Introduction to Russian grammar through oral, written, and reading exercises; special emphasis on oral expression. Three periods.

Survey of Russian fiction from the Age of Pushkin (1820s-1830s) to Tolstoy's mature work (1870s) focusing on the role of fiction in Russian history, contemporaneous critical reaction, literary movements in Russia, and echoes of Russian literary masterpieces in the other arts, especially film and music. Major works by Pushkin (Eugene Onegin, "The Queen of Spades"), Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time), Gogol (Dead Souls), Pavlova (A Double Life), Turgenev (Fathers and Children), Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), and Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) will be read.

Continued studies in Russian grammar through oral, written, and reading exercises; special emphasis on oral expression. Four periods.

Probably no writer has been so detested and adored, so demonized and deified, as Dostoevsky. This artist was such a visionary that he had to reinvent the novel in order to create a form suitable for his insights into the inner life and his prophecies about the outer. To this day readers are mystified, outraged, enchanted, but never unmoved, by Dostoevsky's fiction, which some have tried to brand as "novel-tragedies," "romantic realism," "polyphonic novels," and more. This course challenges students to enter the fray and explore the mysteries of Dostoevsky themselves through study of his major writings.

This course explores Soviet and Russian popular film classics loved by generations of viewers and that have become cultural symbols. We will study G. Aleksandrov's musicals of the 1930s; sentimental, detective and fantastic comedies by the masters of the genre, L. Gaidai, E. Riazanov, and G. Danelia, in the 1950s-80s; and post-Soviet crime comedies of the twenty-first century. We will attempt to determine the source of their enduring popularity and cult status through an examination of their aesthetics and of their social and political context.