian author’s role as cultural and moral authority. Focuses on the 19th century (Pushkin, Gogol, Chaadaev, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) with some attention to the Soviet era (Lenin, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky).

Defining Russia
G91.2121  Required course for graduate students in the department. Lounsbery. 4 points.
Interdisciplinary, team-taught course designed to introduce the main methods and chief scholarly debates in contemporary Russian studies.

Conspiracy Theories: Paranoid Fictions After Freud
G91.2122  Borenstein. 4 points.
With its clash of ideologies and the rise and fall of metanarratives (modernism, postmodernism, Marxism), the 20th century saw a proliferation of conspiracy theories and intricate attempts to impose rational order on increasingly chaotic systems. This course examines 20th-century narratives that exemplify and explore the modernist and postmodernist paranoid mindset. Authors include Kafka, Olesha, Freud, Pelevin, Pynchon, Dick, and Sologub.

Adultery in the Novel
G91.2124  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Examines novels from the Russian, European, and American traditions that take adultery as their organizing theme. Primary texts include Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Scarlet Letter, Jude the Obscure, and others; critical readings by Georg Lukacs, Tony Tanner, Naomi Schor, Shoshana Fleman, and others.

Pushkin
G91.2200  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Thorough examination of Pushkin’s major works in poetry, prose, and drama, with an introduction to critical treatments of Pushkin from the early stages to contemporary approaches.

Gogol
G91.2202  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Critical introduction to Gogol’s work. Close reading of his principal texts. Includes Gogol’s dramatic work and Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Explores the debates surrounding Gogol and his heritage between East and West.

Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky
G91.2208  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Study of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s major novels as well as some shorter works and nonfictional writings; consideration of the critical tradition that has grown up around both writers, with attention to their role in the Russian canon and world literature.

Chekhov
G91.2210  Lounsbery. 4 points.
Critical introduction to Chekhov’s work. Examination of Chekhov’s creative art, with emphasis on the evolution of the thematic and formal elements in his prose. Chekhov’s place within the Russian literary tradition is assessed. Considers Chekhov’s plays and his importance as a dramatist.

Malevich
G91.2290  Seminar. Douglas, Groys. 4 points.
Examination of the work and thought of the 20th-century artist Kazimir Malevich.

Special Studies in Literary Criticism
G91.2304  Borenstein, Lounsbery. 4 points.

Culture of Modernity: Case Eisenstein
G91.2900  Identical to G29.2900. Seminar. Iampolski. 4 points.
Russian film director Sergey Eisenstein (1898-1948) is a great representative of the revolutionary avant-garde. This course explores his poetics based on montage, shock, violence, and political engagement in the context of modernist, revolutionary, intellectual, and artistic trends.

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

Structure of Modern Russian
G92.1505  Fryscák. 4 points.
Outline of modern standard Russian phonology, morphology, and syntax; introduces Russian/English contractive grammar.

Applied Phonetics and Spoken Contemporary Russian
G92.1506  Staff. 4 points.
The phonetic system and phonological rules of contemporary standard Russian; study and practice in articulation, rhythm, and intonation of spoken language in different social settings and communicative modes.

Methodology of Instruction in Russian
G92.1509  Fryscák. 4 points.
Characteristic approaches to teaching Russian, from the traditional to those using the most recent achievements of applied linguistics; prepares students for practical classroom presentation of grammatical topics.

History of the Russian Language
G92.2501  Fryscák. 4 points.
Historical survey of Russian phonology and morphology, with an examination of the main currents that shaped the development of Russian as a literary language.

Seminar in Russian Linguistics
G92.2592  Staff. 4 points.

Old Church Slavonic
G92.3501  Fryscák. 4 points.
Introduction to the study of Old Church Slavonic grammar and lexicon. Reading and grammatical analysis of selected canonical texts.

Research
G92.3991  Fryscák. 2-4 points.

RELATED COURSES

Certain courses in the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, History, Linguistics, Politics, and Sociology may be counted toward degree requirements for the Master of Arts degree in Russian and Slavic studies. For specific courses, consult the director of graduate studies.

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