This course explores oral traditions and oral literary genres (in English translation) of the Slavic and East European world, both past and present, including traditions that draw from the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish East European communities. Topics include traditional rituals (life-cycle and seasonal) and folklore associated with them, sung and spoken oral traditional narrative: poetry (epic and ballad) and prose (folktale and legend), and contemporary forms of traditional and popular culture. Discussion and analysis will focus on the role and meaning of Slavic and East European oral traditions as forms of expressive culture.

An examination of significant trends in Russian literature from the 2nd half of the 19th century to the Russian Revolution and a bit beyond. The course focuses on many masterpieces of 19th & 20th-century Russian literature. The works (mostly novels) are considered from a stylistic point of view and in the context of Russian historical and cultural developments. The course also focuses on questions of values and on the eternal "big questions" of life that are raised in the literature. Authors read include Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bely, Nabokov, and Kharms.

This interdisciplinary survey explores Soviet literature, art, theater, and film after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We will explore the works of avant-garde authors and artists, official writers and painters, authors who wrote "for the desk drawer", and those whose creative works were circulated in the underground. In our analysis of Soviet artistic production, we will focus on major cultural topics in and around the increasing pressure of shifting political landscapes, ideology, propaganda, the publishing market, and the role of the writer in Russian society.

Exploration of the theme of madness in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Garshin. Discussion of various meanings of madness: as romantic inspiration or confinement; as a reaction to a personal loss or a rebellion against the social system; as a search for the meaning of life or a fight against the world's evil; as craziness or holy foolishness. Readings, discussions, oral presentations, and written papers in Russian. Special emphasis is placed on active use of language and expansion of vocabulary. This course is envisioned as both a language and literature course.

Horror has clawed its way into critical recognition, but continues to challenge our understandings of genre, technique, and the purpose of art. Diverse and often intertwined with the sibling phenomena of science fiction and fantasy, this paradoxical and often-reviled genre has persisted and evolved through the centuries. Why do we want to be scared, and how does horror scare us? In this course, students will develop their own approaches to reading, viewing, and understanding horror. The material will cover a variety of strains of horror in literature and film with a focus on originally Russian works. No knowledge of Russian is necessary.

Canonical authors risk being rendered lifeless and boring through interpretation, but the endlessly elusive Ukrainian-Russian writer Nikolai Gogol resists this ossification through the experimental, intricate, frequently surprising, and often absurdist elements of his prose. In this course, we will read and discuss Gogol's major works from his early short stories through his final and only novel, Dead Souls, and students will be encouraged to develop their own interpretations grounded in the texts at hand. We will conclude with Gogol's afterlife in images, animation, film, and music. All materials in English.

We start with Tolstoy's artistic stimuli and narrative strategies, explore the author's provocative visions of war, gender, sex, art, social institutions, death, and religion. The emphasis is placed here on the role of a written word in Tolstoy's search for truth and power. The main part is a close reading of his masterwork The War and Peace (1863-68) - a quintessence of both his artistic method and philosophical insights. Each student will be assigned to keep a "hero's diary" and speak on behalf of one or two major heroes of the epic (including the Spirit of History). The roles will be distributed in accordance with the will of fate.

Communism is long gone but its legacy continues to reverberate. And not only because of Cuba, China or North Korea. Inspired by utopian ideas of equality and universal brotherhood, communism was originally conceived as an ideological, socio-political, economic and cultural alternative to capitalism's crises. The attempt to build a new utopian world was costly and brutal: equality was quickly transformed into uniformity; brotherhood evolved into the Big Brother. The course provides an in-depth review of these contradictions between utopian motivations and oppressive practices in the Soviet Union.

The course focuses on the "Tower" of Viacheslav Ivanov and its influence on the culture of the day. In addition to readings from the Symbolists (especially Ivanov, Blok, Belyi), course considers a number of non-Symbolist writers and other major cultural figures who attended and participated in the meetings, e.g. Meierhold, Berdiaev, Kuzmin, Mandelshtam, Khlebnikov, and perhaps even Lunacharskii.

Analysis of works of one of Russia's most important contemporary writers. Focus on major novels, including "Pushkin House," the 1st Russian postmodernist novel. We explore his wide-ranging concerns, such as psychology; philosophy; science; other arts (including jazz & cinema); people's relationship to other biological species; integrity & societal and psychological obstacles to it. We examine him as a Petersburg writer. Focus also on his relationship to time, history, & other writers; his place in Russian & Soviet literature & culture.

The first part of the class deals with a general survey and description (physiology) of Russian realism as a cultural movement. In the second part, we focus on Russian Realists' ideological struggle against Romantic values and an unpredicted result of this struggle -- "spectralization" of social and political realities they claimed to mirror in their works and creation of the image of Russia as a house haunted by numerous apparitions: ghosts of the past and guests from the future, tormented women and suffering children, afflicted peasants and demonic nihilists, secret societies and religious sects.

A practical course intended to facilitate the dissertation writing process. The seminar meets every week for 2 hours, or less often depending on the need and pace of the participants. Dissertation writers circulate work in progress for feedback and meet for discussion as a group. The seminar is required of all post-generals students in Russian literature who are in residence.