Russian at William & Mary


Fall 2008 Course Offerings:

In Russian

Russian 101 (Elementary Russian Through Video)

 

Russian 201 (Intermediate Russian Through Video)

 

Russian 303 (Advanced Russian 1)

 
 

Russian 320 (Russian Cultural History)

Russian 393 (Special Topics)

 

In Translation

Russian 250 (Russian Myths and Legends)

Russian 380 (Russian Cinema: "The Most Important Art")

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian 101: Elementary Russian Through Video I (4 credits). No prerequisites.
An introduction to Russian language and culture taught through an innovative multi-media textbook. Follow the adventures and mishaps of a young American in Moscow as you learn the basics of communicating in Russian. Five course hours.
Russian 102: Elementary Russian Through Video II (4 credits). Prerequisite: RUS 101 or permission of the instructor.
An introduction to Russian language and culture taught through an innovative multi-media textbook. Follow the adventures and mishaps of a young American in Moscow as you learn the basics of communicating in Russian. Five course hours.
Russian 150W: Freshman Seminar (3 credits). No prerequisites.
Study of Rusian civilization, with particular emphasis on Russian popular culture of the twentieth-century. The course includes weekly film screenings and is conducted in English: no knowledge of Russian is required.
Russian 201: Intermediate Russian Through Video I (4 credits). Prerequisite: RUS 102 or permission of the instructor.
Continue the study of the Russian language and culture as you follow the romantic video-saga of Denis, Olya, Tanya and Misha. This course is designed to prepare the students to interact with Russian native speakers in a variety of situations, and to improve their reading and writing. Five class hours.
Russian 202: Intermediate Russian Through Video II (4 credits). Prerequisite: RUS 201 or permission of the instructor.
Continue your study of the Russian language and culture as you follow the romantic video-saga of Denis, Olya, Tanya and Misha. This course is designed to prepare the students to interact with Russian native speakers in a variety of situations, and to improve their reading and writing. Five class hours.
Russian 250: Russian Myths and Legends (3 credits). No Prerequisites.
An introduction to Russian culture from Russia's beginnings to the present. Multimedia presentations and class discussion will focus on the major genres opf Russian folk culture, e.g., fairy tales, songs, dances, folk art. Taught in English: no knowledge of Russian is required.
N.B. Optional 4th credit hour for students with reading knowledge of Russian, who will read selected works in the original and meet weekly with the instructor to discuss them in Russian. 

 

Russian 303: Advanced Russian: Conversation, Cosmposition and Reading (3 credits). Prerequisite: RUS 202 or permission of the instructor.
Weekly writing assignments, readings and conversational drills aim to increase students' fluency and creativity in using and understanding spoken and written Russian. Significant audio-visual component, conducted in Russian.
Russian 306: Directed Readings in Russian Literature (3 credits). Prerequisite: RUS 330 and permission of the instructor.
Russian 308: Topics in Russian Literature and Culture (3 credits).

Topic for Spring 2004: Terrorism in Modern Literature and Cinema Cross-listed with LCST 351-02

        For the 9/11 generation, the threat of Terrorism has replaced the fear of nuclear weapons             that dominated public consciousness and government policies during the decades of the             Cold War. By analyzing a variety of literary texts (Dotoevsky's Possessed, Joseph Conrad's             The Heart of Darkness, Albert Camus' The Just Assasins, Jean-Paul Sartre's Dirty Hands,             Graham Greene's The Quiet American, John Le Carre's Little Drummer Girl, Ann Patchett's         Bel Canto, and others) and films (Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Pontecorvo's Battle of                     Algiers, Gavras' State of Siege, Kalatozov's I am Cuba) that focus on Terrorism in other                 places and times, students will confront the complex historical, cultural and moral                         dimensions of Terrorism.

 
 
Topic for Fall 2004: Mass Media and Communism. No Prerequisites.
Cross-listed with LCST 351-02.
 
This course will provide you with an introduction to the mass media and mass culture in Soviet and postcommunist Russia. The primary questions that we will be addressing in this course are: How have people theorized about mass and/or popular culture? What were the distinctive features of mass culture under communism? How did Russian mass and popular cultures evolve in the course of the 20th century? We will be looking at a variety of critical traditions, from the critiques of mass culture offered by the Frankfurt School, to the often more celebratory analyses of popular culture to be found in current work by postmodernist cultural critics and those influenced by the Birmingham School. The course will examine a wide variety of media and texts including Stalinist mass songs, popular reading and cinema, Soviet radio culture, Russian pulp fiction, and Soviet and Russian television.

 

NB. This course is cross-listed with LcSt 351-02.

Topic for 2003: Cold War Culture: Show Trials, Witch Hunts, Alien Invasions (3 credits). No prerequisite.
Cross-listed with LCST 351.01and INTL 390.03.
Perhaps no other historical event had so profoundly affected the psyche of the Western world for so long as the post-WWII stand-off between “The Evil Empire” and "Amerika." By examining literary, cinematic, and cultural texts produced by Russia and the US, we will ask questions about ideology, difference, and paranoia that polarized the twentieth century and divided every nation into an "us" and a "them." With the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of the twentieth century and the emergence of the US as the dominant global power, we have lost the sense of majesty and terror that spy-mania, the atom bomb, and witch-hunt trials (both here and there) inspired in citizens of both nations. In this course we will attempt to understand what it was like to simultaneously fear and be irresistibly drawn to "the other." And we will as: do we have nostalgia for the Cold War? Finally, we will think about the parallels between the struggle against Communism and the contemporary struggle against Terrorism. Taught in English: no knowledge of Russian is required.
Russian 330: Introduction to Russian Literature (3 credits). Prerequisite or corequisite: RUS 304 or permissionof the instructor.
Readings and discussions of representative short texts in prose and poetry from the 19th and 20th centuries. Writeers studied to include Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Nabokov, Brodsky. Conducted entirely in Russian.

Russian 380: Russian Cinema: Revolution, Romance, and Crime (4 credits). No prerequisites.

A historical survey of Russian cinema from the Silent Era to the present, including animated, documentary, and feature films. Representative films of Eisenstein, Vertov, Tarkovsky, Balabanov, and others. Taught in English, no knowledge of Russian required. The course is open and recommended for freshmen.

Russian 387: Love, Adultery, and Prostitution in the 19th Century Russian Literature (3 or 4 credits). No prerequisites.
Love, adultery, and prostitution are key themes of 19th century Russian literature. They reflect, above all, the changing social status of women in Russian society. Many important works of the period also addressed specifically these themes in order to come to terms with changing notion of the “imagined community” of Russians, transforming class, religious and cultural identities. The course includes reading and discussions of stories and novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov.
 
N.B. Optional 4th credit hour for students with reading knowledge of Russian, who will read selected works in the original and meet weekly with the instructor to discuss them in Russian. For 3 credit hours no knowledge of Russian is required. Taught in English.

Russian 388: Revolution, Crime, and Romance in Twentieth Century Russian Literature

The Russian Revolution, the Apocalypse, and the Soviet Utopia became the major themes in 20th century Russian literature. The course examines how the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary sensibilities have influenced Russians' notions of self, creativity, crime, and romance in works by representative writers such as Babel, Bulgakov, Polevoi, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Marinina, and others. Conducted in English.

N.B. Optional 4th credit hour for students with reading knowledge of Russian, who will read selected works in the original and meet weekly with the instructor to discuss them in Russian. For 3 credit hours no knowledge of Russian is required. Taught in English.

Russian 397: Major Works of Dostoevsky in Translation (3 or 4 credits). No prerequisites.
A study of the major prose works by one of the giants of Russian and World literature. Special attention given to the social, philosophical, religious and ideological contexts of Dostoevsky's works.
 
N.B. Optional 4th credit hour for students with reading knowledge of Russian, who will read selected works in the original and meet weekly with the instructor to discuss them in Russian. For 3 credit hours no knowledge of Russian is required. Taught in English.

Russian 398: Major Works of Tolstoy in Translation. (3 or 4 credits). No Prerequisites.

A study of major works of Leo Tolstoy in translation.

N.B. Optional 4th credit hour for students with reading knowledge of Russian, who will read selected works in the original and meet weekly with the instructor to discuss them in Russian. For 3 credit hours no knowledge of Russian is required. Taught in English.

Russian 411: Independent Study (1-3 credits) Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.
Designed to permit self-motivated and well-prepared advanced students to investigate an area or theme in Russian literature, linguistics, culture or cinema not available in current course offerings. A written petition to the instructor and the approval of the section coordinator are required before registration.