DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

Elementary Russian 101-1 is the first in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. In this course, students will continue to develop the fundamentals of speaking, listening, writing, and reading. Emphasis will be placed on practical communication so that students can function at a basic level in several authentic situations by the end of the year.

Welcome to continuing Elementary Russian! This is the second part in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. Students will continue to develop the fundamentals of speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of communicative and content-based activities. Emphasis will be placed on practical communication so that students should be able to function at a basic level in authentic situations by the end of the year.

Elementary Russian 101-3 is the third part in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. In this course, students will continue to develop the fundamentals of speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of communicative and content-based activities. Emphasis will be placed on practical communication so that students should be able to function at a basic level in several authentic situations by the end of the year.

Intermediate Russian 102-1 is the first in a three-quarter sequence designed to continue exploring the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. In this course, students will develop the skills of speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of activities. They will be able to function in many authentic situations at an intermediate level by the end of the year.

Добро пожаловать! Welcome back to Intermediate Russian! This is the second part in a three-quarter sequence focusing on the Russian language and contemporary Russian culture. Students continue to develop the skills of speaking, listening, writing, and reading through a variety of communicative and content-based activities. Emphasis will be placed on practical communication so that students should be able to function in many authentic situations by the end of the year.

Intermediate Russian 102-3 is the continuation of a two-year sequence that enables students to acquire intermediate-level proficiency.  It proposes the further development and command of skills and abilities in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Emphasis is also placed on vocabulary expansion, especially in the areas of speaking and writing. A great deal of attention will be devoted to the learning of grammar in conjunction with the immediate activation of it in conversation.

In this course we will explore some of the sociolinguistic issues in Slavic speaking countries and areas (the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Union, the former Czechoslovakia, etc.) and in Central Europe (specifically, Turkish in Germany). We will look at contemporary issues in Russia and the Ukraine, especially the annexation of the Crimea, anti-gay laws in Russia, and censorship of Pussy Riot. We will explore language policies, minority language rights, language vs. dialect, language planning, language and identity, and language and nationalism.

This course is the first in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to Polish language and culture. We learn the basic Polish grammar and vocabulary, focusing on speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

Slavic 108-2 is the second part in a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to Polish language and culture. We will continue to learn the basic grammar of Polish, building on the material acquired in first quarter. Our focus will be on speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

This is the third of a three-quarter sequence designed to introduce students to Polish language and culture. We continue to learn the basic grammar of Polish, focusing on speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

No description available.

In Winter Quarter of Second Year Polish, the students expand their speaking, reading and writing skills by building on grammar and vocabulary. As a complement to the linguistic side of the course, the students will gain a greater familiarity with Polish history and culture through varied means including readings of literary works, articles from contemporary Polish newspapers and movies.

In Spring Quarter of Second Year Polish, students expand their speaking, reading and writing skills by building on grammar and vocabulary learned during prior quarters. As a complement to the linguistic side of the course, the students will gain a greater familiarity with Polish history and culture through varied means, including readings of literary works, articles from contemporary Polish newspapers and movies.

Before Tolstoy and Dostoevsky came three canonical nineteenth-century Russian writers: Pushkin, Gogol, and Lermontov. In this early era, Russia was heavily in dialogue with Western European culture, which introduced Russia to a new genre of writing—the novel. Steeped in poetry, the gothic, and the Romantic, these writers' groundbreaking works resounded through the generations that followed. We explore the history, culture, and society that produced these long-studied classics of Russian literature.

In this course, we will examine two of the greatest works of world literature, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, in depth. These two novels raise profound questions and offer challenging answers to the most important issues of life: What gives life meaning, how to understand evil, the nature and kinds of love, the significance of death, faith and despair, how to make ourselves and the world around us better, and the way human minds work. We will see why Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are often considered the greatest psychologists who ever lived and why Russian literature conveys a sense of urgency perhaps unmatched anywhere else in human culture. Students will also learn skills for understanding novels that will make it easier and more rewarding to read great fiction generally.

In this course, Spiritual Autobiography and Russian Literature, we will read classic works of Russian literature that explore the challenges of achieving spiritual growth in an individual life, with focus on moments of heightened experience and consciousness. Students will have the (optional) opportunity to write a spiritual autobiography. Works by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Bunin.

(Co-listed with CLS 202)

This course focuses on interconnections between new ideas in literature, culture and politics in the early 20th century. Texts include great Modernist novels Peterburg (1913) by Andrei Bely, Master and Margarita (1940) by Mikhail Bulgakov, and Evgeny Zamiatin's We (1921); poetry by Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Osip Mandelstam. These major works are discussed in the broad Russian and European cultural and historical context.

(Co-listed with CLS 202-0-20)

This course is designed as a following sequence to SLAV211-1, a general survey of early 20c. Russian Literature, focused on the interconnections between new ideas in culture and politics.  It explores the legendary novel Doctor Zhivago (1957), written by the Noble Laureate Boris Pasternak. This work is discussed in the Russian and European cultural and historical context of the Cold War era; we follow and compare the paths of literary heroes and their real-life prototypes: Pasternak himself and his long-time companion Olga Ivinskaya. Doctor Zhivago was harshly criticized and censored in Soviet Union, then smuggled to the West with the help of the CIA to be preserved and published for the first time, finally becoming a literary sensation and winning the Nobel Prize. 

(Co-listed with LING 222)

Students will examine and analyze political and identity issues in terms of the languages and dialects of the Balkans (particularly Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Romani, and Serbian). Topics include: linguistic nationalism, language laws, rights of minority languages, language discrimination, language and religion, alphabet issues, language and dialect as ethnic identity, standard language, and others. We explore key issues that have plagued the Balkans and continue to shape its future. Area IV, Historical Studies, in SLAVIC 255 and Area V, Ethics and Values, in LING 222.

(Co-listed with Hum 260 and History 200)

Historical Studies (IV), Lit. Fine Arts (VI) or Ethics and Values (V). 2017 is the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. To make sense of the significance of this anniversary, this team-taught course integrates insights from Northwestern specialists in Russian and Soviet literature, art, music, theatre, film, graffiti, history, and politics. (These include Saul Morson, Clare Cavanagh and Ilya Kutik). The course provides an introduction to modern Russia’s rich cultural history, from the revolutionary fervor of the 1920s to Stalinist repression, from the vitality of art during the post-Stalin “thaw” to the new artistic revolutions that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The course also grapples with fundamental questions such as how historical and political contexts shape the arts, how the arts have been and can be used to imagine new worlds, how foreign ideologies interact with national cultures, and how scholars’ distinct disciplinary tools and frameworks shape their approaches to the study of Russia’s history, politics, and artistic culture.

An introduction to the literature, culture and history of the country Norman Davies has called "the heart of Europe." In the span of a hundred years, Poland has undergone an extraordinary range of transformations and traumas: Division among three empires (Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian); the brief period of interwar independence; Nazi and then Soviet subjugation; Solidarity and the revolt against Soviet rule; martial law; and finally independence once again. We will explore the relationship between history and culture by way of novels, films, essays, memoirs, historical writing, and poetry. Authors and artists to be discussed include: Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Andrzej Wajda, Adam Michnik, Hanna Krall, and others. All work to be read in translation.

Добро пожаловать! Welcome back! Slavic 302 is a yearlong combined third- and fourth-year multi-skill course. It is recommended for students who are familiar enough with Russian basic grammatical concepts and vocabulary and are willing to continue moving beyond this level to acquire more advanced language skills–- speaking, reading, writing, and listening. The goal is to help students master all major structures of Russian and to begin to function in a wide range of settings and topics. The course acquaints students with aspects of Russian culture that are familiar to most educated native Russian speakers, through literature, videos and Russian movies). Students are encouraged to pursue and develop their own interests in Russian culture, history and social life.

While focusing on conversation, this year-long course promotes the development of all language skills-- speaking, reading, writing, and listening--through a variety of communicative and content-based activities. The goal is to help students to master all of the major structures of Russian and to begin to function in a wide range of settings over a wide range of topics. Beyond assigned topics and themes, students will be encouraged to pursue and develop their own interests in Russian contemporary culture.

Добро пожаловать! Welcome back! Slavic 302 is a yearlong combined third- and fourth-year multi-skill course. It is recommended for students who are familiar with Russian basic grammatical concepts and vocabulary and are interested in acquiring more advanced language skills--speaking, reading, writing, and listening. The course also acquaints students with aspects of Russian culture that are familiar to most educated native Russian speakers, through literature, videos and movies.

In this course we investigate one book, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in detail. We will consider such themes as the nature of decision-making in a world of uncertainty, how consciousness works, the place of death in an understanding of life, the nature of selfhood, the possibility of a social science, whether history fits a pattern, along with other philosophical and psychological questions. We will also see how Tolstoy’s innovations in plotting and presentation of character express his views about human life.

Anton Chekhov was born into a family of former serfs, worked his way through medical school while supporting his parents and siblings, and became one of the most admired story-tellers in the modern world. He represents a profound departure from his Russian context and pioneered modernist literary form, yet his work is also rooted in the culture of late imperial Russia. This course introduces elements of Chekhov's biography and his Russian context, and follows the trajectory of his development, from the early short stories to mature prose. No previous background in Russian literature is required.

(Co-listed with Linguistics 363)

Northwestern University is a community, working to set goals, achieve them, defining and striving for excellence, etc. As such, we are a speech community, using language to describe and form our culture and identity. This includes jargon (e.g., Wildcat, distros, CAESAR, CTECs, DM, ASG, SafeRide, MMLC, etc.) and slang. We focus on language, identity, and heritage, and the students create “WildWords”: https://nudictionary.mmlc.northwestern.edu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

The goal of this course is to help students acquire and improve their reading and writing skills in Polish. It is taught entirely in Polish. All discussions and readings will also be in Polish; students will learn how to discuss literature, culture and politics in Polish. Topics in grammar and stylistics will also be covered.

Poetry in Russian culture is a powerful and unique catalyst. This course offers a survey of the main trends in 19th Century Russian poetry, which, at the time, became a national symbol through the works of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Baratynsky, Lermontov, Tiutchev, and others. Although the topics of this so-called Golden Age of Russian literature were many, particular emphasis was on the genre of elegy.

(Co-listed with RTVF 321-0-20) In this course, we will review major films of Tarkovsky and of Russian and non- Russian directors whose work is related to his (Eisenstein, Wenders, Bergman, Kurosawa).

(Co-listed with Theatre 366-0-22)

Russia’s early 20th century experienced an explosion of activity in the arts. In theatre, the director emerged out of an increased interest in artistically unified theatrical works; avant-garde easel painters began designing for the stage; and a vibrant underground cabaret culture flourished. This course will examine how a rapidly growing pluralism of artistic perspectives and a series of wars, most notably the 1917 October Revolution, coincided with and contributed to one of the most prolific and innovative theatrical periods in history. We will also touch on visual art, opera, and ballet.

(Co-listed with Int St 390-0-22)

This course examines the roots and the drivers of Putin’s foreign policy. We will look at factors leading to the USSR’s disintegration and resulting ethnic conflicts, security issues and responses. The U.S. faced four nuclear powers (Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus), under-secured nuclear weapons, and armed secessionist conflicts in the Caucasus and Moldova. We will examine the post-Cold War security environment, focusing on Russia’s efforts to assert a sphere of influence, and its efforts to undermine Western solidarity and confidence in the liberal democratic system.

(Co-listed with Int St 390-0-22)

This course examines the roots and the drivers of Putin’s foreign policy. We will look at factors leading to the USSR’s disintegration and resulting ethnic conflicts, security issues and responses. The U.S. faced four nuclear powers (Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus), under-secured nuclear weapons, and armed secessionist conflicts in the Caucasus and Moldova. We will examine the post-Cold War security environment, focusing on Russia’s efforts to assert a sphere of influence, and its efforts to undermine Western solidarity and confidence in the liberal democratic system.

(Co-listed with RTVF 351-0-21)

This course will explore post-World War II film from Poland (with English subtitles). We will watch films by Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Munk, Roman Polanski, and others. We will assess what the end of WWII, followed by joining the Eastern Bloc, the fall of communism, and the entry into post-Soviet Europe have meant for the film culture and the Polish national film tradition.

(Co-listed with HUM 260)

This course offers a cross-disciplinary approach to the concept of alternatives and choices. At any given moment, how many alternatives are possible? Is there really such a thing as chance or choice? On what basis do we choose? How does our understanding of the past affect the future? Can we predict the future? Professor Gary Saul Morson, a specialist in literature, and Professor Morton Schapiro, a labor economist specializing in the economics of higher education, will themselves offer alternative approaches to these questions based on the presuppositions of their disciplines.

A graduate level seminar that addresses the complexities of teaching Russian language. The group explores teaching methods with an emphasis on communicative approach to language teaching, working with groups and individuals, and demonstrating and presenting ideas. This seminar is geared toward the student interested in teaching assistantships as well as professional education.

This course, the Theory and Practice of Russian Formalism, examines the school and doctrine of Russian Formalism, which influenced and informed many developments in the XX century literary and art theory, from Prague Linguistic Circle through Structuralism and Semiotics. Along with the detailed study of the critical and theoretical essays by such adherents of Formalism as Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jacobson, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eikhenbaum, et al., we will be exploring the major works of Russian modernism and avant-garde in literature and film through the methodological approach of Formalist theory. Special focus on the issues of Formalism and Marxism, Formalism and History, and the interconnections between culture and politics of the time.

Content varies. Recent offerings include the role of translation in Russian culture, the Poema, The Brothers Karamazov. May be repeated for credit with change of topic. 

(Co-listed with Comp Lit 413-0-20)

What do notions of empire, colonization, Orient and Occident look like from the vantage point of an expanding Eurasian empire (Russia) and a colonized nation at the juncture of Eastern and Western Europe (Poland)? What does Romanticism look like as it moves eastward to what Louis Phillipe, Comte de Ségur, called, in 1779, ‘the Orient of Europe’? We will explore these and other questions through the work of George Lord Byron (1788-1824), Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), and Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837).

Russian poema is a specific genre in Russian poetry that appeared in the 18th century and continues till now. Without knowing about its originality in Russian literary culture it is impossible to imagine the development of Russian poetry through its all periods. Course covers all major poema masterpieces, including those by Pushkin, Baratynsky, Blok, Belyi, Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, and Akhmatova.

Content varies.