Slavic Languages and Literatures

Academic Year: 
2017-18
Address: 
249 East Pyne
Phone: 
609-258-4726
Website: 
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Program offerings: 
Ph.D.
Director of Graduate Studies
Ilya Vinitsky
Graduate Program Administrator
Kate Fischer

Academic department detail

Overview

The aim of our graduate program is to further interest, knowledge, and scholarship relating to Russia, Slavic Central Europe, and Eurasia, primarily through the cultural humanities. To this end we urge our students to explore new intellectual paths and approaches, having first provided them with a strong background in the Russian literary tradition, an introduction to major schools of theory, and the opportunity to conduct research abroad.  (Please note that the program in Slavic Linguistics has been discontinued.)

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) program is a five-year program. The student studies full time in residence during the first two years, selecting courses both from within the department and outside of it.  The general examinations are usually taken during the first term of the third year.  After general examinations, individual programs vary. Most students combine dissertation research with teaching. (Stipends are not contingent on teaching, but students are expected to teach first-year Russian at some point in their career and are strongly encouraged to teach precepts in literature courses.) Some students spend a term or a year doing dissertation research abroad. Ideally, this research is funded by outside fellowships, but if such funding is unavailable and the faculty deems the research essential, university fellowship stipends can be used to cover these expenses.

In the early years of graduate study, students use the summer to prepare for generals or to do additional language study abroad (usually in Russia or Eastern Europe). After generals, most use the time to continue researching and writing their dissertation.

Because we aim to admit only two students into the program each year, we are able to help them design a program of study and develop a research trajectory that accords with individual scholarly needs and interests.  Choosing from a wide range of courses, entering students arrange their programs in consultation with the director of graduate studies and faculty advisers. 

Graduate seminars in the department cover historical periods (e.g., Russian Realism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Futurism, Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature and Culture), specific authors (e.g., Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak), theoretical approaches to literature and culture (e.g., the Russian critical tradition from Belinsky to the Tartu school and Bakhtin), and core courses in the development of literary genres and film (the evolution of Russian poetic form; surveys of Russian theater and visual art; Russian film theory).

Courses

Permanent Courses

Courses listed below are graduate-level courses that have been approved by the program’s faculty as well as the Curriculum Subcommittee of the Faculty Committee on the Graduate School as permanent course offerings. Permanent courses may be offered by the department or program on an ongoing basis, depending on curricular needs, scheduling requirements, and student interest. Not listed below are undergraduate courses and one-time-only graduate courses, which may be found for a specific term through the Registrar’s website. Also not listed are graduate-level independent reading and research courses, which may be approved by the Graduate School for individual students.

HUM 597 Humanistic Perspectives on History and Society (also
SLA 597
/
EAS 597
) In this seminar we locate Spinoza and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) in the exciting currents of seventeenth-century philosophy, theology, biblical scholarship and exegesis. Resituating Spinoza in Golden Age Holland we examine the resources and relevant controversies that shaped the Tractatus, with an eye to common concerns and traditions: the legacies of humanism and Reformation in the Netherlands, for instance, the larger worlds of his friends, as well as the vibrant Jewish community in Golden Age Amsterdam and the varieties of Christian lay piety that fall broadly under the banner of "the Radical Reformation."
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 521 The New Barbarians Course examines a variety of intellectual and artistic discourses of the late 19th - early 20th centuries that constellated around such topics as degeneration; the exhaustion of culture, the threat of a new barbarism; the primitive and atavistic; the instinctual (or the unconscious); the return to the pre-rational. It asks how and why modernity produces the inverted image of itself- the anti-modern.
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 530 Topics in Russian Literature or Literary Theory - Russian Practicum Topics may include the Russian verb, problems of voice in Russian, function of word order in Russian, case in Slavic languages, verbal aspect in Slavic, and West Slavic dialectology.
SLA 531 Topics in Russian Literature or Literary Theory 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 540 Russian Classics On (and Off) The Soviet-Stalinist Stage An examination of six famous 19th-century literary works as transposed into Russian modernist theater in the 1920s-30s: two productions by Meyerhold (Gogol's Inspector General and Griboyedov's Woe from Wit), one opera by Shostakovich (on Leskov's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"), and three archival documents that never passed the censor: Krzhizhanovsky's "scenic projections: of [Evgenii Onegin] and [Hadji Murad], and Mariengof's libretto for [Resurrection]. Our purpose is to sample aesthetic and political constraints on transpositions of the classics during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras.
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.