Language Based Courses: Elementary Russian I and II (RUSS101 - RUSS102) Introduction to Russian grammar through oral, written, and reading exercises; special emphasis on oral expression. Four periods. Prerequisite: None. Open only to first-year students. Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Fall-Spring (1.0 credit for each semester) Intermediate Russian I and II (RUSS201 - RUSS202) Conversation, composition, reading, music, comprehensive review of grammar; special emphasis on speaking and writing idiomatic Russian. Students learn and perform a play in Russian in the course of the semester. Students read unadapted short stories by Pushkin and Zamiatin and view classic films such as Brilliantovaia ruka.Four periods. Prerequisite: 101-102 or equivalent Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Fall-Spring (1.0 credit for each semester) Advanced Russian Topic for 2007-08: Moscow (RUSS301) Students will become experts in one of the great overarching themes of Russian culture: Moscow. We will read and discuss texts, view films, listen to music, and compose essays on the theme of Russia’s historic capital. The course includes study of grammar, vocabulary expansion with strong emphasis on oral proficiency and comprehension. At the end of the semester each student will write a final paper and present to the class her own special research interest within the general investigation of Moscow’s history, traditions, culture, and art. Taught in Russian. Three periods. Prerequisite: 201-202 or equivalent Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Fall Advanced Russian Topic for 2007-08: Children and Laughter in Russia (RUSS302) Students will enter the world of Russian children’s folklore, literature, songs, film, and animation. From lullabies to folktales, from Pushkin’s skazki, animal fables by Krylov, didactic stories by Tolstoy we will move on to examine the contribution of Soviet authors from the early 1920s to the present (V. Maiakovsky, K. Chukovsky, S. Marshak, D. Kharms, M. Zoshchenko, A. Gaidar, N. Nosov, E. Uspensky, G. Oster) and their effect on the aesthetic development and ethical upbringing of children in Russia. The course emphasizes oral proficiency, extensive reading and weekly writing assignments. Students will create and present a final project on their own special research interest. Taught in Russian. Two periods. Prerequisite: 301 or equivalent Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Spring Literature Based Courses: The Nineteenth-Century Russian Classics: Passion, Pain, Perfection (RUSS251) Survey of Russian fiction from the Age of Pushkin (1820s–1830s) to Tolstoy’s mature work (1870s) focusing on the role of fiction in Russian history, contemporaneous critical reaction, literary movements in Russia, and echoes of Russian literary masterpieces in the other arts, especially film and music. Major works by Pushkin (Eugene Onegin, “The Queen of Spades”), Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time), Gogol (Dead Souls, “The Overcoat”), Pavlova (A Double Life), Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), and Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) will be read. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Fall Soviet and Russian Film (RUSS255) The masterpieces of Russian film from the 1920s to the present day will be screened, analyzed, and discussed. Students will explore the famous techniques and themes developed by legendary Russian/Soviet filmmakers, including Eisenstein, Vertov, Tarkovsky and Mikhalkov. We will treat these films as works of art, examining the ways in which directors, like authors of novels and other literary genres, create a fictional world. Guest lecturers will comment on specific issues. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video Semester: Fall of alternating years Politically Correct: Ideology and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel (RUSS272) Is there a “politically correct” set of responses for artists active under a repressive regime? We examine various Russian answers to this question through an intensive analysis of the great ideological novels at the center of Russia’s historic social debates from the 1840s through the 1860s. The tension between literary Realism and political exigency will be explored in the fictional and critical works of Herzen, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Goncharov, Dobroliubov, Dostoevsky, and Pisarev. Representative works from the nonliterary arts will supplement reading and class discussion. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Spring of alternating years Fedor Dostoevsky: The Seer of Spirit (RUSS276) Probably no writer has been so detested and adored, so demonized and deified, as Dostoevsky. This artist was such a visionary that he had to reinvent the novel in order to create a form suitable for his insights into the inner life and his prophecies about the outer. To this day readers are mystified, outraged, enchanted, but never unmoved, by Dostoevsky’s fiction, which some have tried to brand as “novel-tragedies,” “romantic realism,” “polyphonic novels,” and more. This course challenges students to enter the fray and explore the mysteries of Dostoevsky themselves through study of his major writings. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Alternating years Lev Tolstoy: Russia’s Ecclesiast (RUSS277) An odyssey through the fiction of the great Russian novelist and thinker, beginning with his early works (Sevastopol Stories) and focusing on War and Peace and Anna Karenina, though the major achievements of Tolstoy’s later period will also be included (A Confession, The Death of Ivan Ilich). Lectures and discussion will examine the masterful techniques Tolstoy employs in his epic explorations of human existence, from mundane detail to life-shattering cataclysm. Important film adaptations of Tolstoy’s works, including Bondarchuk’s monumental War and Peace (1967), will be screened. Students are encouraged to have read the Maude translation of War and Peace (Norton Critical Edition) before the semester begins. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Alternating years From Russia With Love: Family and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (RUSS282) Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Beginning with his controversial novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, we will discuss love and family in Russian literature, a problem which becomes particularly complicated in the twentieth century. We will explore issues of androgyny in the writings of the symbolists, the regimentation of sex in Zamiatin’s anti-utopian novel We, questions of disease and sterility in Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, and adultery in Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago. We will revisit the eternal literary theme of generational conflict, specifically in the form of mothers and daughters in the writings of Tsvetaeva and Petrushevskaia. We will also view and analyze films such as Bed and Sofa and Commissar. Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Spring of alternating years Vladimir Nabokov (RUSS286) An examination of the artistic legacy of the great novelist, critic, lepidopterist, and founder of the Wellesley College Russian Department. Nabokov’s works have joined the canon of twentieth-century classics in both Russian and English literature. Students will explore Nabokov’s English-language novels (Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire) and the authorized English translations of his Russian works (The Defense, Despair, Invitation to a Beheading). Taught in English. Two periods. Prerequisite: None Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Spring of alternating years Nineteenth-Century Russian Narrative Poetry: Tales of Mystery and Adventure (RUSS333) Students will immerse themselves in the famous poemy of Derzhavin, Zhukovskii, Pushkin, Baratynskii, Kozlov, Lermontov, and Nekrasov, analyzing ballads and verse tales devoted to the natural and the supernatural. Exotic “Oriental” cultures as well as high and low Russian culture serve as the backdrop for these dramatic verse narratives. Russian painting, music, and history will enrich our discussions of Russian Romanticism in the poetry. Prerequisite: 301 or 302 as prerequisite or corequisite. Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Fall of alternating years Unit: 0.5 Fedor Dostoevsky’s Short Stories (RUSS376) A Russian-language course designed to supplement 276 above, though 376 may be taken independently. Students will read and discuss, in Russian, major short works by Dostoevsky. One period.. Prerequisite: 301 or 302 as prerequisite or corequisite. Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Alternating years Unit: 0.5 Tolstoy’s Short Fiction (RUSS377) A Russian-language course designed to supplement 277, though 377 may be taken independently. Students will read and discuss, in Russian, Tolstoy’s short stories and fables as well as excerpts from his religious and philosophical works. One period. Prerequisite: 301 or 302 as prerequisite or corequisite. Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Alternating years Unit: 0.5 Vladimir Nabokov’s Short Stories (RUSS386) A Russian-language course designed to supplement 286 above, though 386 may be taken independently. Students will read and discuss, in Russian, major short works by Nabokov. One period. Distribution: Language and Literature Semester: Alternating years Unit: 0.5
	Russian Department, Founders Hall Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02481 Phone: 781-283-2418 Fax: 781-283-3671