DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

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.

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.

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.

(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.

This course is the second part of a three-quarter sequence focusing on communication, cultural understanding, connections of Russian language and culture with other disciplines (such as history and sociology), and comparisons of Russian and American culture and language. It is a combined third- and fourth-year all skills language and culture class.  This course includes topics in grammar, a focus on developing discussion and conversational skills and writing, and readings from a range of contemporary Russian writers. It is taught in Russian and is intended for students who have completed the SLAVIC 302 series and/or the SLAVIC 102 series.

(Co-listed with German 346) This course examines Prague, one of the most beautiful and culturally vibrant cities in Europe. Its magnificent streets and buildings both conceal and reveal a past full of multiethnic coexistence and interethnic conflict. We explore the development over the past two centuries from a multicultural, democratic city to a homogeneous, communist one, and ultimately to its present open and capitalist incarnation. We will read a range of literary and historical sources, including the story of the Golem and writings by Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, and Franz Kafka, and will study Prague’s architecture and watch several films set on its streets.

Content varies.