Courses

Jewish history, politics, and culture across a century of enormous transformations and transformative enormities in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Topics include the impacts on Jewish life of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the postimperial reordering of Eastern Europe and the Middle East; Zionism and other modes of Jewish contestatory politics; secular-religious Kulturkampf and the interactions and tensions of Jewish cultural renascence, acculturation, and assimilation; the consolidation of American Jewry; Nazism and the Holocaust in Europe; formation and development of the State of Israel; the global reordering of Jewish life amid crosscurrents of the Cold War, conflict in the Middle East, and success in the United States; trajectories of Jewish culture, thought, religion, and relations to modernity in a century of tremendous creativity but also centrifugality, fracture, and bitter cultural conflict. The course will pay substantial attention to recent and contemporary history including the dramatic changes in Israeli (Jewish) society, polity, and culture over the past forty years, the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine, and the entangled lives of Jews and Palestinians. Twice-weekly lectures followed by substantial time for text-related and thematic discussion. Prior study of Jewish history not required. Students at all levels and in all fields welcome.

This course introduces students to the Hittite Empire of ancient Anatolia. In existence from roughly 1750-1200 BCE, and spanning across modern Turkey and beyond, the Hittite Empire is one of the oldest and largest empires of the ancient world. We will be examining their history and their political and cultural accomplishments through analysis of their written records - composed in Hittite, the world's first recorded Indo-European language - and their archaeological remains. In the process, we will also be examining the concept of "empire" itself: What is an empire, and how do anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians study this unique kind of political formation?

This course covers the period from ca. 950 to 1700, surveying works of literature, theology, philosophy, sufism, politics, history, etc., written in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, as well as the art, architecture and music of the Islamicate traditions. Through primary texts, secondary sources and lectures, we will trace the cultural, social, religious, political and institutional evolution through the period of the Fatimids, the Crusades, the Mongol invasions, and the "gunpowder empires" (Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals).

This course will introduce students to the key developments in the history of gender and sexuality in Europe from the French Revolution to the present. Topics will include, but are not limited to, the struggle for suffrage and other women's rights; gender and empire; the impact of WWI and WWII on gender and sexuality; the sexual revolution of the sixties; and gender in communist Eastern Europe. By examining a variety of visual and textual material-political pamphlets, medical literature, personal testimonies, posters, and films-students will explore the constructions of masculinity and femininity and sexual desire in a variety of domains, from political ideologies to everyday life. The course will show how categories of gender and sexuality change over time and not always in a linear fashion.

This upper-level undergraduate seminar introduces students to historical and contemporary approaches to minority studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Our focus is the historical and everyday experience of Roma, whose status as a minority people, whether ethnic or national, will be the subject of careful consideration. Our scope is wide, both geographically (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union) and temporally (the late nineteenth century to the present). We will ask how did the making and remaking of European statehood and national identity transform Romani communities, their social life, and their political trajectories? How does this history continue to shape minority groups today, and what role have minority studies themselves played therein? How have Romani historians, politicians, and activists-members of the largest non-state ethnic minority in Europe-written the history of a European project that questioned and continues to question their legitimacy? Throughout, we will use archival, historical, and ethnographic methodologies to understand and question official and institutional accounts and uses of Romani identity. In doing so, we will center Romani accounts of European nationalism, the Holocaust, and the struggle for restitution in the postwar period and current debates over the crisis of European sovereignty.

"Food Politics" means so many things: Trust, risk, danger. Safety, regulation, retail, and consumption across wildly different scales: global, (trans)national, urban, regional, local, distant, foreign. Diets, fasts, binges. Canning, refrigeration, cafeterias, farmers' markets, and the cold aisles of supermarkets. Educated consumers, mass panics, and the "distant" bodies of humanitarian aid. In this class, ethnographic and comparative approaches to food politics will be our lens into recognizing, discussing, and thinking about food as a critical site of global politics. We will examine articulations of social differences, performances and performativities of bodies (gendered, migrant, public, private, clandestine, hungry, satiated, healthy, and criminal), transnational battles over regional and local "purity," and sensibilities that do or do not trust sites of economic and/or political authority positioned far away. Indeed, food politics are just as much a window into the investigative and critical potentials of ethnography in a global world as they are a way to recognize the moral, popular, imaginary, and experiential processes at work and constitutive of taken-for-granted political actor-abstractions such as "the state" "the economy" and "the public."

The second quarter continues on through the post-Soviet period. Working closely with a variety of primary sources-from oral legends to film and music, from political treatises to literary masterpieces-we will track the evolution of Russian civilization over the centuries and through radically different political regimes. Topics to be discussed include the influence of Byzantine, Mongol-Tataric, and Western culture in Russian civilization; forces of change and continuity in political, intellectual and cultural life; the relationship between center and periphery; systems of social and political legitimization; and symbols and practices of collective identity.

Films presenting trans bodies or "psyches" have historically often othered these as "monstrous," and compelled a sense of the inevitable tragedy of living in sexual fluidity. To fully contemplate such expressions of horror, tragedy, or pity, the course will screen and discuss films such as Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), Dressed to Kill (Brian DePalma, 1980), Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzick, 1983), Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almadovar, 2011), Predestination (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2014) but also considers films of the trans body made ostensibly more calculable, at least in terms of moral and ethical stability, such as Robocop, the Alien films of Ridley Scott, Ghost in the Shell (Sanders, 2017), and the online choice map game Detroit Become Human. The course is dedicated foremost to rupturing binary thinking (as a form of nonage) and the critical theory that will ballast our readings includes selections from Haraway, Halberstam, Garber, Benschoff, Reese's The Fourth Age, Schelde's Androids, Humanoids, and Other Science Fiction Monsters, and Foucault's Abnormal.

This course looks at the traditions of anticolonial thought from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Comparing movements for national liberation, realignment, and literary self-determination from across the world, we'll consider the shifting claims of the British, American, French, Spanish, and Russian empires, and the colonial subjects, postcolonial frameworks, and decolonial movements that sought to contest these formations from Chile to Alcatraz, India to Ireland, and Azerbaijan to Martinique. Our focus will most often be on the manifestos and essays in which anticolonial writers outlined their literary and political programs, but we may also look at a few poems, stories, and films. From Vicente Huidobro's fantasies of a secret international society to end British Imperialism to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's call to abolish the English Department, how did the radical claims of anticolonial political thought take shape in literary writing?

This course is designed to meet the specific needs of a student in the College, an advanced learner of Serbian language and culture, double majoring in Economics and REES. The curriculum of this one-quarter class focuses on the literary work of 20th-century Serbian writer Borislav Pekić. Through a close reading of his first novel, The Time of Miracles (1965), we plan to uncover not only Pekić's notable artistic skills, but also the variety of his linguistic devices- ranging from highly ornate imitations of biblical diction to expressions bordering on urban slang-adjusted to depict the historical and cultural context of his era. In the novel the Christian myth becomes a vehicle for exposing the moral hypocrisy, cruelty, and futility of modern myths, especially those built around the Communists' ideal of their own "promised land." The inevitable flatness of allegorical presentation is always counterbalanced by an enormous vividness of realistic detail, while implied irony makes this somber book surprisingly light-thus it showcases hallmarks of Pekić's unique style.

What is the relationship between film, myth, ideology, and revolution? What are the features of Soviet comedy? What could it mean for a film to be "poetic" and how is this concept understood by and manifest in the work of directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov? These are only some of the many questions we will explore as we engage in a survey of Russian-language cinema from its very beginnings (in the 1890s) to the present, engaging with representative texts and cinematic works from each of Russian cinema's primary periods. The course features films by Bauer, Eisenstein, Vertov, Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Muratova and others. 

This course introduces diaspora studies through visiting and analyzing several diasporic museums in Chicago and through readings in diaspora histories and museum theory. It also includes training in the collection of oral history provided by the Chicago History Museum. The course culminates in a practical collective project in which the students will use their acquired knowledge to contribute to a new museum concept – in this case, based on the history of the Belarusian community in Chicago. We will use the instability of Belarusian identity from Tsarist times to the present to shape a model of a multi-ethnic, open emigrant community with the potential of cooperative democratic integration into a larger multi-ethnic landscape of Chicago. This project’s relevance also goes beyond the Chicago community, for the model of multi-ethnic integration has implications for the development of civil society in the Belarusian homeland. The course will be relevant to those considering careers in museum curatorship and public humanities. Syllabus and readings posted on Canvas. IFK Classroom 104 Wed 10:30 am to 1:20 pm. Most classes will take place in the museums. Transportation by the university bus.

This course examines the works written by Tolstoy after Anna Karenina, when he abandoned the novel as a form and gave up his copyright. Readings include his influential writings on non-violence and vegetarianism, his challenges to church and state authority, as well as later literary works, which some believe surpass the famous novels he had renounced. We will also explore the particularities of Tolstoy's charisma in these years, when he came to be viewed as a second Tsar in Russia and as a moral authority throughout the world.

This course, a continuation of Islamicate Civilization I, surveys intellectual, cultural, religious and political developments in the Islamic world from Andalusia to the South Asian sub-continent during the periods from ca. 950 to 1750. We trace the arrival and incorporation of the Steppe Peoples (Turks and Mongols) into the central Islamic lands; the splintering of the Abbasid Caliphate and the impact on political theory; the flowering of literature of Arabic, Turkic and Persian expression; the evolution of religious and legal scholarship and devotional life; transformations in the intellectual and philosophical traditions; the emergence of Shi`i states (Buyids and Fatimids); the Crusades and Mongol conquests; the Mamluks and Timurids, and the "gunpowder empires" of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Moghuls; the dynamics of gender and class relations; etc. This class partially fulfills the requirement for MA students in CMES, as well as for NELC majors and PhD students.

This is a three-quarter sequence designed for fourth- and fifth-year students of Russian. It is also suitable for native speakers of Russian. This sequence covers various aspects of advanced Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. This sequence emphasizes the four communicative skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in a culturally authentic context. It builds transcultural competence by expanding students' knowledge of the language, culture, history, and daily lives of the Russian-speaking people. Vocabulary building is strongly emphasized. We add to the existing skills and develop our abilities to analyze increasingly complex texts for their meaning: to identify various styles and registers of the Russian language and to provide their neutral equivalents in standard Russian. We also work on developing our abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize, discuss abstract topics, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations (in spoken and written format).

This is a discussion-oriented seminar that introduces students to the evidence, issues, and debates concerning ancient trade and exchange, with a focus on the economic institutions of the ancient Near East and especially those of the Bronze and Iron Age Levant and Eastern Mediterranean.

This two-quarter seminar focuses on the transformation of the Muslim Ottoman principality into an imperial entity--after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453--that laid claim to inheritance of Alexandrine, Roman/Byzantine, Mongol/Chinggisid, and Islamic models of Old World Empire at the dawn of the early modern era. Special attention is paid to the transformation of Ottoman imperialism in the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (1520-1566), who appeared to give the Empire its "classical" form. Topics include: the Mongol legacy; the reformulation of the relationship between political and religious institutions; mysticism and the creation of divine kingship; Muslim-Christian competition (with special reference to Spain and Italy) and the formation of early modernity; the articulation of bureaucratized hierarchy; and comparison of Muslim Ottoman, Iranian Safavid, and Christian European imperialisms. The first quarter comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600; the second quarter is divided between the examination of particular themes in comparative perspective (for example, the dissolution and recreation of religious institutions in Islamdom and Christendom) and student presentations of research for the seminar paper. In addition to seminar papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.

World War I in the Ottoman Empire. This course will examine WWI in in the Ottoman Empire broadly, considering social, economic, and military aspects of the conflict and with attention to the wartime experience for those at the front and on the home front. This is a two-quarter seminar, where the first quarter can be taken independently as a colloquium-style course for credit.

In this course, we dwell on Witold Gombrowicz the philosopher, exploring the components of his authorial style and concepts that substantiate his claim to both the literary and the philosophical spheres. Entangled in an ongoing battle with basic philosophical tenets and, indeed, with existence itself, this erudite Polish author is a prime example of a 20th century modernist whose philosophical novels explode with uncanny laughter. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, who established their reputations as writers/philosophers, Gombrowicz applied distinctly literary models to the same questions that they explored. We investigate these models in depth, as we focus on Gombrowicz's novels, philosophical lectures, and some of his autobiographical writings. With an insight from recent criticism of these primary texts, we seek answers to the more general question: What makes this author a philosopher?

Advanced BCS courses encompass both the 3rd and 4th years of language study, with the focus changed from language structure and grammar to issues in interdisciplinary content. The courses are not in sequence. This course addresses the theme of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav identity through discussion and interpretation based on selected films, documentaries, images, and related texts-historical and literary, popular press, advertisements, screenplays, and literature e on film. Emphasis is on interpersonal communication as well as the interpretation and production of language in written and oral forms. The course engages in systematic grammar review, along with introduction of some new linguistic topics, with constant practice in writing and vocabulary enrichment. The syllabus includes the screening of six films, each from a different director, region, and period, starting with Cinema Komunisto (2012), a documentary by Mila Turajlic. This film will be crucial for understanding how Yugoslav cinema was born and how, in its origins, it belongs to what a later cinephile, Fredric Jameson, has called a "geopolitical aesthetic." We shall investigate the complex relationship between aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav cinema, and pay close attention to aesthetic conceptions and concrete formal properties, and more importantly, to language, narrative logic, and style.

In this course, we explore various ontological and representational modes of the Holocaust material object world as it was represented during World War II. Then, we interrogate the post-Holocaust artifacts and material remnants, as they are displayed, curated, controlled, and narrated in the memorial sites and museums of former ghettos and extermination and concentration camps. These sites which-once the locations of genocide-are now places of remembrance, the (post)human, and material remnants also serve educational purposes. Therefore, we study the ways in which this material world, ranging from infrastructure to detritus, has been subjected to two, often conflicting, tasks of representation and preservation, which we view through a prism of authenticity. In order to study representation, we critically engage a textual and visual reading of museum narrations and fiction writings; to tackle the demands of preservation, we apply a neo-materialist approach. Of special interest are survivors' testimonies as appended to the artifacts they donated. The course will also equip you with salient critical tools for future creative research in Holocaust studies.

"What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people…. Do you want to strip the earth of all the trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?" asks the Devil. Mikhail Bulgakov worked on his novel The Master and Margarita throughout most of his writing career, in Stalin's Moscow. Bulgakov destroyed his manuscript, re-created it from memory, and reworked it feverishly even as his body was failing him in his battle with death. The result is an intense contemplation on the nature of good and evil, on the role of art and the ethical duty of the artist, but also a dazzling world of magic, witches, and romantic love, and an irresistible seduction into the comedic. Laughter, as shadow and light, as the subversive weapon but also as power's whip, grounds human relation to both good and evil. Brief excursions to other texts that help us better understand Master and Margarita.

The tormented, obsessed, and sadistic characters of Dostoevsky's novels posed a challenge to positivism and reason too scandalous and compelling to be ignored. The novels inspired some of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the fields of religion, philosophy, psychology and literary theory. We will read two of Dostoevsky's philosophically challenging novels alongside works by these critics and philosophers, including Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Bakhtin, Kristeva, and Levinas. While exploring their ideas about faith and unbelief, madness and reason, violence and torture, society and history, we will also inquire into the relationships among literature, philosophy and biography and examine the processes of influence and adaptation.

As part of the post-colonial turn, magic realism is a hybrid mode of narration rejects, overcomes, and offers an alternative to the colonial, Enlightenment episteme. It mobilizes the imaginations and narrative modes of pre-colonial pasts in the articulation of new, post-colonial, often national, selves. In this course, we will unpack some captivating narratives from Southeast Europe in which the visions of the pre-modern mythic worlds emerge as the magic, transcendent core of the modern nations. We will indulge in the sheer enjoyment of the brilliance of these text while focusing on the paradoxes they embody - for example, the simultaneous rejection and reliance on the realist mode, the colonial worldview, and its civilizational hierarchies and models.

When most Americans think about "the left," Marxism, Soviet state socialism, or European social democracy spring to mind. This class will explore alternative-but now largely forgotten-blueprints for revolutionizing the political and social order that emerged in the nineteenth century. We will pay special attention to utopian socialism, early anticolonial movements, the Jewish Labor Bund, and anarchism. Examining the intellectual underpinnings of these movements, their influence on the modern world, and the factors that led to their demise, we will also consider what lessons they can teach to those committed to realizing a better future today.

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

In this course, students will develop basic speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in Yiddish.  By the end of the course, students should be able to understand and participate in a conversation on a variety of everyday topics, read simple texts, be prepared to tackle more complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions on a variety of everyday topics.  The course will also introduce students to the history of the Yiddish language and culture.
 

Empire is back in contemporary Russia. Old imperial insignia have replaced hammers and sickles on government buildings, the bodies of the last tsar and his family have been exhumed and venerated, and Putin's foreign policy stakes imperial claims on the nations on Russia's border. This course examines what the Russian empire was, how it worked, and the legacies that it left behind. Themes to be considered include the culture of the autocracy and the tradition of reform from above; imperial expansion and multiethnic society; the construction of class, ethnic, and estate identities; and the causes and consequences of the Old Regime's collapse. Mondays and Wednesdays are reserved for lectures, Fridays for discussion. Note(s): First-year students warmly welcomed; no prior Russian history, culture, or language assumed.

The first quarter covers the ninth century to the 1870s; the second quarter continues on through the post-Soviet period. Working closely with a variety of primary sources-from oral legends to film and music, from political treatises to literary masterpieces-we will track the evolution of Russian civilization over the centuries and through radically different political regimes. Topics to be discussed include the influence of Byzantine, Mongol-Tataric, and Western culture in Russian civilization; forces of change and continuity in political, intellectual and cultural life; the relationship between center and periphery; systems of social and political legitimization; and symbols and practices of collective identity.

In this course, students will extend basic Yiddish speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.  By the end of the course, students should have a basic understanding of regional Yiddish variations in pronunciation and spelling, be able to understand and participate in a conversation in an increasingly comfortable and complex way, read simple texts with ease, have experience tackling more complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions with grammatical complexity.  In the course of language study, students will also be exposed to key topics in the history of the Yiddish language and culture.

The second quarter of a two-section course in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.

This course provides a historical, literary, and political survey of Russia's encounters with black peoples, from the reign of Peter the Great to the administration of Vladimir Putin. Drawing on a variety of sources, including novels, autobiographies, film, media reports, and contemporary scholarly research, the course explores the concepts of race, belonging, and otherness/duality as they evolved in the varying historical contexts of Russia's encounters with "blackness." Particular attention is paid to comparisons of racialization and racial injustice in America and in Russia, as gleaned from the biographies of black "Russophiles" such as Frederick Bruce Thomas and Paul Robeson, as well as from the memoirs and writings of figures such as Alexander Pushkin, Langston Hughes, and Yelena Khanga. From classic Russian literature, to Soviet propaganda, to contemporary geopolitics, the course asks: How has "blackness" been historically understood and/or used by Russians, and what cultural and political legacies has that left in Russia's post-imperial and post-Soviet space?

The second quarter continues on through the post-Soviet period. Working closely with a variety of primary sources-from oral legends to film and music, from political treatises to literary masterpieces-we will track the evolution of Russian civilization over the centuries and through radically different political regimes. Topics to be discussed include the influence of Byzantine, Mongol-Tataric, and Western culture in Russian civilization; forces of change and continuity in political, intellectual and cultural life; the relationship between center and periphery; systems of social and political legitimization; and symbols and practices of collective identity.

In this course, students will acquire intermediate Yiddish speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.   By the end of the course, students should be able to conduct a conversation on a wide range of topics, be comfortable tackling complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions with grammatical complexity.  In the course of language study, students will also be exposed to key topics in the history of the Yiddish language and culture.  Students will also be introduced to basic Yiddish research skills.
 

The second quarter of a two-section course in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.

This is a three-quarter sequence designed for fourth- and fifth-year students of Russian. It is also suitable for native speakers of Russian. This sequence covers various aspects of advanced Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. This sequence emphasizes the four communicative skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in a culturally authentic context. It builds transcultural competence by expanding students' knowledge of the language, culture, history, and daily lives of the Russian-speaking people. Vocabulary building is strongly emphasized. We add to the existing skills and develop our abilities to analyze increasingly complex texts for their meaning: to identify various styles and registers of the Russian language and to provide their neutral equivalents in standard Russian. We also work on developing our abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize, discuss abstract topics, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations (in spoken and written format). Classes conducted in Russian. Course-specific grammar issues are covered during drill sessions (weekly) and office hours (by appointment). Oral Proficiency Interviews are conducted in the beginning and the end of the course (Autumn and Spring Quarters). Prerequisite(s): Four years of Russian, or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

This course, which is designed for fifth-year students of Russian, covers various aspects of Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. It emphasizes the four communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) in culturally authentic context. Clips from Russian/Soviet films and television news reports are shown and discussed in class. Classes conducted in Russian. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

This course, which is designed for fifth-year students of Russian, covers various aspects of Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. It emphasizes the four communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) in culturally authentic context. Clips from Russian/Soviet films and television news reports are shown and discussed in class. Classes conducted in Russian. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

Who are the Armenians and where do they come from? What is the cultural contribution of Armenians to their neighbors and overall world heritage? This crash-course will try to answer these and many other similar questions while surveying Armenian history and elements of culture (mythology, religion, manuscript illumination, art, architecture, etc.). It also will discuss transformations of Armenian identity and symbols of 'Armenianness' through time, based on such elements of national identity as language, religion, art, or shared history. Due to the greatest artistic quality and the transcultural nature of its monuments and artifacts, Armenia has much to offer in the field of Art History, especially when we think about global transculturation and appropriation among cultures as a result of peoples' movements and contacts. The course is recommended for students with interest in Armenian Studies or related fields, in Area or Civilizations Studies, Art and Cultural Studies, etc.

Course introduces students to the historical context and specific characteristics of the mass printed press (newspapers, cultural and political journals, etc.) in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th C. We will investigate issues such as content, censorship, production, readership and distribution through secondary reading and the examination of period publications.

This one quarter course is designed to help students over one of the most difficult hurdles in language training—the transition from working through lessons in a textbook to reading unedited literary texts. The selected pieces of fiction and the exercises drawn from them engage the language’s structure on every page. Immersed in a complete language experience, students learn how to engage the natural, organic language of literary texts across a variety of styles and themes enabling them to work with ever more challenging material. The course objective is to hone students’ abilities to analyze increasingly complex unrevised texts, identify various styles and registers of the language, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations in both spoken and written format. Attention is given to improving students’ abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize and discuss abstract topics. Building vocabulary is stressed as a key to making progress, while issues of language structure and grammar are reinforced throughout the course. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. 

This course addresses the theme of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav identity through the discussion and interpretation of selected films, documentaries, images, and related texts—historical and literary, popular press, advertisements, screenplays, and literature on film. We examine the ways in which national identity and interethnic relations are approached, evaluated and critically dissected in films, subaltern television, musical performances (e.g. the Bosnian art movement New Primitivism, political documentaries, and more. Students view eight visual productions, each representing a different medium, author, region, and period. To begin, we screen the documentary Cinema Komunisto by Mila Turajlic (2012). This film is crucial for understanding how Yugoslav cinema was born and how, in its origins, it belongs to what cinephile Fredric Jameson has called a “geopolitical aesthetic.” We investigate the complex relationship between aesthetics and ideology in Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav cinema, paying close attention to aesthetic conceptions and concrete formal properties and, more importantly, to language, narrative logic, and style. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. The provisional weekly lesson plan is subject to change in order to accommodate additional needs and requests. 

The course uses an urban studies lens to explore the complex history, infrastructure and transformations of cities, mainly the capitals of today’s Serbia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Croatia. There is a particular need to survey this region and feed the newfound interest in it, mainly because Yugoslav architecture embodied one of the great political experiments of the modern era. Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnography of the city, we consider processes of urban destruction and renewal, practices of branding spaces and identities, urban life as praxis, art and design movements, film, music, food, architectural histories and styles, metropolitan citizenship, and the broader politics of space. The course is complemented by cultural and historical media, guest speakers, and virtual tours. One of them is a tour through the 2018 show at MoMA “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980” a project curated with the goal to find a place for Yugoslav Modernism in the architectural canon. Classes are held in English. No knowledge of South Slavic languages is required.

This course foregrounds different periods in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav art and architecture. Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s architects responded to contradictory demands and influences, developing a postwar architecture both in line with and distinct from the design approaches seen elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Drawing on the country’s own idiosyncrasies, diverse heritage and influences, the course surveys examples of architectural styles from classical to Baroque, through Art Nouveau and Modernism, all the way to full-blown Brutalism with its heft and material honesty. Given that Yugoslav architecture also expressed one of the great political experiments of the modern era, the course entertains many questions on related topics. While exploring major cities, their infrastructure, houses, buildings, monuments, churches and more, the course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. 

This course foregrounds different periods in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav art and architecture. Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s architects responded to contradictory demands and influences, developing a postwar architecture both in line with and distinct from the design approaches seen elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Drawing on the country’s own idiosyncrasies, diverse heritage and influences, the course surveys examples of architectural styles from classical to Baroque, through Art Nouveau and Modernism, all the way to full-blown Brutalism with its heft and material honesty. Given that Yugoslav architecture also expressed one of the great political experiments of the modern era, the course entertains many questions on related topics. While exploring major cities, their infrastructure, houses, buildings, monuments, churches and more, the course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. 

Over the past 200 years, various political and cultural regimes of Russia have systematically exploited the gap between experience and representation to create their own mediated worlds--from the tight censorship of the imperial and Soviet periods to the propaganda of the Soviet period and the recent use of media simulacra for strategic geopolitical advantage. During this same period state control of media has been used to seclude Russia from the advancement of liberalism, market economics, individual rights, modernist art, Freud, Existentialism, and, more recently, Western discourses of inclusion, sustainability, and identity. Examining this history, it is sometimes difficult to discern whether the architects of Russian culture have been hopelessly backward or shrewd phenomenologists, keenly aware of the relativity of experience and of their ability to shape it. This course will explore the worlds that these practices produce, with an emphasis on Russia's recent confrontations with Western culture and power, and including various practices of subversion of media control, such as illegal printing and circulation. Texts for the course will draw from print, sound, and visual media, and fields of analysis will include aesthetics, cultural history, and media theory.

In this course, we explore various ontological and representational modes of the Holocaust material object world as it was represented during World War II. Then, we interrogate the post-Holocaust artifacts and material remnants, as they are displayed, curated, controlled, and narrated in the memorial sites and museums of former ghettos and extermination and concentration camps. These sites which-once the locations of genocide-are now places of remembrance, the (post)human, and material remnants also serve educational purposes. Therefore, we study the ways in which this material world, ranging from infrastructure to detritus, has been subjected to two, often conflicting, tasks of representation and preservation, which we view through a prism of authenticity. In order to study representation, we critically engage a textual and visual reading of museum narrations and fiction writings; to tackle the demands of preservation, we apply a neo-materialist approach. Of special interest are survivors' testimonies as appended to the artifacts they donated. The course will also equip you with salient critical tools for future creative research in Holocaust studies.

Chicago claims to have the largest Polish and Polish-American population in the US and yet the city's distinctly Polish neighborhoods are now only history as their population has dispersed or moved to the suburbs. This course explores the diminishing presence of Poles against the lasting input of the material culture which they introduced to the urban spaces of Chicago. The course is framed by the fundamentals of thing discourse and employs the mediums of sculpture, fashion, photography, architecture and topography of the Polish community in Chicago through several field trips. The course's main goal is to map the evolution of the former Polish neighborhoods which often concluded with the erasure of their distinct ethno-space. In order to grasp the status of such changes, students take several field trips to the former Polish neighborhoods and visit their existing architectural landmarks and cultural institutions. Towards the end of the course, students conduct several interviews with Polish Chicagoans from the postwar and Solidarity immigrations. The course concludes with a capstone project for which students will make a virtual collection of artifacts designed as a curio cabinet filled with objects they found, created, and purchased during their research and field trips.

In this course, we study the monumental series "The Decalogue" by one of the most influential filmmakers from Poland, Krzysztof Kieślowski. Without mechanically relating the films to the Ten Commandments, Kieślowski explores the relevance of the biblical moral rules to the state of modern man forced to make ethical choices. Each part of the series contests the absolutism of moral axioms through narrative twists and reversals in a wide, universalized sphere. An analysis of the films will be accompanied by readings from Kieślowski's own writings and interviews, including criticism by Zizek, Insdorf, and others. 

"Being alienated from myself, as painful as that may be, provides me with that exquisite distance within which perverse pleasure begins, as well as the possibility of my imagining and thinking," writes Julia Kristeva in "Strangers to Ourselves," the book from which this course takes its title. The authors whose works we are going to examine often alternate between nostalgia and the exhilaration of being set free into the breathless possibilities of new lives. Leaving home does not simply mean movement in space. Separated from the sensory boundaries that defined their old selves, immigrants inhabit a warped, fragmentary, disjointed time. Immigrant writers struggle for breath-speech, language, voice, the very stuff of their craft resounds somewhere else. Join us as we explore the pain, the struggle, the failure, and the triumph of emigration and exile. Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Brodsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Nina Berberova, Julia Kristeva, Alexander Hemon, Dubravka Ugrešić, Norman Manea, Miroslav Penkov, Ilija Trojanow, Tea Obreht.

What makes it possible for the imagined communities called nations to command the emotional attachments that they do?  This course considers some possible answers to Benedict Anderson’s question on the basis of material from the Balkans. We will examine the transformation of the scenario of paradise, loss, and redemption into a template for a national identity narrative through which South East European nations retell their Ottoman past.  With the help of Žižek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma and Kant’s notion of the sublime, we will contemplate the national fixation on the trauma of loss and the dynamic between victimhood and sublimity.

“What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people…. Do you want to strip the earth of all the trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?” asks the Devil. Mikhail Bulgakov worked on his novel The Master and Margarita throughout most of his writing career, in Stalin’s Moscow. Bulgakov destroyed his manuscript, re-created it from memory, and reworked it feverishly even as his body was failing him in his battle with death. The result is an intense contemplation on the nature of good and evil, on the role of art and the ethical duty of the artist, but also a dazzling world of magic, witches, and romantic love, and an irresistible seduction into the comedic. Laughter, as shadow and light, as the subversive weapon but also as power’s whip, grounds human relation to both good and evil. Brief excursions to other texts that help us better understand Master and Margarita.

Aware of being observed. And judged. Inferior... Abject… Angry... Proud… This course provides insight into identity dynamics between the “West,” as the center of economic power and self-proclaimed normative humanity, and the “Rest,” as the poor, backward, volatile periphery. We investigate the relationship between South East European self-representations and the imagined Western gaze. Inherent in the act of looking at oneself through the eyes of another is the privileging of that other’s standard. We will contemplate the responses to this existential position of identifying symbolically with a normative site outside of oneself—self-consciousness, defiance, arrogance, self-exoticization—and consider how these responses have been incorporated in the texture of the national, gender, and social identities in the region. Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andrić, Nikos Kazantzakis, Aleko Konstantinov, Emir Kusturica, Milcho Manchevski.

What does it feel to be watched and listened to all the time? Literary and cinematic works give us a glimpse into the experience of living under surveillance and explore the human effects of surveillance--the fraying of intimacy, fracturing sense of self, testing the limits of what it means to be human. Works from the former Soviet Union (Solzhenitsyn, Abram Tertz, Andrey Zvyagintsev), former Yugoslavia (Ivo Andrić, Danilo Kiš, Dušan Kovačević), Romania (Norman Manea, Cristian Mungiu), Bulgaria (Valeri Petrov), and Albania (Ismail Kadare).

The course is designed to meet the specific needs of advanced learners of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, including heritage and native speakers, and to foster cross-cultural experiences through interdisciplinary content. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics relative to the students' field of study, research and personal interests. Although grounded in the field of philology, it expands students' knowledge in other disciplines of social and behavioral sciences such as history, anthropology, global studies, economics, political science, sociology, and the like. Attention is given to the ability to paraphrase scholarly arguments, formulate research hypotheses, and present  research in the target language. The course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. Classes are conducted in BCS. The prerequisite is three years of formal study of the target language or the equivalent.

The course is designed to meet the specific needs of advanced learners of B/C/S, including heritage and native speakers, and to foster cross-cultural experiences through its interdisciplinary content. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics relative to the students' field of study, research and personal interests. Although grounded in the field of philology, it expands students' knowledge in other disciplines of social and behavioral sciences such as history, anthropology, global studies, economics, political science, sociology, and the like. Attention is given to the ability to paraphrase scholarly arguments, formulate research hypotheses, and present one's research in the target language. The course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. 

The course is designed to meet the specific needs of advanced learners of B/C/S, including heritage and native speakers, and to foster cross-cultural experiences through its interdisciplinary content. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics relative to the students' field of study, research and personal interests. Although grounded in the field of philology, it expands students' knowledge in other disciplines of social and behavioral sciences such as history, anthropology, global studies, economics, political science, sociology, and the like. Attention is given to the ability to paraphrase scholarly arguments, formulate research hypotheses, and present one's research in the target language. The course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. 

This team-taught course invites students to reassess critically the meaning of the Soviet collapse on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary. Topics to be examined include the neoliberal "shock therapy" economic reforms that ushered in a state of wild capitalism, the dissolution of the Soviet empire and rise of rise of new right nationalisms, and the formation of alternative artistic movements that resisted the economic and political devastation that accompanied the transition. The course pedagogy employs economic, political, historical, and aesthetic analysis to develop a robust understanding across a variety of disciplines and methodological approaches.

Consent required for undergraduate enrollment; email Professors Feldman and Hillis a paragraph long description about what you bring and what you hope to get out of this seminar.

This course focuses on the demise of one of the most enduring, ambitious, appealing, transformative, and destructive political ideologies. We will consider the collapse of communism as a religion, an aesthetic, and a way of life, an economic system and a material culture, a political structure and an international order. We will also discuss communism's afterlives in biographies and memoirs (including those of scholars). Topics include reforms and revolutions, political and cultural dissent, generations and languages, secrecy and publicity, travel and immobility, competing religions and rival ideologies, the Cold War and détentes, privileges and shortages, apartment blocks and palaces of culture, the Gorky Park, the Memento Park, and other Luna Parks. Our readings will range across Europe, focusing primarily on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the last forty years of the twentieth century. 

When most Americans think about "the left," Marxism, Soviet state socialism, or European social democracy spring to mind. This class will explore alternative-but now largely forgotten-blueprints for revolutionizing the political and social order that emerged in the nineteenth century. We will pay special attention to utopian socialism, early anticolonial movements, the Jewish Labor Bund, and anarchism. Examining the intellectual underpinnings of these movements, their influence on the modern world, and the factors that led to their demise, we will also consider what lessons they can teach to those committed to realizing a better future today.

The first quarter of a two-section course in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.

This course offers students the opportunity to study the Yiddish language at the intermediate level. It reviews and extends students' knowledge of the grammar of the Yiddish language, enhances vocabulary, and includes literary and cultural readings. Designed to further develop listening, speaking, reading comprehension, and writing skills.

This course offers students the opportunity to study the Yiddish language at the intermediate level. The focus of this course is learning to navigate and study from a variety of archival materials including newspapers, music archives, and historical texts. The course is designed to further develop listening, speaking, reading comprehension, and writing skills and to give students tools to continue Yiddish reading and research independently.

This course considers the main themes of Soviet history through canonical works of fiction, with an occasional addition of excerpts from autobiographies, memories, and police files.

When reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded, it quickly made headlines around the world. Swedes found radiation in their air, Germans in their milk, Greeks in their grain, and Britons in their sheep. Ukrainians and Belarusians found it in their rain, wind, water sources, homes, and in their children's thyroids. Americans worried about finding it in their bodies, especially in pregnant or fetal bodies. A lot of roads led to the Chernobyl disaster: the Soviet state system, to be sure, but also the Cold War arms race, a faith in scientific progress shared in East and West, and a global disregard for the natural world and the human body. This course will follow those roads to the climax of the explosion and then examine the many paths out of Chernobyl: the disaster's aftereffects on geopolitics, environmentalism, feminism, and body politics. We will draw on a recent outpouring of scholarly and popular works on Chernobyl, including books, podcasts, and television series. We will also read texts on feminism, environmentalism, and other nuclear disasters, Cold War histories, and fiction to provide context and sites for further inquiry.

Perhaps no object of scholarly inquiry in Turkey has attracted as much attention as the 'state'. A central category in the construction of ideologies of authority, power, kinship and nationhood within Turkish society, the state has also emerged as a hotly contested subject of academic debate. At issue is the relationship of the Turkish state to broader publics, and the way that publics are constructed in relation to government institutions, mass media, consumer markets and forms of everyday sociality. In this course, we explore how scholars have theorized the relationship between state and public in Turkey, noting how their diverse scholarly orientations place Turkey in a unique position vis-à-vis academic knowledge production about Europe and the Middle East/Western Asia; and we consider how different methodological approaches and theoretical paradigms dominant in contemporary scholarship shape more prosaic concerns around education and language policy, political propaganda and mass media, bureaucracy and the politics of the public sector, fashion and the policing of public space, et al. At the same time, we focus on how these academic and policy debates are tied up with broader social concerns in Turkey and the wider region (as well as in Western Europe and North America) around democracy and authoritarianism, the relationship between secularism and Islam, the rights and status of religious and ethnic minorities, and shifting gender dynamics and generational change.

This seminar focuses on current research in contact linguistics in a global perspective, including but not limited to the impact of languages of wider communication (e.g. English, Russian) in contact with other languages. Topics to be covered include the following: language/dialect contact, convergence and language shift resulting in attrition and language endangerment and loss. Other contact-induced linguistic changes and processes to be considered include borrowing, code-switching, code-shifting, diglossia, loss of linguistic restrictions and grammatical permeability, and the impact of language contact in the emergence and/or historical development of languages.

Tolstoy’s novel is at once a national epic, a treatise on history, a spiritual meditation, and a masterpiece of realism. This course presents a close reading of one of the world’s great novels, and of the criticism that has been devoted to it, including landmark works by Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, Isaiah Berlin, and George Steiner.

Central Asia Past and Present serves as a multi-disciplinary course, spanning anthropology, history and political science. This course introduces students to the fluid, political-geographic concept of Central Asia as well as to the historical and cultural dimensions of this particular and oft-redefined world. My understanding of Central Asia comes from studies of ex-Soviet Central Asia, which includes five independent countries (since 1991) within central Eurasia--the former U.S.S.R. Thus the course encompasses Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in addition to parts of northern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and western China (Xinjiang/Sinkiang). Students will familiarize themselves with universal and divergent factors among the Central Asian peoples based on phenomena such as human migrations, cross-cultural influences, historical events, and the economic organization of peoples based on local ecology and natural boundaries. Working together and as individuals, we will study maps and atlases to gain a fuller understanding of historical movements and settlements of the Central Asian peoples.

This course is the continuation of Islamic History and Society 1 and presumes a familiarity of early Islamic history, 600-1100. This course covers the period from roughly 1000 to 1750 and deals with, among other topics, the coming of the steppe people (Turks and Mongols), the Mongol successor states, and the rise of the great early modern Islamic empires (Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals), the relation of Islamic political entities with Russia and China. Mid-term and final exam required for Undergraduates.

This course covers the period from ca. 1750 to the present, focusing on Western military, economic, and ideological encroachment; the impact of such ideas as nationalism and liberalism; efforts at reform in the Islamic states; the emergence of the "modern" Middle East after World War I; the struggle for liberation from Western colonial and imperial control; the Middle Eastern states in the cold war era; and local and regional conflicts.

What are the major developments in thinking and in literature in the Islamic world of the “middle periods” (c. 950 – 1800 C.E.). How did noteworthy Muslims at various points and places think through questions of life & death, man & God, faith & belief, the sacred & the profane, law & ethics, tradition vs. innovation, power & politics, class & gender, self & other? How did they wage war; make love; shape the built environment; eat & drink; tell stories; educate their youth; preserve the past; imagine the future; perform piety, devotion and spirituality; construe the virtuous life and righteous community, etc.? How did these ideas change over time? What are some of the famous, funny, naughty and nice books read in the pre-modern Muslim world?
We will survey a broad geographic area stretching from Morocco and Iberia to the Maldives and India – even into the New World – through lectures, secondary readings and discussion. You will engage with a variety of primary texts in English translation, as well as various visual, aural and material artifacts. How do the ideas, institutions, and literary works evolve in response to changing historical, demographic and religious circumstances? How do culture, ethnicity, gender, history, politics and religion interact to create individual Muslim identities and a multi-faceted intellectual milieu (consisting of the scientific, philosophical and theological production; the religious, educational, governmental, commercial and social institutions; the literary, artistic, musical, and constructs which together make up "Islamic Civilization).

This course explores the rituals, oral literature, and music associated with the nomadic cultures of Central Eurasia.

This course will examine the development of the Turkish state following WWI including questions of economy, institutions, and identity formation. The first quarter make be taken as a free-standing colloquium, or students may take both quarters and produce a research paper.

This course examines responses to the Mongol destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in 1258 and the background to formation of regional Muslim empires. Topics include the opening of confessional boundaries; Ibn Arabi, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Khaldun; the development of alternative spiritualities, mysticism, and messianism in the fifteenth century; and transconfessionalism, antinomianism, and the articulation of sacral sovereignties in the sixteenth century. All work in English. This course is offered in alternate years.

This is the continuation of NEHC 20837/30837: History Early Turkish Republic I. Students will produce a seminar/research paper and meet to discuss selected readings on the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic and the consolidation of the Republican regime.

This two-quarter seminar focuses on the transformation of the Muslim Ottoman principality into an imperial entity—after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453—that laid claim to inheritance of Alexandrine, Roman/Byzantine, Mongol/Chinggisid, and Islamic models of Old World Empire at the dawn of the early modern era. Special attention is paid to the transformation of Ottoman imperialism in the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (1520-1566), who appeared to give the Empire its “classical” form. Topics include: the Mongol legacy; the reformulation of the relationship between political and religious institutions; mysticism and the creation of divine kingship; Muslim-Christian competition (with special reference to Spain and Italy) and the formation of early modernity; the articulation of bureaucratized hierarchy; and comparison of Muslim Ottoman, Iranian Safavid, and Christian European imperialisms. The first quarter comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600; the second quarter is divided between the examination of particular themes in comparative perspective (for example, the dissolution and recreation of religious institutions in Islamdom and Christendom) and student presentations of research for the seminar paper. In addition to seminar papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.

The goal of this course is a thorough treatment of Kafka's literary work in its Central European, more specifically Czech, context. In critical scholarship, Kafka and his work are often alienated from his Prague milieu. The course revisits the Prague of Kafka's time, with particular reference to Josefov (the Jewish ghetto), Das Prager Deutsch, and Czech/German/Jewish relations of the prewar and interwar years. We discuss most of Kafka's major prose works within this context and beyond (including The Castle, The Trial, and the stories published during his lifetime), as well as selected critical approaches to his work.

This course explores changing roles of puppets, robots, and automatons in the arts from the nineteenth century through the present. Major themes will include expressions of the anxieties surrounding animate inanimate objects, intersections between the arts and technology, constructed bodies in the context of both modernism and modernity, robots and automatons in utopian and dystopian spaces, and the relationship between puppets, robots, and automatons and developments in media through the past two hundred years. Readings for the course will historical and contemporary theoretical discourses on these constructed and imagined bodies, literary depictions ranging from folk tales through science fiction narratives, and discussions of puppets, robots, and automatons in the popular press. Beyond these texts, we will investigate how these figures are represented in film, theater, and the visual arts. Although we will consider sources and viewpoints from a broad geographical perspective, we will give special attention to the role of puppets, robots, and automatons in Central and Eastern Europe, where both nineteenth century romantic nationalism and twentieth century socialism fostered a distinctive discursive, technological, and creative space for the constructed, animated body.

This course offers a survey into the manifold strategies of representing the Jewish community in East Central Europe beginning from the nineteenth century to the Holocaust. Engaging the concept of liminality-of a society at the threshold of radical transformation-it will analyze Jewry facing uncertainties and challenges of the modern era and its radical changes. Students will be acquainted with problems of cultural and linguistic isolation, hybrid identity, assimilation, and cultural transmission through a wide array of genres-novel, short story, epic poem, memoir, painting, illustration, film. The course draws on both Jewish and Polish-Jewish sources; all texts are read in English translation.

Vampires, fire-breathing dragons, vengeful mountain nymphs. 7/8 and other uneven dance beats, heart-rending laments and a living epic tradition.This course is an overview of Balkan folklore from historical, political and anthropological, perspectives. We seek to understand folk tradition as a dynamic process and consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. We also experience this living tradition first-hand through visits of a Chicago-based folk dance ensemble, “Balkan Dance.”

Being alienated from myself, as painful as that may be, provides me with that exquisite distance within which perverse pleasure begins, as well as the possibility of my imagining and thinking," writes Julia Kristeva in "Strangers to Ourselves," the book from which this course takes its title. The authors whose works we are going to examine often alternate between nostalgia and the exhilaration of being set free into the breathless possibilities of new lives. Leaving home does not simply mean movement in space. Separated from the sensory boundaries that defined their old selves, immigrants inhabit a warped, fragmentary, disjointed time. Immigrant writers struggle for breath-speech, language, voice, the very stuff of their craft resounds somewhere else. Join us as we explore the pain, the struggle, the failure, and the triumph of emigration and exile. Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Brodsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Nina Berberova, Julia Kristeva, Alexander Hemon, Dubravka Ugrešić, Norman Manea, Miroslav Penkov, Ilija Trojanow, Tea Obreht.

This course introduces a current of Russian-Japanese exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas running from the late nineteenth century to now. Our focus will be on the historical role that Russia came to play in anarchist movement in Japan. We will read such revolutionary intellectuals as Lev Mechnikov, Peter Kropotkin, and Lev Tolstoy; compare the visions of civilizational progress of the state modernizer Fukuzawa Yukichi and Japanese anarchists Kōtoku Shūsui and Ōsugi Sakae; and study the post-WW II continuation of the anarchist tradition in the films of Kurosawa Akira, music of Takemitsu Toru, and writings of Ōe Kenzaburō.

Class meets for 2 hours each week. We'll work with several topics, all of them are relevant to the general theme of "Geography and Worldview: Russian Perspective". There will be maps, reading materials, several documentaries, clips from TV programs and other media, and feature films. Class meetings will be a combination of group discussions, short presentations, and lectures. Final - one term paper at the end (in English) based on Russian materials.

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

In this three-quarter sequence, students will develop basic speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in Yiddish.  By the end of the first course, students should be able to understand and participate in a conversation on a variety of everyday topics, read simple texts, be prepared to tackle more complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions on a variety of everyday topics. The course will also introduce students to the history of the Yiddish language and culture. By the end of the second course, students should have a basic understanding of regional Yiddish variations in pronunciation and spelling, be able to understand and participate in a conversation in an increasingly comfortable and complex way, read simple texts with ease, have experience tackling more complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions with grammatical complexity. By the end of the sequence, students should be able to conduct a conversation on a wide range of topics, be comfortable tackling complex texts with the aid of a dictionary, and write short compositions with grammatical complexity.  In the course of language study, students will also be exposed to key topics in the history of the Yiddish language and culture.  Students will also be introduced to basic Yiddish research skills.

This three-quarter sequence course in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages introduces students to the basics of four basic skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. It maintains a good balance of the three languages, their respective grammatical and lexical differences, and the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Students are encouraged to concentrate on the language and culture of their interest and choice. The course objective is to build a solid foundation in the grammatical patterns of the spoken and written languages, while simultaneously working on basic interpretive, interpersonal, presentational and intercultural communication. This is achieved through a communicative situation-based approach, dialogues and texts and, reinforced by the students and instructor, screenings of short announcements, commercials, documentaries, interviews, and the like. Once a week, one-on-one 15-minute conversation sessions with the instructor offer students the opportunity to review and practice the materials presented in class. The course is supplemented with cultural events, guest speakers and selected media. Together with the conversation sessions, these supplements improve the students’ ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds— essential for establishing successful, positive relationships across cultural boundaries.

This 3-quarter sequence introduces the Czech language to those students who would like to speak Czech or use the language for reading and research purposes. All four major communicative skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening, speaking) are stressed. Students will also learn about Czech culture through readings, films and class activities. This sequence prepares students for the second-year Czech course and to study or travel abroad in the Czech Republic. Conversation practice is held weekly.

This is a 3-quarter sequence that teaches students to speak, read, and write in Polish, as well as familiarizes them with Polish culture. It employs the most up-to-date techniques of language teaching (e.g., communicative and accelerated learning, and learning based on students' native language skills), as well as multileveled target-language exposure. It includes instruction in grammar, writing, and translation, as well as watching selected Polish movies. Selected readings are drawn from the course textbook, and students also read Polish short stories and press articles. In addition, the independent reading of students is emphasized and reinforced by class discussions. Work is adjusted to each student’s level of preparation. Drill sessions to be arranged.

This course is a 3-quarter sequence.

This course introduces modern Russian to students who would like to speak Russian or to use the language for reading and research. All four major communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) are stressed. Students are also introduced to Russian culture through readings, videos, and class discussions. This year-long course prepares students for the College Language Competency Exam, for continued study of Russian in second-year courses, and for study or travel abroad in Russian-speaking countries. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

This course is a 3-quarter sequence.

This literary and linguistic approach to Russian allows students to learn the language by engaging classic Russian poetic texts (e.g., Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman), as well as excerpts from Eugene Onegin and selections from Pushkin's shorter poems and prose works. Although the focus is on reading Russian, all four major communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) are stressed, preparing students for the College Language Competency Exam and for continued study of Russian in second-year courses. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

A two-quarter sequence in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.

This course offers students the opportunity to study the Yiddish language at the intermediate level. It reviews and extents students' knowledge of the grammar of the Yiddish language, enhances vocabulary, and includes literary and cultural readings. Designed to further develop listening, speaking, reading comprehension, and writing skills.
 

This 3-quarter sequence includes instruction in grammar, writing, and translation, as well as watching selected Polish movies. Selected readings are drawn from the course textbook, and students also read Polish short stories and press articles. In addition, the independent reading of students is emphasized and reinforced by class discussions. Work is adjusted to each student's level of preparation. The primary goal of second year Polish is to expand the student’s speaking, reading and writing skills by building on grammar and vocabulary learned during the first year of study. As a complement to the linguistic side of the course, the student will gain a greater familiarity with Polish history and culture through varied means including readings of literary works, articles from contemporary Polish newspapers and movies. 

The main goal of this course is to enable students to read Czech proficiently in their particular fields. Conversation practice is included. The program is flexible and may be adjusted according to the needs of the students.

The Second-Year Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages and cultures course is designed for both students who have completed the first- year sequence and heritage learners. Its main objective is to develop further communicative skills—interpretive, interpersonal, presentational and intercultural—using authentic materials representing the contemporary spoken and written language in authentic cultural contexts. Students are presented with a series of texts, such as newspaper articles, interviews with writers, actors, athletes, short biographies, book and film reviews, university websites, travel blogs, etc. Audiovisual materials, representing both high and popular culture, constitute an integral part of every unit. Grammar and vocabulary are reinforced and developed throughout the quarter. Textual and audiovisual materials are selected to best exemplify the outlined themes while maintaining a good balance of the three languages and their respective grammatical and lexical differences in order to assess students’ progress in all four skills. Each of the 12 units is accompanied with a unit test, all of which, including the final exam at the end of the term, mirror the tasks in the practical proficiency assessment test that students can take at the end of the spring quarter. The course is complemented with cultural and historical media from the Balkans, guest speakers and cultural events. 

This course is a 3-quarter sequence.

This course continues RUSS 10103-10203-10303; it includes review and amplification of grammar, practice in reading, elementary composition, and speaking and comprehension. Systematic study of word formation and other strategies are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading rather than translating. Readings are selected to help provide historical and cultural background. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

This course offers students the opportunity to study the Yiddish language at the intermediate level. The focus of this course is learning to navigate and study from a variety of archival materials including newspapers, music archives, and historical texts. The course is designed to further develop listening, speaking, reading comprehension, and writing skills and to give students tools to continue Yiddish reading and research independently.

This course is a 3-quarter sequence.

This course, which is intended for third-year students of Russian, covers various aspects of Russian grammar in context and emphasizes the four communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) in a culturally authentic context. Excerpts from popular Soviet/Russian films and clips from Russian television news reports are shown and discussed in class. Classes conducted in Russian; some aspects of grammar explained in English. Drill practice is held twice a week.

In this two-quarter sequence, students will be exposed to essays, short stories, poetry and other writings by some of the great Yiddish writers of the twentieth century, including Abraham Reisin, Bella Chagall, Abraham Sutzkever, Esther Kreitman, and Dovid Bergelson. Students will write critical essays and creative responses, listen to excerpts read aloud, participate in discussions and debates. In the second quarter, we will read from a variety of writing by women - memoirs, prose fiction, and poetry. We will discuss how their gender (and the way they were received as women within the literary marketplace) may have influenced their writing, and will talk about contemporary acts of literary recovery and reinterpretation of their work. Authors in this syllabus include: Kadya Molodovsky, Salomea Perl, Esther Kreitman, Shira Gorshman, and Miriam Karpilove, among others. This sequence will be conducted entirely in Yiddish. 

This course examines the major aspects of Russian grammar and stylistics essential for heritage learners. Students engage in close readings and discussions of short stories by classic and contemporary Russian authors (e.g., Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Platonov, Bulgakov, Erofeev, Tolstaya), with special emphasis on their linguistic and stylistic differences. All work in Russian.

This course is an intensive reading of Pale Fire by Nabokov.

This course is a 3-quarter sequence.

This course is designed for fourth- and fifth-year students of Russian. It is also suitable for native speakers of Russian. This sequence covers various aspects of advanced Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. This sequence emphasizes the four communicative skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in a culturally authentic context. It builds transcultural competence by expanding students’ knowledge of the language, culture, history, and daily lives of the Russian-speaking people. Vocabulary building is strongly emphasized. We add to the existing skills and develop our abilities to analyze increasingly complex texts for their meaning: to identify various styles and registers of the Russian language and to provide their neutral equivalents in standard Russian. We also work on developing our abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize, discuss abstract topics, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations (in spoken and written format). Classes conducted in Russian. Course-specific grammar issues are covered during drill sessions (weekly) and office hours (by appointment). Oral Proficiency Interviews are conducted in the beginning and the end of the course (Autumn and Spring Quarters).

This one quarter course is designed to help students over one of the most difficult hurdles in language training—the transition from working through lessons in a textbook to reading unedited literary texts. The selected pieces of fiction and the exercises drawn from them engage the language’s structure on every page. Immersed in a complete language experience, students learn how to engage the natural, organic language of literary texts across a variety of styles and themes enabling them to work with ever more challenging material. The course objective is to hone students’ abilities to analyze increasingly complex unrevised texts, identify various styles and registers of the language, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations in both spoken and written format. Attention is given to improving students’ abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize and discuss abstract topics. Building vocabulary is stressed as a key to making progress, while issues of language structure and grammar are reinforced throughout the course. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. 

Advanced BCS courses encompass both the 3rd and 4th years of language study, with the focus changed from language structure and grammar to issues in interdisciplinary content. The courses are not in sequence. This course addresses the theme of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav identity through discussion and interpretation based on selected films, documentaries, images, and related texts—historical and literary, popular press, advertisements, screenplays, and literature e on film. Emphasis is on interpersonal communication as well as the interpretation and production of language in written and oral forms. The course engages in systematic grammar review, along with introduction of some new linguistic topics, with constant practice in writing and vocabulary enrichment. The syllabus includes the screening of six films, each from a different director, region, and period, starting with Cinema Komunisto (2012), a documentary by Mila Turajlic. This film will be crucial for understanding how Yugoslav cinema was born and how, in its origins, it belongs to what a later cinephile, Fredric Jameson, has called a “geopolitical aesthetic.” We shall investigate the complex relationship between aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav cinema, and pay close attention to aesthetic conceptions and concrete formal properties, and more importantly, to language, narrative logic, and style. 

This course foregrounds different periods in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav art and architecture. Situated between the capitalist West and the socialist East, Yugoslavia’s architects responded to contradictory demands and influences, developing a postwar architecture both in line with and distinct from the design approaches seen elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Drawing on the country’s own idiosyncrasies, diverse heritage and influences, the course surveys examples of architectural styles from classical to Baroque, through Art Nouveau and Modernism, all the way to full-blown Brutalism with its heft and material honesty. Given that Yugoslav architecture also expressed one of the great political experiments of the modern era, the course entertains many questions on related topics. While exploring major cities, their infrastructure, houses, buildings, monuments, churches and more, the course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. Classes are conducted in the target language and may be taken for pass/fail. 

The course is designed to meet the specific needs of advanced learners of B/C/S, including heritage and native speakers, and to foster cross-cultural experiences through its interdisciplinary content. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics relative to the students’ field of study, research and personal interests. Although grounded in the field of philology, it expands students’ knowledge in other disciplines of social and behavioral sciences such as history, anthropology, global studies, economics, political science, sociology, and the like. Attention is given to the ability to paraphrase scholarly arguments, formulate research hypotheses, and present one’s research in the target language. The course delves into advanced grammatical topics with the goal of increasing proficiency in both aural and reading comprehension, in addition to honing writing and speaking styles. Classes are conducted in B/C/S. 

Class meets for 2 hours each week. We'll work with several topics, all of them are relevant to the general theme of "Geography and Worldview: Russian Perspective". There will be maps, reading materials, several documentaries, clips from TV programs and other media, and feature films. Class meetings will be a combination of group discussions, short presentations, and lectures. Final - one term paper at the end (in English) based on Russian materials.