Undergraduate courses in Slavic General

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. The political and cultural history of Russia and the Russians: prominent persons, prominent events, and how they shape current attitudes and society. Short works by Russian authors. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Win (Schupbach, R)

SLAVGEN 77Q. Russia's Weird Classic: Nikolai Gogol

(S,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. The work and life of Nikolai Gogol, the eccentric founder of Fantastic Realism. The relationship between romanticism and realism in Russian literature, and between popular Ukranian culture and high Russian and W. European traditions in Gogol's oeuvre. The impact of his work on 20th-century modernist literature, music, and art, including Nabokov, literature of the absurd, Shostakovich, Meyerhold, and Chagall. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Aut (Fleishman, L)

SLAVGEN 110. The Gogol Bordello: Ukraine as a Meeting House of Cultures

(Same as SLAVGEN 210.) The cohabitation of authors and cultural geography in multiethnic Ukraine. Comparison of Ukrainian texts, images of Ukraine and Ukrainians by their Polish, Jewish, German, and Russian cohabitants. Possible authors include : Andrukhovych, Aleichem, Babel, Celan, Franko, Gogol, Lewycka, Mickiewicz, Shevchenko, Pushkin, Schulz, Ukraina, and Zabuzhko. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 122. Yiddish Story

(Same as SLAVGEN 222.) The humor, drama, anger, and artistry of modern E. European and American Yiddish writers including Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Grade, and Yankev Glatshteyn. In English. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

5 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 123. The Yiddish Novel

(Same as SLAVGEN 223.) How Yiddish novels reveal changes in modern Jewish life and literature in Europe and the U.S. The influences of folklore, traditional Jewish culture, and European literature. Works by Isaac and Joshua Singer, Joseph Opatoshu, Der Nister, Chava Rosenfarb, Sholem Asch, and David Bergelson. Readings in English; optional sessions for close readings in Yiddish. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 133. Poles and Others: Literature and History in Modern Poland

(Same as SLAVGEN 233.) The physical and cultural territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have long been objects of contest. The 20th century witnessed two or three rebirths of Poland and one or two deaths; a belated modernization of Polish society; the final inclusion of Polish-speaking peasants and burghers in a Polish national identity; and the exclusion of Jews, Germans, Lithuanians, Belarusans, Ukrainians, and others from the state and participation in a partially shared culture. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 141. Staging the Revolution: Russian Theater and Society, 1917-1937

(Same as SLAVGEN 241.) Between 1917 and 1937, artistic experimentation in the Russian theater coincided with political and social changes in Russian society. Modernist artists interpreted the revolution as an artistic possibility to demolish conventions of representation. Mass festivals, circus, and street performances replaced the old theater. In the time of the Great Terror and staged trials, theater and opera remained among the leading arts, but state patronage caused a major reorientation of artistic practices. Readings include plays by Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Babel, Tretiakov, and Erdman. Readings in English. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 145. Age of Experiment: From Pushkin to Gogol

(Same as SLAVGEN 245.) The Russian leap into European culture after the Napoleonic Wars and the formative period of Russian literature. Readings seen as local literary developments and contemporary European trends including Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, The Belkin Tales, and The Captain's Daughter; Lermontov's Hero of Our Time; and Gogol's Petersburg Tales and Dead Souls. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

3-4 units, Aut (Fleishman, L)

SLAVGEN 146. History and Other Theories of Time and Action in the Great Russian Novel

(Same as SLAVGEN 246.) Connections of philosophy to literary form in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, and other stories. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

3-4 units, Win (Greenleaf, M)

SLAVGEN 147. The Age of War and Revolution: A Survey of Russian Literature and Culture, 1900-1950s

(Same as SLAVGEN 247.) First of two-part sequence. Russian modernism and the avant garde.The Russian Revolution, the era of the NEP, Soviet civilization, and the literature of opposition following Stalin's death. Texts in English translation. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

3-4 units, Spr (Fleishman, L)

SLAVGEN 148. The Age of Dissent: A Survey of Russian Literature and Culture, 1953 to the Present

(Same as SLAVGEN 248.) From the death of Stalin to post-communist Russia. Literature of the thaw and de-Stalinization, official and unofficial literature of dissent, samizdat, village and urban prose, literature of the new emigration, late Soviet underground, sots-art, perestroika, and post-communist literature and culture. Texts in English translation. For graduate credit for research paper, register for 399. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 150. Countercultures in Conversation: Russian and American Rock Music and Protest Poetry

(Same as SLAVGEN 250.) Non-conformist protest movements in contemporary Russian poetry; historical and cultural context; and comparison with similar processes in American social and cultural life. Sources include Russian and American poetry, songs, and DVDs. Fourth unit for readings in Russian. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 151. Dostoevsky and His Times

(Same as COMPLIT 119, COMPLIT 219, SLAVGEN 251.) Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Major works in English translation with reference to related developments in Russian and European culture, literary criticism, and intellectual history. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Frank, J)

SLAVGEN 153. Russian Jewish LIterature

(Same as SLAVGEN 253.) Russian Jewish experience inspired books and films in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and English that reveal a world of conflict, humor and beauty. From the mid-19th century to the t21st century. Authors include Haim Nahman Bialik, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac babel, Osip Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, Leonid Tsypkin, Ludmila Ulitskaia, Gary Shteyngardt. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Win (Safran, G)

SLAVGEN 155. Anton Chekhov and the Turn of the Century

(Same as SLAVGEN 255.) Chekhov's art in its Russian literary, historical, philosophical, and political contexts. Short stories and major plays; supplemental readings for graduate students from Chekhov's letters and works by his friends and contemporaries, such as Leskov, Tolstoy, Korolenko, and Gorky. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Spr (Safran, G)

SLAVGEN 156. Nabokov in the Transnational Context

(Same as COMPLIT 115, COMPLIT 215, SLAVGEN 256.) Nabakov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel The Gift, Lolita (the novel and screenplay), and Pale Fire. Readings in English.GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Spr (Greenleaf, M)

SLAVGEN 162. Gender Images in Film

(Same as SLAVGEN 262.) Film creates permanent new images of femininity. One of its conscious prerequisites is the notion of social stereotypes. The development of enduring images of the film heroine, 1914-90, through a comparison of the Russian, American, and W. European cinema, and analytical approaches to them from feminist film theory. GER:EC-Gender

3 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 163. Gender in Postwar Russian Culture

(Same as SLAVGEN 263.) Issues of femininity and masculinity in Russian literature, film, and popular culture from the 40s to the present. Readings include fiction, memoirs, poetry, drama, and theoretical works in gender studies. GER:EC-Gender

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 165. Poetry, Painting, and Music of the Russian Avant Garde

(Same as SLAVGEN 265.) Interrelationships between poetry and other arts in Russia, 1905-30. The pursuit of synthesis of arts and the modernist agenda of life creation and immortality. Parallel developments in literature, painting, and music, and style and poetics. Russian modernist poetry in the context of changes in the language of visual arts and music). Women poets and artists. Native sources and Western influences; non-Russian elements and transnational tendencies. The impact of scientific discoveries and technological inventions on artistic experimentation.

3-4 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 169. Mermaids, the Firebird, and the Singing Tree: Russian Folklore and Its Theory

(Same as SLAVGEN 269.) Russian culture through its oral folklore and music. Theory, current data and its interpretation, how scholars collect and understand traditional oral poetry, and the lessons of folklore. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, not given this year

SLAVGEN 181. Philosophy and Literature

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Anderson, L; Vermeule, B)

SLAVGEN 190. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophical, Social, and Ethical Thought

(Same as HUMNTIES 197F, SLAVGEN 290.) Themes: institutions of the family and gender; debate about the female body, church, and religion; the decline of privilege and the rise of capital and industry; the meaning of art and the artist; conflicts of law and custom, country and city, andnationalism and cosmopolitanism; and the ascetic rejection of the world. Authors include Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Weber, and Freud. GER:DB-Hum, DB-Hum, EC-EthicReas

3-4 units, Spr (Freidin, G)

SLAVGEN 195. RUSSIAN THEATER

(Same as SLAVGEN 295.) Reading plays in juxtaposition with clips from performances and famous directors' writings (Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and beyond). Evolution of Russian theatrical theory and practice, with particular attention to the present. Some knowledge of Russian desirable. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Aut (Greenleaf, M)

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Alphabetical Index

Bulletin Archive

Undergraduate courses in Slavic General