Russian

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Core Courses

Taught by Andrew Kahn

  • Survey of Russian Literature: Part I: 1815-1917 (8 tutorials)
  • Survey of Russian Literature Part II: 1917-1991 (FHS Paper VIII) (8 tutorials)
  • Authors and Texts: a selection from Papers X and XI, including Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Mandelstam, and others (each author taught in 4 tutorials)

Optional Courses

Taught by Sofya Dmitrieva

Soviet Cinema

This option can be taken as a primary course (8 tutorials) or secondary course (4 tutorials).

This course offers a focused study of eight major Soviet films, examining their cinematic form in relation to the cultural, political, and ideological contexts of their production:

  1. Fragment of an Empire (1929, dir. Fridrikh Ermler)
  2. Earth (1930, dir. Alexander Dovzhenko)
  3. Kashchey the Immortal (1944, dir. Aleksandr Rou)
  4. The Cranes Are Flying (1957, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov)
  5. Welcome, or No Trespassing (1964, dir. Elem Klimov)
  6. The Beginning (1970, dir. Gleb Panfilov)
  7. The Ascent (1976, dir. Larisa Shepitko)
  8. The Asthenic Syndrome (1989, dir. Kira Muratova)
Survey of Russian Art

This option can be taken as a primary course (8 tutorials) or secondary course (4 tutorials).

Spanning from Andrey Rublev to Dmitri Prigov, this course provides a broad introduction to the history of Russian visual art. Topics include:

  1. Orthodox Art and Architecture (12th-16th centuries)
  2. Invited Artists and Western Influences (17th-18th centuries)
  3. The Peredvizhniki: Art, Society, and Reform in Imperial Russia
  4. Mir Iskusstva and the Russian Silver Age
  5. The Russian Avantgarde I
  6. The Russian Avantgarde II
  7. Socialist Realism
  8. Moscow Conceptualism
Russian Formalist Theory

This option can be taken as a primary course (8 tutorials) or secondary course (4 tutorials).

The 1910s–1920s marked a period of intense experimentation in Russian literature, film, and visual arts — and of radical theoretical innovation, centered on questions of form. This course examines the central ideas and foundational texts of Russian formalism, including:

  1. Boris Eikhenbaum, “The Theory of the ‘Formal Method’” (1925)
  2. Futurist Manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1912) and Kazimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism” (1915)
  3. Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Device” (1917)
  4. Boris Eikhenbaum, “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ Is Made” (1919)
  5. Roman Jakobson, “On Realism in Art” (1921)
  6. Sergei Eisenstein, “Montage of Attractions” (1923)
  7. Yury Tynyanov, “On Literary Evolution” (1927)
  8. Vladimir Propp, “Morphology of the Folktale” (1928)

Further topics may also be available depending on the applicant’s specific background and level of Russian. Please contact the Admissions Office for details.

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