Adv Conversation & Comp

A half course designed for intermediate-level students who wish to develop their fluency, pronunciation, oral comprehension, and writing skills. We will study and discuss Russian films of various genres. Two hours per week.

Requisite: RUSS 301 or consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer Babyonyshev.

Third-Year Russian II

We will be reading, in the original Russian, works of fiction, poetry and criticism by nineteenth-century authors such as Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Chekhov. Conducted in Russian, with frequent writing and translation assignments.

Requisite: RUSS 301 or consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Professor Rabinowitz and Senior Lecturer Babyonyshev.

Leo Tolstoy

Count Leo Tolstoy’s life and writings encompass self-contradictions equaled in scale only by the immensity of his talent: the aristocrat who renounced his wealth, the former army officer who preached nonresistance to evil, the father of thirteen children who advocated total chastity within marriage and, of course, the writer of titanic stature who repudiated all he had previously written, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Century of Catastrophe

Russia was launched on a unique path by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917: it was intended to become the first Communist society in history.  The Cultural Revolution that followed sought to remake institutions and even persons in the name of realizing a classless society.  This utopian project came up against the actual history of the twentieth century not just in Russia but internationally:  world wars, the collapse of empires, and the victory of “capitalism” over “communism.”  Much of the best Russian literature and film of the twentieth century

Survey Russian Lit II

An examination of major Russian writers and literary trends from about 1860 to the Bolshevik Revolution as well as a sampling of Russian émigré literature through a reading of representative novels, stories, and plays in translation. Readings include important works by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Sologub, Bely, and Nabokov. The evaluation of recurring themes such as the breakdown of the family, the “woman question,” madness, attitudes toward the city, childhood and perception of youth. Conducted in English.

Spring semester. Professor Rabinowitz.

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