Melissa Frazier

At the end of this course, students will know the fundamentals of Russian grammar and will be able to use them to read, write, and, most especially, speak Russian on an elementary level. Successful language learning involves both creativity and a certain amount of rote learning. Memorization gives the student the basis to then extrapolate, improvise, and have fun with the language. This course will lay equal emphasis on both. Our four hours of class each week will be spent actively using what we know in pair and group activities, dialogues, discussions, etc. Twice-weekly written homework, serving both to reinforce old and to introduce new material, will be required. At the end of each semester, we will formalize—through small-group video projects—the principle of rigorous but creative communication that underlies all of our work. Students are required to attend weekly conversation classes with the Russian assistant. Attendance at Russian Table is strongly encouraged.

At the end of this course, students should feel that they have a fairly sophisticated grasp of Russian and the ability to communicate in Russian in any situation. After the first year of studying the language, students will have learned the bulk of Russian grammar; this course will emphasize grammar review, vocabulary accumulation, and regular oral practice. Class time will center on the spoken language, and students will be expected to participate actively in discussions based on new vocabulary. Regular written homework will be required, along with weekly conversation classes with the Russian assistant. Attendance at Russian Table is strongly encouraged. Conference work will focus on the written language. Students will be asked to read short texts by the author(s) of their choice, with the aim of appreciating a very different culture and/or literature while learning to read independently, accurately, and with as little recourse to the dictionary as possible.

Henry James called them “baggy monsters.” For the Vicomte de Vogüé, they were not romans but russ-ans. This course will argue that the Russian novel is marked, above all, by its persistent posing of the question of form. We will begin with Bakhtin’s theory of the novel and also with Tolstoy’s essay, “A Few Words About War and Peace,” which claims that War and Peace is not a novel but only the latest in a long line of 19th-century Russian non-novels, including Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Gogol’s Dead Souls, and Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead. We will read all these works and more, as we attempt to answer the double question that Tolstoy raises: not just what is the “novel,” but also what we mean by “Russia.”

In his 1984 essay “Catastrophes in the Air,” the poet Joseph Brodsky suggests that, as its “every sentence drives the Russian language into a semantic dead end or, more precisely, reveals a proclivity for dead ends, a blind-alley mentality in the language itself,” Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit (1930) can be profitably read as a sequel to Dostoevsky’s Demons (1872). This course will frame a reading of Russian literature both before and after the 1917 Revolution with Brodsky’s insight. We will begin not with Demons but with the most important revolutionary and utopian text in Russian literature, Chernyshevsky’s novel-manifesto, What Is To Be Done? (1863). In response to Chernyshevsky, we will turn first to Demons and then to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) before considering Andrei Bely’s attempt in Petersburg (1916) to write both an explosion into the 20th century and also a culmination of all that has come before. We will then read from the wild burst of creativity in the 1920s as Russian literature fragmented into smaller forms—Shklovsky’s Sentimental Journey (1923), Zamiatin’s We (1924), Babel’s Red Cavalry (1926), Olesha’s Envy (1927)—before finishing with The Foundation Pit and what Brodsky sees as its essentially Dostoevskiian message: “Language is a millenarian device, history isn't.”

This course is intended for students who are beyond the second-year level. Our aim will be to move away from grammar and into active reading, writing, watching, and speaking in Russian. In the fall semester, the course will center on the very rich artistic and cultural heritage of the city of St. Petersburg. We will start with Pushkin’s poem, The Bronze Horseman, and short story, The Queen of Spades, and then also consider Tchaikovsky’s rendering of the latter. We will also enjoy at least pieces of Gogol’s Petersburg Tales and Bely’s Petersburg. As we turn to the topic of the 1917 revolution, we will consider literary texts such as Shklovsky’s Sentimental Journey, as well as films such as Eisenstein’s October and Esfir Shub’s The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. We will then devote some time to the avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms. Kharms’ arrest and death in the early days of the siege of Leningrad brings us to another central moment in the city’s history, one that we will consider also in terms of documentary film, Tatiana Tolstaia’s short story, Sonia, and the life and music of Shostakovich. We will end the semester with Joseph Brodsky, both in his own writing and in the recent film, A Room and A Half. As the fall semester draws to a close, we will discuss possibilities for the spring; we might move to Moscow, for example, or focus on a particular text or writer. In both semesters, we will emphasize vocabulary acquisition along with the basics of Russian word morphology. Weekly conversation classes with the Russian assistant will be required, and attendance at Russian Table is strongly encouraged. The fall semester, at least, will also include biweekly film screenings.

Dostoevsky is often considered the most Russian of writers. He was, however, deeply influenced by his reading of contemporary Western European literature. Among Russian writers, he is also remarkable for the extent of his influence outside of Russia. This course will read Dostoevsky’s major novels in the context of the non-Russian works that precede and follow them. Our reading of Crime and Punishment, for example, will begin with Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Balzac and finish with Nabokov and Robert Bresson. While we will focus on Western Europe and the United States, we will also consider the work of at least two readers of Dostoevsky who claimed him from other parts of the world: J. M. Coetzee and Akira Kurosawa. Other texts will include Notes from Underground, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, as well as works by Rousseau, Benjamin Constant, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Ralph Ellison, and Walker Percy.