11322

RUS 106 Russian Intensive

Marina Kostalevsky / Olga Voronina

M T W Th .

10:00am - 12:00pm

OLINLC 210

FLLC

8 credits This intensive course is designed as a continuation for students who have completed Beginning Russian 101. Our focus on speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills continues through cultural context, video materials, songs, and literary analysis. This course culminates in a 4-week June program in St. Petersburg, where students will attend classes (earning an additional 4 credits) and participate in a cultural program while living in Russian families. Successful completion of the intensive sequence qualifies the student to pursue semester or yearlong study in St. Petersburg at Smolny College of the Liberal Arts, a joint educational venture of Bard and St. Petersburg University. Class size: 20

11326

RUS 207 Continuing Russian II

Oleg Minin

M T W . .

10:30am - 11:30am

OLINLC 206

FLLC

This course is designed to continue refining and engaging students’ practice of speaking, reading and writing Russian. Advanced grammar topics are addressed through a wide variety of texts and contexts, with emphasis on literary analysis and the modern press. Students expand their vocabulary and range of stylistic nuance by writing response papers and presenting oral reports. Study includes a semester-long project that provides an opportunity to build our own Web design dictionary; to research aspects of modern Russian culture; and to present findings in a collaborative creative effort, such as a play, “news broadcast”, or a concert. Class size: 15

11889

LIT 2159 Into the Whirlwind: Literary Greatness and Power

Jonathan Brent

. . . . F

2:00 – 4:20 pm

OLIN 201

ELIT/DIFF

Cross-listed: Russian and Eurasian Studies This course will examine the fate of the literary imagination in Russia from the time of the Revolution to the stagnation of the Brezhnev period.  We will look at the majestic, triumphant imaginative liberation in writers such as Isaac Babel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam and Mikhail Bulgakov; the struggle with ideology and the Terror of the 1930s in Yuri Olesha, Anna Akhmatova, Lidia Chukovskaya, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Varlam Shalamov, Boris Pilnyak and Yuri Tynyanov; the hesitant Thaw as reflected in Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago; and the course will conclude by reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and  Moscow to the End of the Line, by Venedikt Erofeev. Readings of literary works will be supplemented with political and historical documents to provide a sense of the larger political-social-historical context in which they were written. After the violent, imaginative ebullience of the Revolutionary period, how did literature stay alive during the darkest period of mass repression, censorship and terror when millions of Soviet citizens were either imprisoned or shot?  What formal/aesthetic choices did these writers make in negotiating the demands of official ideology and Party discipline, on the one hand, and authentic literary expression, on the other?  What image of history and of man did these “Engineers of human souls” produce?  These are some of the questions we will ask and seek to answer.  All readings will be in English. Class size: 20

11347

LIT 3019 Nabokov's Shorts: The Art of Conclusive Writing

Olga Voronina

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLIN 107

ELIT

Cross-listed: Russian & Eurasian Studies This course will focus on Vladimir Nabokov's short stories as well as his memoir Conclusive Evidence and the novel Pnin, both of which first appeared in story-length installments in The New Yorker. We will read "Details of a Sunset," "Christmas," "A Guide to Berlin," "A Nursery Tale," "The Visit to the Museum," "The Circle," "Spring in Fialta," "Cloud, Castle, Lake," "Ultima Thule," "Solus Rex," "Signs and Symbols," and "The Vane Sisters." Keeping our eyes open for the elusive, but meaningful, textual details and discussing the writer's narrative strategies, we will also trace the metaphysical streak that runs through the entire Nabokov oeuvre. A discussion of all matters editorial will be our priority. We will study Nabokov's correspondence with Katherine White and William Maxwell, his editors at The New Yorker, and look at the drafts of his stories, now part of the Berg Collection in the NYPL. Our endeavor to understand the Nabokovian process of composition and revision will go hand-in-hand with the work on our own writing. Class size: 15

11328

RUS 316 Advanced Russian II

Oleg Minin

M T W . .

11:40am - 12:40pm

OLINLC 206

FLLC

Advanced Russian through Reading and Writing is designed for students with at least two years of study of the language and for native speakers who wish to review their knowledge of grammar and practice reading and speaking Russian. By focusing on the original literary works by such canonical writers as Chekhov, Pushkin, and Dostoevsky, the course aims to improve students’ grammar, morphology and syntax through a variety of written and oral exercises and structural conversation. The texts chosen for reading and analysis will help students build narrative and conceptual proficiency. Writing in Russian will be an important part of the course. Class size: 15

11374

RUS 330 Dramatic Difference: Russia and Its Theater

Marina Kostalevsky

. T . Th .

1:30 pm -2:50 pm

OLINLC 118

FLLC

Cross-listed: Literature, Theater This course will examine the evolution of Russian dramaturgy in connection with parallel developments in both literature and theater. It will offer students an opportunity to explore various aspects of Russian culture by discussing the specifics of Russian Drama. Special attention with be given to issues of genre and style, tradition and innovation, criticism and theory. Readings include plays by Fonvizin, Griboedov, Gogol, Pushkin, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Mayakovsky, Erdman, and Petrushevskaia, as well as theoretical texts by Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and Mikhail Chekhov. Also, the students will have a chance to see some productions of Russian plays on screen and on stage. Conducted in English. Class size: 15