The following table is a complete list of approved Russian courses at Emory.
REES COURSES
REES 190 Freshman Seminar
4 credit hours
Fulfils GER freshman seminar requirement. Seminar will introduce students to special topics in Russian and East European studies with a cross-disciplinary approach.
REES 200 Intro to Russian Area Studies
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. This course is an introduction to the vast sweep of Russian culture, society and history. As such, it takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering two fundamental questions that have animated Russians themselves for centuries: What is Russia? Where is Russia going? These issues are approached from a number of perspectives, including historical, cultural, political, legal, and artistic.
REES 375: Special Topics in REES
Fall or spring. Variable credit. Approval by department is required.
REES 490: Advanced Topics in REES
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This advanced course in cultural, economic, social, political and everyday life of contemporary Russia and Eastern and Central Europe will operate either as an advanced topics class, cross-listed with History, Political Science, Film, and Literature of Russian and Eastern Europe.
REES 497R: Directed Study
Variable credit, may be repeated for up to 4 Semester Hours.
REES 499R: Senior Thesis
4 Semester Hours
RUSS COURSES
RUSS 101 Elementary Russian I
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Russia is the largest country in the world. From the standpoint of usage, Russian ranks with English and Chinese as one of the three major world languages. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, new and exciting job opportunities for students who know Russian have appeared. Elementary Russian is designed to introduce students to the Russian language and to the rich culture of Russia. The course focuses upon contemporary Russian and the development of speaking, listening, and writing. The course utilizes internet-based resources and Russian television.
RUSS 102 Elementary Russian II
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course is an introduction to Russian grammar with emphasis on conversation. The course will include discussion of contemporary Russian life and culture. The course utilizes internet-based resources, also Russian television.
RUSS 103 Russian for Advanced Beginners I
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Designed for students with a Russian background who can speak but have difficulty reading and writing. It will help students develop and maintain writing, reading, and speaking skills at the academic level.
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Designed for students with a Russian background who can speak but have difficulty reading and writing. It will help students develop and maintain writing, reading, and speaking skills at the academic level.
RUSS 110 Intensive First Year Russian
8 credit units
8 credit units
Intensive first year course covers two semesters of Russian in one. Emphasis on developing proficiency: Oral, written, reading and comprehension.
RUSS 190 Topics in Russian Culture (Freshman Seminar)
4 credit hours
(Freshman Seminar)
4 credit hours
(Freshman Seminar)
Fall or spring as needed. Focus on special aspects of Russian culture or language.
RUSS 200 Fundamentals of Russian For Reading
4 credit hours
Russian 200 is designed to enable students to acquire basic reading to comprehend with the aid of dictionary printed materials of both a scientific and non-scientific nature. Students will be given the opportunity to select texts for translation in accordance with their fields of interest. The course should be helpful to graduate students in preparing for reading exams, but is open to other students as well. No previous knowledge of Russian is required.
4 credit hours
Russian 200 is designed to enable students to acquire basic reading to comprehend with the aid of dictionary printed materials of both a scientific and non-scientific nature. Students will be given the opportunity to select texts for translation in accordance with their fields of interest. The course should be helpful to graduate students in preparing for reading exams, but is open to other students as well. No previous knowledge of Russian is required.
RUSS 201 Intermediate Russian Conversation and Reading I
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Intermediate Russian is designed to develop proficiency in conversational and written usage of Russian. Although implementation of new grammar is essential, the main focus is on Russian as a living means of communication. The course utilizes internet-based resources.
RUSS 202 Intermediate Russian Conversation and Reading II
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Intermediate Russian is designed to develop proficiency in conversational and written usage of Russian. Although implementation of new grammar is essential, the main focus is on Russian as a living means of communication. The course utilizes internet-based resources.
RUSS 203 Russian for Advanced Beginners II
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Designed for heritage speakers of Russian; it is sequel to RUSS 103. The emphasis is on improving students' reading and writing skills. It prepares students for further study at the advanced level. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to take RUSS 301, 310, 311, 312, and 313.
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Designed for heritage speakers of Russian; it is sequel to RUSS 103. The emphasis is on improving students' reading and writing skills. It prepares students for further study at the advanced level. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to take RUSS 301, 310, 311, 312, and 313.
RUSS 270 Russian Culture
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisite: none. Knowledge of Russian is not required. An interdisciplinary course that introduces students to the diversity of Russian culture. Presented against a chronological sequence of Russian history, it covers Orthodoxy, iconography, literature, music, folk beliefs, and customs.
RUSS 271 Literature of Imperial Russia
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisite: none. Knowledge of Russian is not required. Survey of the masterpieces of the Golden Age of Russian literature presented against the background of historical, cultural, social, and political developments.
RUSS 275 Russian Folklore
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisite: none. Knowledge of Russian is not required. Designed as a one-semester course to introduce students to the major genres, methodology, and folk agricultural calendar, and the beliefs associated with it. This is a descriptive course, with the specialists and major collections introduced with each genre. The class will meet for three hours each week. Students will be required to write a midterm and a final exam, as well as submit a term paper on a subject of their choosing.
RUSS 276 The Vampire: Monster and Myth
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The interest in the vampire in modern pop culture is high as witnessed by the never-ending Hollywood releases and novels dealing with the subject. The game, Masquerade, played enthusiastically by thousands, is based on vampire characters. Countless web pages are devoted to vampirism. The vampire as we know it today is the grandson of the East European vampire, a monster, the undead, the unclean. Progressively, as the conception East European vampire moved West, it became more and more of a romantic hero, a fallen angel, a hero struggling to maintain a spark of its humanity, while at the same time challenging God. Fall or spring. Prerequisite: None. Knowledge of Russian is not required.
RUSS 301 Advanced Oral and Written Communication I
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The course is designed to develop fluency in spoken Russian as well as enhance writing skills, vocabulary development, and reading and listening comprehension. Discussion and compositions focus on contrasting and comparing contemporary Russian and American societies. Attention will be given to grammatical constructions and stylistic differences to assist in the development of communicative skills. Fall. Prerequisite: Russian 202 or consent of instructor. Designed to help students reach a new level of fluency, focusing on vocabulary development and the more complex forms of literary and colloquial Russian.
RUSS 310R Russian Poetry in the Original
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisites: Russian 202 or consent of the instructor. The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the rich tradition of Russian poetry and drama (nineteenth and twentieth century). This course is conducted for the most part in Russian and addresses such issues as the role of poetry and drama in Russian culture. The texts will be read in the original, but some background material may be read in English.
RUSS 311R Fiction and Nonfiction in Russian
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisites: Russian 202 or consent of instructor. The main goal of this course is to expand students' literary vocabulary and to develop further their ability to express themselves on both literary and everyday issues. This class will emphasize the varying stylistic patterns of different Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and will seek to enhance students' understanding of the cultural ambience of Russian literature.
RUSS 312R Studies in Individual Authors
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisites: Russian 202 or consent of instructor. The main goal of this course is to expand students' literary vocabulary and develop further the ability to express themselves on both literary and everyday issues by means of the study of a particular Russian author, i.e., Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Bulkagov, Pasternak, and more.
RUSS 313R Topics in Russian Literature
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisites: Russian 202 or consent of instructor. The main goal of this course is to expand students' literary vocabulary and to develop further their ability to express themselves on both literary and everyday issues. This class will emphasize the varying stylistic patterns of different Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and will seek to enhance students' understanding of the cultural ambience of Russian literature.
RUSS 314F St. Petersburg Summer
8 credit units
8 credit units
Summer. Credit, eight hours. Prerequisites: Russian 202 or equivalent, and approval of department. Intensive summer study of Russian language and culture in St. Petersburg, Russia. Practical language study, lectures, and tours. See chair of department for application procedure.
RUSS 315 Russian Through Film
4 credit hours
RUSS 315 Russian Through Film
4 credit hours
The course is designed to develop fluency in spoken Russian as well as enhance writing skills, vocabulary development, and reading and listening comprehension. Using Russian film as a basis for conversation provides students with a wealth of cultural and linguistic insights.
RUSS 351 Business Russian
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisite: Russian 202 or equivalent. Introduction to basic oral and written communication skills for trade and business negotiations with Russian-speaking areas of the former Soviet Union.
RUSS 360 Dostoevsky in English Translation
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Of all Russian writers Dostoevsky had the most serious impact on the world culture. He widened horizons of artistic imagination and human thought. In this class four major works of fiction by Dostoevsky will be discussed. Dostoevsky will be approached as a creator of a genre of polyphonic novel and a predecessor of modern intellectual trends such as Jungian theory of psychological archetypes and existentialism. Interpretations of Dostoevsky's work by Berdiaev, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Bakhtin will amplify reading experience and outline topic for discussion. Satisfies G.E.R area IV.A.
RUSS 363 Russia's "Amazon-Women"
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course explores the “other” side of the revolution in Russia— contributions of powerfully gifted women to transition in the arts and Russian society (1900). Class includes works by writers Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, painter Popova, film director Muratova, and political activist Kollontia.
RUSS 361 Leo Tolstoy in English Translation
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Fall or spring. Prerequisite: none. Knowledge of Russian is not required. The novels of the most famous Russian writer and thinker, who deeply influenced world literature. Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and others. Topics for discussion include: Christianity and atheism, existentialism, the superman, the sources of evil, and freedom and suffering as moral categories.
RUSS 372 Russia & the Age of Revolution
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The "mystery" of Russia lies in great part in the drama of 20th-century events: the fall of tsardom and the splendor of the Russian court, the rise and fall of the Soviet empire, and the painful steps of a new nation torn between democracy and its Communist past. Perhaps no voice more vividly captures the political, social, and personal upheavals of the century than the literature of the times. Works for the course include selections by Nobel laureates, including Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. Films, slides, and music will be used.
RUSS 373 Russian Art and Literature: Russian Avant-garde
4 credit hours
Cross listing: ARTHIST 369WR
4 credit hours
Cross listing: ARTHIST 369WR
Dramatic political and artistic changes color the tapestry of Russian culture in the 20th century. This time frame spans the twilight of tsardom, as well as the Communist and post-Communist eras. Using a multi-media approach, we will explore the bold visions of the Russian artistic avant-garde as they came into conflict with "official" views. Painters like Kandinsky, Malevich, Tatlin, and Popova will be examined alongside filmmakers like Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, theater directors like Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, and writers like Mayakovsy and Bely. While the works of Russian artists reflect a Russian context, their insights into the nature of reality and human identity have implications for us all. Course is conducted in English.
RUSS 374 Shakespeare in Russian Culture
4 credit hours
Cross listing: ENG 389WR, CPLT 389WR, and IDS 385WR
4 credit hours
Cross listing: ENG 389WR, CPLT 389WR, and IDS 385WR
This class examines several paradigms for understanding Shakespeare's formidable influence in Russian culture: from Bloom's anxiety of influence, to Eliot's claim that Shakespeare cannot be a poetic influence, to Pasternak's conception of the battle entailed in the transmission of tradition, and then to Mandelstam's vision of influence as a forceful impulse to speech or even a mating call. 8 of 10 of Shakespeare’s plays will be carefully discussed in order to understand which of the themes have the strongest impact and new life in a Russian culture and which are overlooked and downplayed.
RUSS 375R Special Topics
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Study of Russian language, literature, or culture, alone or in conjunction with other literary or cultural trends. Topics to be announced in advance.
RUSS 376WR Discourses in Love
4 credit hours
Cross listing: CPLT 376 and IDS 376
4 credit hours
Cross listing: CPLT 376 and IDS 376
Russia is famous (or notorious) for its wide and sometimes wild experimentation with patterns of erotic behavior, from extreme asceticism to the proclamation of "free love" ("winged eros") in the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution. We will examine some of these "sextremes," as well as the construction of masculinity and femininity in Russian culture and the transformation of gender roles in the 19th and 20th cc., in the time of revolutions and in places like prisons, exiles and concentration camps. This course will focus mostly on the question of love as presented in the works of Russia's most prominent writers, from Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev and Chekhov to Bunin, Solzhenitsyn and Nabokov. We will explore love triangles and squares, jealousy and adultery, virginity and "sexploitation" from psychological, ideological and philosophical viewpoints. The course will place the rich artistic imagery of Russian prose and poetry in the theoretical and historical contexts provided by outstanding Western thinkers and writers, such as Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Freud, Sartre, C.S. Lewis and R. Barthes.
RUSS 378: Post-Soviet Phantom of Empire
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The course examines the birth of new Russian culture, which developed during and after the break of Soviet empire, in the period of 1980s – 2000s. It is an interdisciplinary course embracing some elements of politics and history but focusing mostly on cultural issues. The topics range from literature to visual art, from religious diversity to language evolution, and from the fate of the Russian intelligentsia to the impact of market economy and commercialism on artistic genres and intellectual trends. We will read and discuss some of the most influential contemporary Russian writers, such as Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, Tatiana Tolstaia, and Dmitry Prigov, and examine the work of such artists as Ilya Kabakov and Grigory Bruskin. Major religious and philosophical trends under consideration will include postmodernism, postatheism, “minimal religion,” the resurgence of traditional confessions and sectarian consciousness, conceptualism, and culturology.
RUSS 381 Jews in Russian Culture
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course explores Russian-Jewish intellectual dialogue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the most representative examples of cross-cultural writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
RUSS 401WR 19th Century Russian Literature in the Original
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course provides a systematic survey of some of the best Russian short stories and poems, from Pushkin and Gogol to Tolstoy and Chekhov. Topics for reading, discussion and writing include the variety of literary schools, cultural and social issues, and individual differences in styles. The course is conducted in Russian.
RUSS 402WR 20th Century Russian Literature in the Original
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course provides a systematic survey of some best Russian short stories and poems, from Blok and Nabokov to Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky. Topics for reading, discussing and writing include the variety of literary schools, cultural and social issues, and individual differences in styles. The course is conducted in Russian.
RUSS 403 21st-c. Russian Lit in Orig.
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course involves reading and discussion of selected materials from contemporary Russian literature as well as from current periodicals. Attention will be given to grammatical constructions and stylistic differences to develop communicative skills.
RUSS 414 Russian in the Media
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course focuses on readings and discussion of materials from current periodicals and newspapers and from television on Russian history, politics, culture, and science. This course is conducted in Russian.
RUSS 416 Political Russian
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The focus of this course is on political Russian. There will be readings and discussion of materials from historical and current periodical literature as well as Russian television newscasts, with primary emphasis on current political developments within Russia and problems of Russian foreign policy.
RUSS 420 Philosophy and Religion in Russia
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
Russian philosophical and religious thought is deeply rooted in the meditative practice of Eastern Christianity and at the same time is strongly influenced by the systems of Western rationalism. The typically Russian combination of philosophy and religion (or atheism) has produced social movements that crucially changed the historical fates of Russia and Eurasia, but their intellectual sources and potentials are insufficiently known to the West. This course explores the development of Russian religious and atheistic philosophy from 19th century debate between idealists and nihilists through comprehensive philosophical systems of Solovyov and Berdyaev and Soviet "dialectical materialism" to Bakhtin's theory of dialogue and contemporary debates between "metaphysicians" and "ironists." The latest trends of 1980s-90s such as Cosmism, Culturology and postmodern Conceptualism are examined in the aspects of their Russian specificity and affinities with Western philosophical traditions.
RUSS 475 19th and 20th c. Russian lit.
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
In-depth examination of special topics in Russian culture from an interdisciplinary and/or comparative perspective. The course is taught in Russian and may be offered as an Advanced Seminar.
RUSS 485 Western and Russian Postmodernism
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
This course offers a comparative perspective on postmodernism in Western and nonwestern cultures (literature, art, and the humanities). We will discuss the general concept of postmodernism as shaped by American, French and Russian theorists and its application to 20th century cultures, with the emphasis on the newest post-totalitarian developments. The course will bring together various disciplinary perspectives on the questions of contemporary historical orientation and self-definition: How to characterize our cultural period and its relation to the legacy of modernity and modernism? How the traditional views on individuality, authorship, truth, and reality are reshaped in postmodern theories and practices? And finally: what comes after this "post"? The course will be taught in ENGLISH; knowledge of Russian is not required. Undergraduate students will need permission from the instructor.
RUSS 490 Advanced Seminar in Russian
4 credit hours
4 credit hours
The course, taught in English, is designed to examine in depth a topic of major importance in the development of Russian culture. Although specific themes will vary from year to year, the approach will be interdisciplinary and comparative in nature.
RUSS 495A Honors Program In Russian
Variable credit
Variable credit
Open to eligible candidates in their senior year.
RUSS 495B/WR Honors Program In Russian
Variable credit
Variable credit
Open to eligible candidates in their senior year.
RUSS 496R Russian Language Internship
Variable credit
Variable credit
This internship provides students an opportunity to use their Russian language skills outside the classroom in a variety of situations. Permission only.
RUSS 497R Individual Directed Reading
Variable credit
Variable credit
Permission only, discretion of instructor.
RUSS 550C Semiotics and Poetics
4 credit hours
Cross listing: CPLT 753 and ILA 790
4 credit hours
Cross listing: CPLT 753 and ILA 790
This course is an introduction to the general science of signs which revolutionized many scholarly disciplines of the 20th century, not only poetics and literary theory, but also philosophy, history, cultural studies, and theories of mythology and ideology. The categories of semiotic analysis, such as “sign” or “structure,” are indispensable for any contemporary research in the humanities. The course will explore principal problems of semiotics and the broad interdisciplinary range of its applications from the foundational conceptions of Charles Peirce and F. de Saussure to the most provocative of structuralist and poststructuralist writings, by such authors as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Special attention will be given to semiotic methods emerging from different cultural traditions, including important Russian contributions by Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jacobson, and Yury Lotman. Students are encouraged to suggest their own topics for discussion and are expected to apply semiotic methods to their respective fields of concentration.
