Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures

MUS 513 Topics in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Music (also

SLA 507

) Text-critical and analytic studies in the works of one or several of the major figures are studied.

RUS 549 Russian for Academic Purposes I This course focuses instruction on skills required to perform in a Russian-speaking academic context across core subject areas of literary analysis and cultural studies. The targeted language skills - reading, writing, speaking, and listening - are tied with the specific needs of students (e.g., reading and writing proposals, presentations for conferences, academic articles, and correspondence). In addition, students get acquainted with various academic sub-styles and genres as well as differences in academic standards (citation, bibliography). The course includes a comprehensive review of Russian grammar and syntax.

RUS 550 Russian for Academic Purposes II In this course, graduate students continue developing skills required to perform in a Russian-speaking academic context across core subject areas of literary analysis and cultural studies. Students are expected to discuss and assess the results of their research and present papers in their field of study at a "mock" conference in Russian. The course includes a comprehensive review of Russian grammar and syntax as well as academic genres and styles.

SLA 511 Critical Approaches to Literature: Russian Contributions A survey of major 19th- and 20th-century schools of literary and cultural criticism (from Belinsky to the Tartu School), with some direct application to selected literary texts.

SLA 512 The Evolution of Russian Poetic Form An introduction to Russian poetics through selected readings, from Trediakovsky to Joseph Brodsky, organized by poetic genre. Specific subjects include the ode, the elegy, folk adaptations, blank verse, and the significance of translation.

SLA 513 The Empire of Fictions: Russian Literature in the Eighteenth Century This course is a survey of the most significant works and genres of Russian literature from the medieval period through the eighteenth century.

SLA 514 Pushkin A study of Pushkin's major lyrics, narrative poems, drama and prose in the context of Russian and European literary developments.

SLA 516 19th-Century Master Novelists A study of either Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.

SLA 517 Russian Short Prose The course either concentrates on a single writer (Gogol, Chekhov, Babel) or traces the development of the Russian short story from Karamzin to the present.

SLA 518 Major Russian Poets and Poetic Movements Readings selected from the nineteenth century (e.g., the "Golden Age," the Romantics) or the twentieth century (e.g., the Symbolists, the Futurists, the Acmeists).

SLA 520 Approaches To The List Based on the Slavic Department's graduate student reading list, this seminar is designed to help students prepare for the general examination and to develop productive ways to approach large bodies of material-whether for preparing syllabi or working on research projects. It explores socio-political and cultural contexts in which major literary movements arose in Russia, considering generic and stylistic developments and attending to European influences that were alternately absorbed and rejected. It looks closely at representative works in the settings in which they first appeared and at how they signify in later periods.

SLA 523 Topics in Russian Literature (Half-Term) Using Toporov's conception of the "Petersburg text" as a point of departure, the class moves in various directions, from the city to the countryside, from the center to the periphery, from the Russian to the Soviet empire. For the final paper, students work on a text not on the reading list.

SLA 527 Mimesis: Narrative and Image (also

COM 526

) Drawing on pivotal moments in Russian literary history, this course explores the dynamic exchanges between visual and textual media from medieval Russia to Pushkin to Moscow Conceptualism. Sample subjects, including iconography, Symbolist poetry, book illustration, 19th century prose, Soviet cinema, and post-modern art installations, are paired with theoretical readings from the canon of Western thought on mimesis, media theory, and the history of Russian/Soviet literary criticism.

SLA 528 The Poetics of Space This seminar takes into account space in its manifold definitions: from the diegetic space investigated by semiotics, to alternative, non-conventional geometries, and their aesthetics; from space/time to the outer space and its claiming; from desired or imagined spaces to post-human ones; from cybernetic to global positioning systems to the environment. By looking at literary and theoretical texts, produced in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the course tracks the poetics of space and the epistemological consequences of its literary expression.

SLA 529 Seminar on Andrei Bitov (also

COM 528

/

RES 529

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

SLA 531 Topics in Russian Literature or Literary Theory (also

COM 533

) Topics may include individual authors (e.g., Herzen, Bely, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva) or significant literary and critical trends (the "superfluous man," "skaz," Russian formalism, Bakhtin, the Moscow/Tartu School, and Soviet literature and censorship).

SLA 535 Methods of Teaching Russian A practical course required of graduate students who are teaching beginning Russian. The course covers all issues relevant to the teaching of the language: phonetics, grammar presentation, efficient use of class time, class and syllabus planning, writing quizzes and tests. In addition to weekly meetings with the instructors, students are expected to meet as a group to develop best practices for covering each week's material. An important part of the course is instructor supervision of teaching.

SLA 547 Worlds of Form: Russian Formalism and Constructivism The seminar examines the ways Russian formalists and constructivists problematized the role and importance of form in their writing. We explore systemic views, paying especial attention to the role of structure (and deconstruction); we investigate the links between materiality and form, and, finally, we see how form, texture, and system - are localized in particular artistic or historical contexts. This is an interdisciplinary seminar, and during the semester we move back and from literature to cinema, and from architecture to painting.

SLA 561 Proseminar in Slavic The purpose of the course is twofold: to cover some of the essential texts of the Russian literary and critical tradition and to acquaint students with the range of topics and approaches taught by the faculty. Offered once every two years, it is team-taught, with each faculty member taking a two-week segment. The course is mandatory for all graduate students in the department, who take it either their first or second year of study.

SLA 599 Slavic Dissertation Colloquium A practical course devoted to scholarly writing intended to facilitate the proposal and dissertation writing process. The seminar meets every three to four weeks. Dissertation writers circulate work in progress for feedback and discuss issues that arise in the course of their work. The seminar is required of all post-generals students in Russian literature who are in residence.