RUSS 0800 - ADULTERY, MURDER, OMNISCIENCE: INTRODUCTION TO 19TH C RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Are some people more deserving of life and happiness than others? Am I responsible for the well-being of others? Can you ever really know someone else? Celebrated works of nineteenth-century Russian literature tackle these and other, equally fundamental, questions. This course provides a dynamic introduction to some of the most influential works of Russian literature, texts that became moral, ideological, and aesthetic touchstones for all later periods of Russian culture. We will study the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov with attention to their thematic and formal preoccupations, their historical contexts, and often fascinating histories of reception. Topics of particular interest (vary from one semester to the next and tend to) include Russia’s experiment in Westernization; Russian imperialism; the status of the writer within shifting socio-political hierarchies; transgression and criminality; kinship and family; human agency in the natural world; religion; science; the fluctuating meanings of social class; individual subjectivity as an object of artistic representation; the adaptation of literary works in other media (e.g., cinema, opera).
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Requirements: PREQ: ENG 0102 or ENGCMP (0002 or 0006 or 0020 or 0200 or 0203 or 0205 or 0207 or 0208 or 0210 or 0212 or 0213 or 0214) or ENGFLM 0210 or FP (0003 or 0006) *Applies to all WRIT Courses*
Course Attributes: DSAS Geographic Region General Ed. Requirement, DSAS Literature General Ed. Requirement, Russian & East European Studies, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req., Writing Intensive Course (WRIT)

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