NOTE: The Russian Intensive Program will be offered in Spring 1999. Russian 101 is, therefore, not being offered this semester.

RUSSIAN INTENSIVE PROGRAM (RUS 101, 102, 201) - JANUARY INTERSESSION, SPRING 1999

The Russian Intensive sequence provides the student who has no previous experience in Russian with the equivalent of 2 years of college Russian, in the course of the January Field Period, the spring semester, and a June program of study and travel at St. Petersburg University. The course introduces and activates the phonetic, grammatical, and syntactic foundations of contemporary spoken and written Russian. Audio-visual materials will be utilized. The June program in St. Petersburg includes 24 hours a week of Russian language classes, and an extensive cultural program of museum visits, theater performances and concerts, as well as tours of the environs of St. Petersburg. Successful completion of this program qualifies the student to pursue advanced Russian study as St. Petersburg State University in the Fall '99 semester, as well as advanced language study and cross-disciplinary tutorials at Bard. Russian 101 (January 1999, 4 credits) and Russian 102-201 (Spring 1999, 8 credits) are indivisible courses. The June course carries four credits. Financial aid will be made available for qualified students.

For further information please contact Lindsay Watton. Although formal registration for the Russian Intensive Program will not take place until November, interested students are strongly encouraged to contact Professors Watton and Petrova as soon as possible.

In addition to reviewing the basic principles of Russian morphology and syntax, this second-year Russian course pursues major topics in the pragmatics of Russian, such as verbal aspect, prefixation, and speech etiquette. Videos and a variety of original texts will be incorporated to further the goals of comprehension and practical proficiency.

Close reading of selected short stories and poems of Russian writers from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. Examination of artistic meditations on paradoxes of love, on erotic behavior, on psychological and cultural conflicts of the period. Special emphasis on the role of language and literary form, as the erotic themes are developed in texts by Karamzin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gippius, Kuzmin, Blok, Nabokov, Tolstaya, and Petrushevskaya. Conducted in Russian.