Courses

This course will focus on continued study of the fundamentals of Russian grammar, vocabulary expansion, and activation. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

This course is taken in combination with Russian 107. Students focus on the essentials of Russian pronunciation with preliminary work in intonation. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director. 

This course is taken in combination with Russian 107. Emphasis on socially relevant material. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

This course aims at vocabulary expansion and the assimilation and activation of formulaic conversational structures and speech etiquette at the same time it develops familiarity with more complex principles of Russian grammar. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

This course is taken in combination with Russian 207. Students focus on the essentials of Russian pronunciation and correction. Preliminary work in intonation will be offered. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

This course is taken in combination with Russian 207. Emphasis will be placed on socially relevant reading materials. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University’s Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director. 

In this course we will the address the problem of Russophonia and the changing role of the Russian language in the post-Soviet world. Through discussions of theoretical readings, literary texts and cultural artefacts, we will explore spaces for creative dialogues among writers and artists in the post-Soviet states and the Russophone diasporas. Topics will include the post-colonial search for identity in contemporary art; linguistic, gender and cultural hybridity in prose and poetry; imperial legacies, trauma and (post)memory in historical and auto-fiction; and connections between creative communities and ecological and political activism. Taught in English.

How did the Russian peasant stove shape culinary culture? Why did Catherine the Great force her subjects to cultivate potatoes? How did the October Revolution change the way Soviet citizens ate? In this course we will study key aspects of Russian history and culture through the lens of culinary history. Topics will include: food and fasting in Russian Orthodoxy; food, class and power under the tsars; high Russian (or is it French?) culture of the nineteenth century; Soviet policies for feeding the worker; non-Russian cuisines in the Soviet Union; drinking culture and anti-alcohol campaigns; food and nationalism in the twenty-first century. Includes hands-on sessions on Russian food preparation. In English.

What is Russia’s problem? Why is the country famous for its great “soul” and culture waging a bloody war and becoming increasingly anti-Western? This course explores the cultural mythology that characterizes the state of contemporary Russian society and its “soul,” using critical approaches from trauma and memory studies, as well as theories of ressentiment and nostalgia. Authors to be studied include ideologues of Putin’s Russia (Surkov, Prilepin), its critics (Sorokin), and other writers, artists, and filmmakers who reflect, define, question, and challenge the direction in which country is moving and give it a cultural diagnosis. In English.

Rejected by every major publisher, first released in France in 1955 by a press known for pornographic trash, Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous novel about a middle-aged immigrant college professor obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl continues to feed controversy as well as to challenge and delight readers with its labyrinthian narrative, endless wordplay, innumerable intertextual allusions, and troublesome eroticism. In addition to reading the novel, we will focus on critical approaches that address the cultural clash underlying the ostensible plot, changing reception, and reception of the novel outside the US. Thus warned, you are invited to join the jury in deliberating the designs and delights of this twentieth-century literary classic.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, is many things: a riveting murder mystery, a probing philosophical treatise, one of the best known novels in world literature, and a complex book worth reading and discussing with serious readers of diverse backgrounds. We will familiarize ourselves with the historical and philosophical context in which it was written, while grappling with the fundamental questions it raises: What does it mean to act morally? Why do humans so often act against their own best interest? How do we reconcile a world of chaos and suffering with the notion of a benevolent god? Conducted in English.

Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Lev Tolstoy challenges readers to confront some of the most confounding questions of human existence: How can we reconcile the notion of free will with the seemingly ineluctable forces of history? Is individual moral action possible in war? How can we live a meaningful life in the face of inevitable death? And what might lie after death? In this course we read War and Peace in its cultural and historical context, while also considering how it continues to be relevant to our lives today. Conducted in English.

Short texts in a variety of genres connected with the momentous events of 1917 provide the basis for continued development of reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. 

In weekly meetings we will discuss in Russian current events taking place in Russia and around the world as reported by the Russophone online media. Emphasis will be on reading, listening, and conversation. Vocabulary building by topics; grammar as needed.

This course combines advanced work in Russian grammar (largely corrective) and fundamentals in composition, with conversational Russian.

This course is taken in combination with Russian 307. Students focus on corrective pronunciation and theory and practice of Russian intonation. This course is conducted by members of Kazakh National University Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

This course aims at skill development in speaking and oral presentation as well as in limited forms of composition. It is taken in combination with Russian 307 and conducted by members of Kazakh National University Philological Faculty and supervised by the program director.

Beginning in the 1910’s, Russian and then the Soviet Union was home to some of the most creative and innovative animated films in the world. In this course we will examine selected animated shorts in the context of Russian history and culture. Topics to be considered include the roots of animated film in the folk tale, the role of cartoons in educating the model Soviet child, the language of Soviet colonial discourse, and the ways in which post-Soviet animated films perpetuated or subverted past traditions. 

Chekhov’s literary oeuvre appeared at the same moment as the birth of cinematography, and the two are closely intertwined. His art rests on what Sergei Eisenstein called the central principle of film: montage, visuality, the constant changing of shots, and dislocation in time and space. It is no wonder that Chekhov’s stories were adapted for the screen in record numbers: to date we count 235 film adapatations plus 10 animated films. In this course we will read several of his best short stories, view films based on his works, and analyze the cinematographic qualities of Chekhov’s prose.

In addition to its well-known “doorstop novels,” Russia has a rich tradition of short fiction. This course presents a sampling of prose genres, from nineteenth-century classic folktales and short stories to contemporary works in which twentieth- and twenty first-century writers play with tradition. Conducted in Russian.

This course focuses on the question of collective identity in post-Soviet cinema. Topics include the marginalization of “the other,” whether disabled, gay, hipster, migrant or elderly; the breaking down of the boundary between civil society and the criminal world; and the transformation of former “brothers” into outsiders. In light of current events in Ukraine, particular emphasis will be placed on films dealing with war. Conducted in Russian.

An introduction to the names, quotations, and events that every Russian knows–knowledge which is essential to understanding Russian literature, history, and culture of the last two centuries. We will study the works of Russian writers (Griboedov and Pushkin, Leskov and Dostoevsky), composers (Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-­Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky), artists (Briullov, Ivanov, the Itinerants) and actors (Mochalov, Shchepkin) in the context of social thought and the social movements of the nineteenth century. Conducted in Russian.