Welcome to the Program in Russian and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers. We offer a major and three minors in Russian language and literature, as well as courses in Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, and other Slavic and East European languages and cultures.
Our program offers a broad introduction to Russian literature and culture in its historical, social, and global contexts. We offer courses in translation on major Russian writers (such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Nabokov), thematic courses (on empire, gender and sexuality, selfhood), as well as courses that illuminate important cultural moments or media (radical thought, revolution, war, film). We foster a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, and cross-list courses with Comparative Literature, Women’s and Gender Studies, Cinema Studies, and Art History, while also encouraging our students to take advantage of relevant offerings in other departments. We also teach courses on Russian culture in Russian and offer a special honors track, in which students may write a senior thesis under the close advisement of our award-winning faculty.
Our language courses help students, including those who have learned some Russian at home, to achieve a degree of fluency in Russian that will enable them to enter into dialogue with Russia, past and present. We run an 8-week, 8-credit study abroad program in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg during the summer weeks of incredible White Nights. We also organize special annual program events, such as Poetry Evening or the Russian Mardi Gras (Maslenitsa).
