Russian 261 - Anna Karenina: A Close Reading

This course examines Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece Anna Karenina. Through careful textual analysis, students will explore the novel's central themes of family values, love, adultery, and moral responsibility between spouses, situating these issues within the social debates of 1870s Russia during the work's composition and publication. We will investigate the enduring power and provocative nature of the text by studying Tolstoy's literary devices and narrative techniques that both engage and influence his audience. The latter portion of the course explores various film and theatre adaptations from the former USSR, post-Soviet Russia, France, Italy, and Kazakhstan, offering an interdisciplinary lens through which to understand how different cultural contexts have interpreted the moral questions at the heart of the novel.

Spring semester. Visiting Assistant Professor Mayofis.

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Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Readings, text analysis, visual analysis, aural presentations.