RUSSIAN

Language Courses

860:102 FIRST YEAR RUSSIAN

01: MTTh5 Natalia Iurievna Kazakova

02: MTTh 6 Gerald Pirog                                                                                                                             email

This course is intended for students who have taken 860:101 or who have permission to take this course

860:108 RUSSIAN FOR RUSSIAN SPEAKERS

01: MTTH3 Natalia Mikhailovna Medvedeva

02: MTTH5 Natalia Mikhailovna Medvedeva

This course is for students who have taken 860:107 or who have permission to take this course. Students will improve their knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and idiomatic
usage as well as their reading and writing skills. If you are unsure, please contact the department for proper placement.                                                                                                                                                                                                email

860:202 SECOND YEAR RUSSIAN
Because of student demand and need, we are adding a section of Second Year Russian for students who began their study of Russian at Rutgers, or another academic institution. Section 01 of this course is designed for this type of student. We want to do everything we can to encourage students such as these to continue their study of Russian and we realize that their needs and expectations are different from "Heritage Speakers."
Please feel free to ask Dr. McCoy-Rusanova, or Prof. Pirog about this course.

01: MTTh3 Svetlana Georgievna McCoy-Rusanova For students who have had 860:201. Not for students who have taken 860:108.This section is for students who have no prior knowledge of Russian from home.

02: MTTh4 Svetlana Georgievna McCoy-Rusanova

For students who have taken 860:108. Not for students who have taken 860:102.
This section is for students who have some prior knowledge of Russian from home.      

860:204 LANGUAGE LAB FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS

M2 Svetlana Georgievna McCoy-Rusanova For students enrolled in 860:202 only.  

  This one credit course supplements work in the regular 860:202 course. It utilizes the audio visual and digital
capabilities of the newly renovated language lab on College Avenue. Work on pronunciation, intonation, and
comprehension. IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT ALL STUDENTS TAKE THIS COURSE.                                                                          e-mail

860:302 THIRD YEAR RUSSIAN

TTh6 Natalia Iurievna Kazakova

This course is for students who have completed 860:301 at Rutgers or the equivalent at another institution.
Students who speak Russian at home and who have studied Russian in school may wish to take this course.
(Please contact Professor Pirog if this is the case.)
Students will work on advancing their writing, reading and conversational skills and will read and discuss
contemporary Russian texts. Students will learn how to search the Internet, retrieve information
and will present their findings in class.

860:402 ADVANCED RUSSIAN

TTH6 Svetlana Bogomolny

This course is for students who have completed 860:401 at Rutgers or the equivalent at another institution.
Students who speak Russian well at home and who have studied Russian in school may wish to take this course.
(Please see Dr. Bogomolny or Professor Pirog if this is the case.)

This course is a continuation of the 401, successful completion of which (or its equivalent) is a pre-requisite. Students will continue to examine the ways America was perceived and depicted in Russian literary texts and cinematography. The structure of the course will be based on analytical reading and critical viewing of the movies. The readings will include "The Voice of America" by B. Lavrenev, "Little Golden America" by Ilf and Petrov, and contemporary texts by V. Aksyonov, I. Voinovich, E. Savella, and others. Movie selections include the documentary on Ilf and Petrov, Amerikanskaya Doch, Musulmanin, and may include other films. Additionally, 402 students will continue to perfect their essay writing skills, with emphasis on persuasive and causative essays. Grammar aspects that will be covered include participles, verbal adverb, and syntax.

The course is conducted in Russian.
This course counts toward the "Literature Requirement" for the Minor.

860:491/492 RUSSIAN PRACTICUM

BA

Permission to register required.
Students assist instructors in language instruction and study language pedagogy.
Students must also be enrolled in 01:860:302 or 402 or have taken a Russian language course
at the 300 or 400 level to participate.

Courses in Literature

860:320 Special Topics in Russian Literature: The Second World War in Literature and Film: Comparative Perspectives

(Cross-listed with 01:195:397:01)

MW6

Emily Van Buskirk                                                                                                                                             email

The Second World War is known as the “Great Patriotic War” in Russia, and has a particularly powerful legacy there. This war, in which the Soviet Union suffered unspeakable losses on the road to victory (roughly twenty million dead), continues to occupy the public consciousness today, through commemoration in personal and state rituals, as well as cultural productions. The goal of this course is to interpret the Russian experience and memory of World War II through a study of literature, film, diaries, and journalistic accounts.  We will focus on issues of narrative, memory, and the formation of cultural myths. The topic of war will also serve as a window onto literary politics, as we study differences in expression and in censorship of war themes from the forties through the eighties. Arriving at the present, we will try to understand the meanings of the war in contemporary Russian culture.Our course material will be drawn from literature and film, both of the war era and the post-war period, and from propaganda (posters, radio broadcasts, and songs).  There will be an extra class period twice a month for film screenings (for example, Kalatozishvili’s The Cranes are Flying, M. Romm’s Ordinary Fascism, Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood, and Norshtein’s Tale of Tales).  Click here for more information

                                                                                                                                                                         

860:328 Russian Literature of the Twentieth Century

(Croll-listed with 01:195:396:01)

MW4

Emily Van Buskirk                                                                                                                                                 email

A survey course designed as an introduction to twentieth-century Russian literature. We will sample the artistic movements that preceded and surrounded the Revolution, the subsequent production that was suppressed, muted, or twisted by Stalinist policies, and finally, the literature of the thaw through to perestroika.  We will focus on the ways in which individual experiences were shaped by mass phenomena: revolution, war, terror, the prison camp system, and the construction of the state in various periods, from the “new man” of New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921-1929) to the Stalinist subject, to the dweller of a communal apartment.  We will study the following novels: Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisevich, and Viktor Pelevin’s Omon Ra.  We shall read short stories or novellas by Olesha, Trifonov, and Petrushevskaya.  In addition, our survey will incorporate several poems, films, and works of visual art (at our own Zimmerli museum).

01:860:331 Tolstoy

(Cross-listed with 195:395:03)

TF2

Edyta Bojanowska                                                                                                                 email

Leo Tolstoy--the great aristocrat of Russian literature--was an anarchist, a vegetarian, a pacifist, a schismatic who founded his own brand of Christianity, an untiring engine of public controversy, and a constant nuisance to authorities.  In the course of his long and turbulent literary career, he confronted key questions of modernity in its implications for both individuals and societies.  These questions continue to occupy us to this day.  What should guide us in navigating the stormy whirl of modern life: science, humanism, or religion?  How to live a moral life in a culture that encourages self-interest and self-gratification?  What links homes and homelands, domestic and imperial relations?  What are the physical, social, political, and ethical dimensions of sexuality?  Finally – a question that was never too broad for Tolstoy – what is the meaning of life and how does death tend to put this question in focus?  We will study all of Tolstoy’s major works with the exception of War and Peace.  The texts will include Tolstoy’s major novel Anna Karenina, his autobiographical writings, his short fiction, and his one play.  The course will conclude with a work that has a particular resonance today: Tolstoy's stark tale about the Russian Empire's handling of its Islamic "terrorists," Hadji Murad.

01:860:334:01 Russian Literature and Empire

(Cross-listed with 01:195:396:02)

TTh4

Edyta Bojanowska                                                                                                                     email

Throughout its modern history, Russia has been an imperial state.  Whether by conquest or annexation, countless ethnically and culturally distinct populations have found themselves within Russian borders, making ethnic Russians, in 1897, a minority in their own empire (less than 50% of the population).  We will examine how Russian literature of the imperial period reflected, shaped, and challenged this imperial reality. We will focus on images of conflict and violence, military themes, representations of peripheral regions, the role of gender, and ways in which empire figured in negotiations of Russianness.  We will explore the interaction of nationalism, imperialism, and Orientalism in the imperial period of Russian culture.  Readings focus on 19^th century authors and include Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Bely. We will conclude with late 20^th century engagements – in literature and film – with Pushkin's seminal “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (1820).

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