Current Courses (Fall 2022)
RUSSN 311: Russian Through Media
This course looks at Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. There is an emphasis on communicative skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students work with Internet materials, newspapers, magazines and excerpts from Russian and Soviet films. (Prerequisite: Russian 200B) (Taught in Russian)
RUSSN 435: Russian and East European Jewish Culture
This course focuses on Russian and East European Jewish culture from 1900s to present. How literature written in Russian, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, German by writers of Jewish origin as well as visual arts and cinema reflect changing problem of Jewish national identity. (Prerequisite: Upper division standing for majors) (Taught in English)
RUS 310 will survey cinema from this region and see how it responded to the evolution of Russian and East-Central European societies in post-Cold War era. We will explore why a divide between Eastern and Western Europe remains palpable and the main reasons behind new European fortification and sovereignty.
The course will introduce students to the methodological tools and techniques needed to analyze cinematic text. The traditional concepts of film form, genre, and cinematic narrative, as well as film techniques such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, montage, and sound will be studied.