LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION COURSES SPRING 2023

(3 credits)

MWF 9:55 – 10:45 am          Instructor: Andrew Reynolds

Course Description: This class as a whole has three major objectives:

1. To acquaint students with some of the major literary movements and writers of 20th-Century Russian Literature.
2. To acquaint students with the history, culture, and politics of pre-1917 Russia, the USSR, and contemporary Russia.
3. To introduce students to various critical approaches to the study of literature and to help them read, analyze, and write about complex literary works.

In addition, the Communications-B sections of this class allow students to work more closely on writing and research. The Teaching Assistants for these sections provide their own syllabus and Course outline.

“If the Russians are mentioned one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is a waste of time.” Virginia Woolf’s famous statement refers above all to the 19th-century Russian realist novelists, but 20th-century Russian literature is also more than worth your attention. The course begins with an introduction to the study of literature and with an overview of some of the specific features of Russian history and culture. The first texts studied are short stories by Chekhov: this allows students to develop the habits of close reading that should stand them in good stead for the longer works. We then survey the reasons for the revolutions in culture and politics in the period from 1892-1917. Our first novel is Zamyatin’s science-fiction dystopia We, precursor of 1984, Brave New World and countless other works. The themes most central to utopian and dystopian literature will be an important thread running through the semester. Our second novel, Olesha’s Envy, describes the clash of the “old” and “new” ways of life in the young and triumphalist Soviet state and the attempts of a “superfluous man” to find a place for himself in this new society. Nabokov’s novel Invitation to a Beheading is typical of this writer in its highly metaliterary and enigmatic narrative of an “outsider” who is condemned to death by an Alice-in-Wonderland–type world for the crime of “gnostical turpitude”(!); Nabokov argues that this text has little to do with the Soviet and Nazi tyrannies of the time, still less to do with Kafka, though some readers will disagree. Our next novel is often the students’ favorite – the unclassifiable Master and Margarita, with a cast list which includes a large talking black cat, Pontius Pilate and someone whose identity shall remain a mystery for the time being. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in large part to help Khrushchev’s process of De-Stalinization, but this first truthful account of life in the Gulag, like the author itself, soon refused to conform to the “authorized readings” vainly imposed on it, and can be seen as one of the books that helped lead to the collapse of the USSR. Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow to the End of the Line depicts a different type of resistance to the official “heroic” ideology – alcoholism and anti-social behavior as a form of self-martyrdom. The final text, Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik, written in 2006, is a uncannily prophetic dystopian satire on Russia in the year 2028; critics considered that many of the absurdities it portrayed seemed extreme even for Sorokin, and yet today many of the horrors it foresaw have already come to pass. Sorokin’s breaking of virtually all lexical and literary taboos in the depiction of extreme and absurd acts of sex and violence are offered as a way of overcoming the allegedly exhausted traditions of 20th-century Russian Literature, but these aesthetic victories seem Pyrrhic when set against the horror of “prophecies” coming true.

This course should be valuable and relevant to anyone studying Russian society or history, and of course for anyone with an interest in literature. These works are also, of course, direct encounters, like all the best works of Russian literature, with the “accursed questions” of life, love, evil, violence, sex, death and the other usual suspects. As always in my classes, the main focus will be on the individual reader’s close encounter with the aesthetics and ethics of these works.

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: David Danaher

Course Description: In the United States, science fiction (SF) is typically thought of as a quintessentially American (or American-British) genre. This course explores the rich tradition of Slavic contributions to SF. We will survey major writers and their works in the Czech, Polish, and Russian contexts, most of which are little known in the US but are nonetheless, as we will see, fundamental to the genre. We will read these works as both anchored in their particular cultural-historical circumstances and also for their contribution to the development of SF as a world genre. In this regard, SF is perhaps the dominant contemporary genre for sociocultural commentary and critique aimed at reimagining the world in which we live, and Slavic SF texts have played a defining role in establishing SF as such. Since the rise of film coincides with the rise of modern SF and since the intertextual dimension in SF literature is particularly strong, we will also compare and contrast the literary works with, where available, their film adaptations. Learning goals:

1. Students will demonstrate knowledge of major works and authors of science fiction in the Slavic context.
2. Students will demonstrate an awareness of the cultural/historical significance of these works given the contexts in which they were written.
3. Students will develop critical-reading skills related to the analysis of texts (literature and film) and particularly to the genre of science fiction.

Prerequisites: This course has no prerequisites. It is open to all, including first-year students.

(3 credits)

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm          Instructor: Maksim Hanukai

Course Description: This course introduces students to the life and works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Through close reading and discussion of his short stories, novellas, and plays, we will learn about Chekhov’s treatment of such topics as childhood, religion, love and infidelity, and the dramas of modern life, while paying close attention to his developing artistic views and literary technique. All readings will be in English.

Prerequisites: None. Open to first-year students.

(3 credits)

MWF 12:05 – 12:55 pm          Instructor: Andrew Reynolds

Course Description: “When, as in the immortal The Overcoat, Gogol really let himself go and pottered on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced.” Vladimir Nabokov 

This course will explore the major fictional texts of Nikolai Vasil’evich Gogol (1809-52) – Ukrainian and Petersburg Tales, The Inspector General, Dead Souls – in an attempt to get closer to one of the most enigmatic and influential writers in world literature. Relevant non-fiction texts will also be introduced when appropriate. Despite the comparisons to Poe and Kafka or Gogol’s undeniable influence on Dostoevsky and Bulgakov, one thing is certain – his world of laughter and tears is unlike that of any other writer. Are his characters realistic if satirical portraits of his countrymen, or phantoms spawned by his own spiritual torments? Is Gogol a Russian imperialist or Ukrainian nationalist, both, or neither? Is Dead Souls an excoriation of a sad Russia or an evocation of her special destiny as the speeding troika before whom all other nations will give way? Among the many questions raised by Gogol’s writing, those concerning national and personal identity, empire, and political and literary authority, can and need to be read in a new light in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Indeed, is it even correct to call Gogol, and this course, Russia’s Greatest Enigma, rather than Ukraine’s?

(3 credits)

TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm          Instructor: Kirill Ospovat

Course Description: In this course, we read Tolstoy’s lengthier and shorter masterpieces, from War and Peace to The Strider, alongside some of his nonfictional manifestoes. We explore his techniques of representation and ethical stances and traced their evolution through Tolstoy’s long literary career. What were Tolstoy’s objections to sexuality and political reform? What is moral and beautiful? How does civilization and education relate to nature? What does death say about life? These were some of the questions that we have investigated while reading Tolstoy’s manifold work.

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: Maksim Hanukai

Course Description: What does it mean “to perform” and what does performance do? How does performance help impose or challenge oppressive structures of power? We will attempt to answer these and related questions by examining a range of performance theories and practices from Russia, Europe, and the United States. Focusing on artists and authors like Sergei Eisenstein, Bertold Brecht, Marina Abramovic, and Pussy Riot, we will learn about political theater in the 20th and 21st centuries, the emergence and evolution of performance art and art actionism, the aesthetic and juridical functions of documentary theater and film, and the recent performative turn in New Left poetry. We will also extend our inquiry beyond art to examine performative practices in modern political and everyday life: show trials, historical reenactment festivals, protests movements, gender performances, collective memory rituals, etc. This course is open to students at all levels. All readings and materials will be available in English.

Prerequisites: None. Open to first-year students.

(3 credits)

MW 2:30 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: Oksana Stoychuk 

Course Description: Description to come.

(3 credits)

MW 4:00 – 5:15 pm          Instructor: Krzysztof Borowski

Course Description: Get CREDIT for watching and discussing MOVIES! No final paper, no final exam, no prior knowledge required — instead, a multimedia final project and a series of video assignments. All course content and materials provided by the instructor and in English or with English subtitles.

What makes comedy a powerful political tool? Can laughter become a weapon against totalitarian regimes? How do comedy and humor help subvert power relations in society?

We explore these and similar questions by analyzing political comedy in various formats (film, television, literature, music, internet memes, etc.) using examples from modern Polish culture.

Due to its strong tradition of political comedy amidst a turbulent history — wars, communism, totalitarian rule, and social protests — Poland is uniquely positioned to serve as a cultural case study of how individuals and societies can embrace and survive change, political turmoil, and an uncertain future.

This course is open to students at all levels. All reading and materials will be available in English. No purchase of textbooks or other learning materials required.

No background in Polish or Slavic studies, or languages necessary — everyone interested in comedy and/or politics is welcome!

(3 credits)

TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm          Instructor: Lukasz Wodzynski

Course Description: Poland and Europe 1914-1945.  Even as we emerge from a devastating global health crisis and face the uncertain future, we find that the traumas, issues, and concepts engendered by two World Wars continue to haunt us, even a century later. We once again find ourselves in difficult times, marked by social, cultural, religious, and economic tensions. In this course, we will examine how cultural texts – including literature, film, theatre, painting and sculpture – produced during, between, and after the two wars – deal with the extreme and everyday experiences, with shattered worlds of individuals, ethnicities, and nations. 

(3 credits)

MW 12:05 – 12:55 pm          Instructor: Susan Brantly

Course Description: Can thrillers, science fiction novels, or films be literary masterpieces? Yes they can! Explore the changing fashions in literature throughout the 20th Century, while you learn important survival skills for the media age. Everybody wants something, so how do you assess what different writers want from you, and what tricks do they use to go about getting it? Through a selection of short texts, novels, and plays, we’ll be learning from some of the best: Nobel Laureates (Knut Hamsun, Pär Lagerkvist), medical doctors (P.C. Jersild), and other provocateurs (August Strindberg, Isak Dinesen, Ingmar Berman, Peter Hoeg, and the rest).

(This course is also offered to majors as Scan 374.)

(3 credits)

SEC 001: TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm          Instructor: Sabine Moedersheim

Course Description: “Climate Fiction “ is an emerging genre of literature, graphic novels, and film exploring the consequences of climate change in the age of the “Anthropocene”, the epoch in which human impacts on the planet’s ecological systems reach a dangerous tipping point. The aim of this course is to discuss the human experience of climate change on a global scale through analyses of works by German authors such as Lutz Seiler, Yoko Tawada, Ilija Trojanow, Christa Wolf, Werner Herzog, as well as writers from around the world, including Margaret Atwood, Octavia E. Butler, Amitav Ghosh, and others. We will explore dystopian, and apocalyptic stories but also works that imagine a more just future of resilience and social equality.

All materials will be in English translations or with English subtitles. Lectures and discussions will be in English. Prior knowledge of German welcome but not required.

Prerequisites: None.

(3 credits)

• TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Zach Fitzpatrick

Course Description: Spanning the late 1700s to the 2020s, this course provides a survey of different forms of alterity within German literature, including subjects “othered” according to racial/ethnic, gender/sexual, religious, national/cultural, and class affiliations. Because hegemonic status—whether white, Western, Christian, heterosexual, bourgeois, and often male in the German context—depends on the exclusion of an Other, we will analyze how authors write Otherness: disparagingly, sympathetically, exotically, “objectively”? Moreover, where do marginalized authors’ self-representations fit in this spectrum? In considering all of the course’s texts, whether canonical or lesser known, we will ask: what aesthetic techniques are utilized to represent the Other? To what extent can one attribute certain tropes to historical context, genre, or literary periodization? Investigating the ever-changing definition of Otherness over time will provide just as much insight into Germany’s perceived sense of “Self” at various points from the Enlightenment to the 21st century. The course and all materials will be in English. Prior knowledge of German is welcome but not required.

(3 credits)

SEC 002: MWF 1:20 – 2:10 pm          Instructor: Melissa Sheedy

Course Description: From wolves to witches, Rumpelstiltskin to Rapunzel, the German fairy-tale tradition is filled with rich imagery, familiar themes, and political and social subversion. Of enduring popularity and as constant subjects of reimagination and revitalization, German tales and their retellings serve as a unique lens through which to view the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were produced. Through these texts, we will glimpse the underlying perceptions and values regarding family, gender, nation, nature, religion, and society, both in the first half of the 19th century and in the Germany of the last 25 years. With an eye to depictions of gender and gender roles as well as to conceptions of the environment and civilization, we will critically engage with these works and contextualize them within the social and political landscapes that shaped them. Our investigations will center on tales and their retellings in a variety of forms, with a special focus on fairytales by women writers. In recognizing and analyzing the Märchen’s influences in literature, art, music, poetry, and pop culture, we will begin to appreciate the fairy-tale’s enduring legacy and its place within German literary and cultural history. This course counts as a cognate course for the German major.

(3 credits)

TR 4:00 – 5:15 pm     Instructor: Katie Somers

Course Description: This course is about Germanic barbarians as they have been imagined and reimagined in Europe and North America. Our origins story for the barbarian is Tacitus’s Germania, in which the Roman senator created the fierce and wild-eyed savages who destroyed three Roman legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. In the medieval Lay of the Nibelungs, these same barbarians acquire the civilized veneer of courtly manners and opulent wardrobes, but retain their propensity for brutal acts of violence. They are more thoroughly rehabilitated in the centuries to follow, when German-speaking intellectuals cultivate and promote a sense of nationalism in the absence of a German nation. During this time, the barbarian attains a new status, embodied in characters like Siegfried and Brünhilde in Wagner’s four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung^[1] and Hermann the German in Heinrich von Kleist’s play, The Battle of Hermann. Yet the myth of the German barbarians, their imagined indigeneity and racial purity, their supposedly ancient and uniquely German culture that reflects the true nature of the Volk, is treated as fact. Even worse, it becomes the template for what all Germans should strive to be. Finally, we investigate the migration of the Tacitean ideal to North America, where it appears in the form of the liberty-loving Anglo-Saxon. We end the course by tracing its influence in the formation of an American national identity.

[1] It takes 17 hours to perform the whole cycle. We’re going to watch all of it; j/k, actually about five minutes of it.

(3 credits)

TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm          Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff

Course Description: American literature has never been written in one language. While English has become dominant in the United States, there has been a long tradition of American literary and cultural production in other languages. This class focuses on the Jewish immigrant experience in Yiddish—a fusion language that brings together German, Hebrew, English, Russian, Latin, and more. We will follow Yiddish culture from the beginning of the twentieth century until today as it has been alternatingly supported, neglected, and imbued with nostalgia. The questions driving our inquiry will be: What does it mean to translate America into Yiddish and what does it mean to translate Yiddish for America? Major terms to be discussed include: cultural translation, ethnicity, migration, “Melting Pot,” multilingualism, and assimilation. Themes include: Jewish-Christian difference, ethnic American humor, race and Jewish culture. Learning outcomes:

Awareness of History’s Impact on the Present: To identify the major themes of American Yiddish literature and culture from the early-twentieth century until today.
Effective Participation in a Multicultural Society: To prepare students for life and careers in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual US environment, and to engender in students the ability to ability to participate in a multicultural society more effectively, respectfully, and meaningfully.
Ability to Recognize and Question Assumptions: To develop critical thinking skills through sustained discussion with one’s peers and foster a constructive climate in which to engage with questions concerning cultural, racial, religious, and linguistic difference, and to challenge students to question their own assumptions and preconceived notions about these topics.
Oral and Written Expression: To acquire a critical vocabulary to speak about historical and present-day issues concerning migration, ethnic identity, and religious difference; to engage in reflective writing practices, respond critically to feedback, and assess one’s own communicative strengths.

(3 credits)

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm          Instructor: Ida Moen Johnson

Course Description: In Henrik Ibsen’s famous play, The Wild Duck (1884), the animal is often understood as a symbol for the drama’s damaged characters. But is the duck just a metaphor, or is the duck a duck, too? As for the humans in the story: are they people, animals, or both? In this course, we will study Nordic texts that center the animal, from ugly ducklings and charismatic reindeer to Moomintrolls and hobbyhorses. We will also learn from the fields of animal studies and posthumanism, whose lessons are critical at a time when human-made climate change threatens all forms of life on Earth. Through fiction, film, and theory, this course tackles questions such as: Can art created by humans ever be “true to the animal?” How might literature and film help us challenge humanist hierarchies? And, what can Nordic texts teach us about the possibilities and limits of being an animal—including the human kind?

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: Benjamin Mier-Cruz

Course Description:  This course explores the historical development of the vampire legend from the 18th century until today, with particular attention to literary works, film, and television. The course will additionally focus on representations of gender and sexuality related to the vampire.

(3 credits)

MW 2:40 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: Susan Brantly

Course Description: Isak Dinesen, alias the Baroness Karen Blixen, is a Danish writer, who lived in British East Africa, and made her international publishing debut in America. Her life inspired the Oscar-winning film Out of Africa and her tale “Babette’s Feast  inspired yet another Oscar-winning film by the same name…the Pope’s favorite film, in fact. This course studies the intricate and fantastic tales that Dinesen wrote, and also looks at her autobiographical novel, Out of Africa, and considers it as both fiction and a piece of colonial literature.

(This course is offered to majors as Scan 434.)

(3 credits)

TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm          Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: Telling stories is as old as time. Folk storytelling, which originate in the distant past, has often been scorned by the literary establishment, but the fact that they survived through centuries of oral transmission until they were finally recorded in the fairly recent past testifies to their lasting existential appeal. The stories these texts tell are dashingly entertaining and often deeply disturbing: they may offer a profoundly fatalistic view of existence, but they may also voice an angry and, at the same time, humorous protest against oppression. When this narrative type was discovered by scholars and the societal elite about 1800, it inspired many first-rank Nordic authors, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf; and in the 20th century it has cast its spell over Isak Dinesen, Villy Sørensen, and Pär Lagerkvist and its influence has moved from literary to other media today. The course examines both the original folktales, its modern “imitations” and literature as well as gives an introduction to the critical methodologies that have recently been developed to deal with this seemingly simple, but in reality, highly sophisticated, narrative.

Prerequisites: Sophomore or higher

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm          Instructor: Lukasz Wodzynski

Course Description: 1989 was a watershed year in modern Polish history. The collapse of communism and the posthumous triumph of the Solidarity movement started a new era in Polish culture. As a democratic, capitalist state, a member of NATO and the EU, Poland can finally define itself as a nation fearing for its geopolitical existence. However, this fantasy of living in a “posthistory” was short-lived. It soon became evident that no genuine attempt at building a new cultural identity is possible without facing past traumas, from the tragedies of World War II to the grim legacy of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL). Contemporary Polish culture struggles with its historical heritage even as it attempts to “move on.” In this class, we examine the forms of this struggle. What is the role of culture in a free society? How does culture mediate our relationship with the past? How does it help us understand the present? What does it mean to live in an age where all the major narratives of modernity come apart and humanity faces unprecedented existential threats? What does it mean to be living at the end of times?

(3 credits)

Instructor: Kirill Ospovat

Course Description: The course will explore the dual political face of Enlightenment, turned at once towards sovereignty and democracy, freedom and governance, revolution and enslavement. We will discuss these topics in the context of global Enlightenments, with a specific focus on Russia, tracing them through the works of philosophers (Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant), social critics (Guillaume Raynal, Aleksandr Radischev), monarchs, republicans, and freed slaves.